4NCL Online

[NickFaulks]

Er, no. Expert witnesses can expect a good grilling from a slippery barrister on minute detail of analysis.

Why do you have to say a slippery barrister? Why not just a competent barrister who is trying to discover how on earth his client came to be convicted?

[David Sedgwick]

I personally think this yardstick is OK though, as the consequence of being wrongly banned from online chess cannot compare with being wrongfully convicted.

That is not encouraging to read. Someone who made their living as a chess coach and now can't do that any more will think the consequence is serious.

Not to mention someone trying to make a living (or, more realistically, trying to supplement their income) as a chess arbiter.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Why do you have to say a slippery barrister? Why not just a competent barrister who is trying to discover how on earth his client came to be convicted?"

Sorry - I was thinking of a colleague who spent 11 hours in the witness box repeatedly answering the same question regarding the scientific evidence. Our guy's boss produced a musical video commemorating the event, which was premiered at our guy's retirement celebration a few years later.

[Li Wu]

Sorry to be blunt but a criminal conviction is way worse than no longer being a chess professional overall.

For a start- criminal conviction --> cant get a job around children
--> cant get a job as an official
--> cant be an arbiter/chess coach

And when you are wrongly banned for cheating in chess you can at least go for other professions.

In any case I was just being realistic here. On the one hand to the far extreme I would say it's morally wrong for a single innocent man to be sentenced to death (so thus I'm against the death penalty), and then we have being banned from online chess with no doubt many other things even further down the other end of the scale.

[NickFaulks]

And when you are wrongly banned for cheating in chess you can at least go for other professions.

Thank you for this revealing and honest comment, which I expect is representative of the views of the online chess industry. It will be of value in future reports.

[John Swain]

And when you are wrongly banned for cheating in chess you can at least go for other professions.

Thank you for this revealing and honest comment, which I expect is representative of the views of the online chess industry. It will be of value in future reports.

I'm sure that most of those caught by the software are cheating, but my concern is with the small -perhaps very small- minority who are innocent and wrongly branded, especially when they are juniors.  One is too many in my opinion, especially if organisers or organisations are going to make a personal or collective profit out of such cases.

[Roger Lancaster]

Sorry to be blunt but a criminal conviction is way worse than no longer being a chess professional overall.

For a start- criminal conviction --> cant get a job around children
--> cant get a job as an official
--> cant be an arbiter/chess coach

And when you are wrongly banned for cheating in chess you can at least go for other professions.

In any case I was just being realistic here. On the one hand to the far extreme I would say it's morally wrong for a single innocent man to be sentenced to death (so thus I'm against the death penalty), and then we have being banned from online chess with no doubt many other things even further down the other end of the scale.

Sorry to state the obvious but it depends very much what the criminal conviction is for. Driving without due care and attention isn't trivial [particularly for someone who depends on driving for a living] but it's a good deal less serious than a wide range of other offences.

[John McKenna]

I agree with the direction of travel in which Roger L's statement, above, is taking the argument.

Li W was being too blunt in his comparison to the criminal justice system and should have looked up and compared the stats on miscarriages of justice in that system before doing so, they were not a pretty sight when I last looked.

Going further in Roger L's direction of travel I'd argue that cheating at chess is more akin to the motoring offences of speeding and parking. (Slippery lawyers are available in those areas for hire by the driver and/or parking company.)

Unfortunately the analogy breaks down in that although one may lose one's license or vehicle for major infringements there is a sliding scale of penalty points and/or monetary fines that come into play first.

The real blunt instrument in the cheating at chess case is the all-or-nothing-peremptory bans that are being dished out on dubious and undemonstrable evidence.

Is there no other way of policing and enforcing this?

Probably not, so people will just have to live with it as they do with speeding and parking offences in particular and the criminal justice system in general.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Perhaps Li has been misunderstood, at any event everything he has said seems right to me.

It is other people who seem to want to apply standards of criminal justice here, whilst apparently unaware that even they are fallible* and result in (probably) several thousands of wrong convictions per year - and it does not seem to have occured to them to complain of this before, so why the special concern for an occasional person wrongly banned from playing chess in an online community? Just asking....

* it may well be the risks of error are in fact roughly comparable.

[JustinHorton]

why the special concern for an occasional person wrongly banned from playing chess in an online community? Just asking....

Because this is a chess forum

[John McKenna]

I wonder what an irate motorists' forum looks like, on second thoughts I'd rather not know.

[Kevin Thurlow]

I think the issue with online chess is that the prosecution, judge and appeal judge are the same person.

It isn't confined to chess, as cowboy parking companies and local councils operate the same way. I think any "irate motorists forum" would query that police operating "alcohol in breath" test machines (or speed cameras) don't seem ever to be queried in court. (i.e. when did you last calibrate the equipment?)

It is tempting to start an irate motorists forum and charge £1 to join. That would augment the pension...

[John McKenna]

Or become a legal eagle and represent the rich & famous.

Despite Jonathan R's plea for mitigation I still maintain that any comparison to the crininal justice system is of very limited use in trying to solve this case because the armies of people involved on both sides and the cost of the criminal justice system are so much greater.

[Li Wu]

The exact false positive rates to strive for aren't so important- what's important is that there needs to be some careful discussion and a decision on it, and it naturally falls on a scale amongst everything else as you guys all agree above. I think you'll find that I've never said that it's fine to ban innocent players.

Whatever FIDE/ECF/online chess sites decide it's not going to please everyone- same as all things when a a threshold is decided.

People with nothing to lose will argue for lower thresholds for bans, along with people who would never cheat. Obviously established arbiters/coaches that aren't making a living primarily from playing would want to minimise the chance of innocent players to be banned as much as possible. But someone who plays it for a living with no other income during covid would either be extremely tempted to cheat, or be very frustrated if cheating isn't policed.

Let's be real here- there is no magic formula to catch cheats 100% with 0% false positive rate. I think it's pretty obvious why banning innocent players is bad, and why letting cheats get away with it is bad- optimal solution has to be somewhere in the middle (really shouldn't be a controversial statement). In fact an optimal threshold should feel bad for both sides of the spectrum.

[Li Wu]

There might be a solution to reduce false positive rates with the blackbox of online sites- give ppl 2 online screen names, and they are only considered banned if both are.

Ofc there will be those in the public that say any ban is a ban and treat it the same but it might help.

Also you guys have not talked about the other solution which is to reduce the stigma of being banned from online sites.

As I said before it's my opinion that cheating online =/= cheating otb (amongst other things- like giving people second chances- outside of ppl like Rausis). Players online also fall into various categories, with some more likely to make mistakes (cheating online). Perhaps there can be an initiative to improve education on the matter to ECF members and the like.