British Blitz Championships

[JustinHorton]

Hard to see how anonymous handles were even allowed for this championship to be honest.

Baffles the hell out of me.

Somebody must have thought about this, though, because the entry form states:

The final stage qualifiers list, draw and results will be published using players’ real names
rather than their chess.com handles. It is a condition of entering the final stage that this is
adhered to.

There must have been a rationale, and I'd be reluctant to condemn without hearing the rationale and the reasons for it first. (That said, I can't find anybody being named as organiser, so I don't know whose rationale it was.)

[DavidWalker]

Entrants had to be members of the ECF club on chess.com, so although a handle may be anonymous on chess.com, the ECF should know who it is.

[JustinHorton]

Yeah, but that's not necessarily the problem.

[Roger de Coverly]

Yeah, but that's not necessarily the problem.

I formed the impression from the rules at https://www.englishchess.org.uk/english ... hips-2020/
and https://englishchessonline.org.uk/engli ... hips-2020/ that it is only the finalists who must declare who they are.

Players qualifying for the final must agree to their real names being used in the draw and reporting of the final stage rather than their chess.com handles as a condition of entry to the final.

[JustinHorton]

I am assuming that in the earlier stage their names need to be known to the ECF, whereas for the final, they are openly published.

[Roger de Coverly]

I am assuming that in the earlier stage their names need to be known to the ECF

It seems the case that real names and membership codes have to be disclosed to chess.com. That may not mean that chess.com pass them on.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/english ... ion-form-1

With chess.com's unilateral approach to making cheating allegations and acting on them with limited or no means of appeal, what's the ECF's policy on cross referencing such accusations to the real world?

[JustinHorton]

I am assuming that in the earlier stage their names need to be known to the ECF

It seems the case that real names and membership codes have to be disclosed to chess.com. That may not mean that chess.com pass them on.

I am wondering how the ECF would verify that competitors were members or supporters without seeing names.

[Roger de Coverly]

I am wondering how the ECF would verify that competitors were members or supporters without seeing names.

It would seem to be chess.com doing the verification as a condition of entry. That's not different to an over the board competition insisting on ECF membership and relying on entrants not using identity theft.

With one of the winners being Australian, or at a pinch Scottish, there's no requirement to be English in the FIDE sense.

[Joseph Conlon]

I am wondering how the ECF would verify that competitors were members or supporters without seeing names.

When joining the ECF club on chess.com, or lichess, one had to fill in something on the ecf website with your ECF membership code and your lichess/chess.com username (or something very similar). You would then be accepted into the ECF club, which I think was a precondition for joining these tournaments. So the ECF should know the real names of everyone in the tournament.

I played on Sunday evening with my pseudonymous account; I think it would be useful if real names were published while the tournament is in process (as happens for chess.com's Titled Tuesdays, when otherwise pseudonymous accounts become named during the tournament). But generally I have no objections to pseudonyms (and indeed use one myself). For the record I got 7/11, and found one of my 11 games suspicious, where I felt I had to play very well to just about hold a draw against a 1700 player.

In fact I slightly like the mystique in e.g. lichess titled arenas where super-GMs turn up with people trying to guess who they are.

General arguments for pseuodnyms:

1. People already have long-standing pseudonymous accounts on chess.com / lichess, they shouldn't need to create new accounts to enter tournaments (and multi-accounting is frowned upon by e.g. lichess terms of service though to be fair the world champion does it frequently)

2. At a professional/serious amateur level, players may want to practise novelties, new openings and new lines in online blitz, without having an OTB opponent prepare for them by looking up all their recent games to see what they are experimenting with.

3. At an amateur level, as all games are recorded and visible on the site, players may not want their employer (eg) to be able to have an easily verified record that they played 1.5 hours of blitz chess when they were meant to be at work.

4. Regarding cheat detection as generally very good but not 100%, pseudonyms give protection against the reputational damage of an unwarranted engine mark.

5. If one comments on lichess or chess.com forums, one might not want every throwaway flippant remark permanently archived on the internet under one's real name.

[Keith Arkell]

Here's Keith's game against the banned player.

https://www.chess.com/live/game/4832312 ... rname=topj

Keith goes into a Rook and Pawn ending a pawn down and wins. When they reach the 5 man ending, I was quite sure it was a draw, but it's not enough to know the assessment, you also have to find the correct move.

Topj almost certainly cheated- you can trust chess.com here.

Being barred from daily chess is very different from being barred from blitz, where you can get a big sample quickly (and can use thinking time for analysis).

I guess in this particular case I was lucky that the engine wasn't used once the guy got into time-trouble, so I went from playing a 3400 monster, when I have almost no chance, to giving pawn odds in an endgame against a 175, when I guess I became favourite.

[Jonathan Bryant]

(I personally find it strange from a cursory look at the game that he doesn't know Philidor's defence and crushes in other parts of the game)

Indeed.

Of course it’s perfectly possible to lose a drawn position you know how to draw by a one-off blunder (done it myself) or a mouse slip or something. But that guy obviously didn’t have any clue what to do.

A few years back there was a British Championship game where one side didn’t know Philidor but he got a draw because the other side didn’t know Lucena.

A couple of rounds later the guy got another chance to Philidor but still didn’t know it properly.

I remember at the time being astonished that somebody of. Championship strength didn’t know something so easy to learn.
If memory serves he was around 200 ECF - pretty handy by most standards but still a long way shy of being able to take Keith Arkell to the cleaners.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I am assuming that in the earlier stage their names need to be known to the ECF

It seems the case that real names and membership codes have to be disclosed to chess.com. That may not mean that chess.com pass them on.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/english ... ion-form-1

With chess.com's unilateral approach to making cheating allegations and acting on them with limited or no means of appeal, what's the ECF's policy on cross referencing such accusations to the real world?

No idea.

A few years back (again) a county captain got banned from a chess site for cheating. The opinion then (motivated by a desire not to get involved in anything problematic or difficult, I’m sure) seemed largely to be that what happened online didn’t really have any connection with real world chess.

I don’t really see how that attitude is sustainable for the ECF, though, when it’s an ECF event at which somebody is supposed to have cheated.

[NickFaulks]

(I personally find it strange from a cursory look at the game that he doesn't know Philidor's defence and crushes in other parts of the game).

Such things do happen when down to single figure seconds. If I were an experienced computer cheat I imagine I would be careful not to get into such a state.

[Mick Norris]

I am assuming that in the earlier stage their names need to be known to the ECF

It seems the case that real names and membership codes have to be disclosed to chess.com. That may not mean that chess.com pass them on.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/english ... ion-form-1

With chess.com's unilateral approach to making cheating allegations and acting on them with limited or no means of appeal, what's the ECF's policy on cross referencing such accusations to the real world?

No idea.

A few years back (again) a county captain got banned from a chess site for cheating. The opinion then (motivated by a desire not to get involved in anything problematic or difficult, I’m sure) seemed largely to be that what happened online didn’t really have any connection with real world chess.

I don’t really see how that attitude is sustainable for the ECF, though, when it’s an ECF event at which somebody is supposed to have cheated.

I would hope that online cheating is seen as wrong enough to have sanctions applied OTB; the main difficulty, of course, is we need to have confidence that online cheating has actually happened when people deny it, and that we don't apply sanctions to innocent players like Justin

[MartinCarpenter]

There's probably a very different standard of proof used by LiChess/chess.com etc vs what you'd really want to accuse someone in person.