British Blitz Championships

[Li Wu]

So it's not so much them risking making mistakes. It's more of a case of not caring about if mistakes have been made and rectifying them.

[MartinCarpenter]

David's assumption of 1 false positive to 5 cheats surprises me. I would probably have gone 1 to 100 on the anecdotal evidence.

He's not assuming that - he assumes a bunch of reasonable things and then calculates the expected false positive rate.

The underlying point being that, even with a really very good test, it is surprisingly easy to find yourself ending up with quite a high false positive rate.

[JustinHorton]

From a purely business perspective- having a proper system in place to handle Justin's case and others like it properly would have made a net loss on their site

How do we know that?

banning ppl with high false positive rates is very bad for their business- they would lose potential paying customers with not much upside (not banning player X who might be cheating wouldn't hurt playing experience of rest of the site enough to offset potential revenue loss).

Thgis isn't necessarily true at all, and there's a case that they ban lots of people because players who are concerned about cheating want to see a lot of people banned and aren't particularly concerned that some of the people concerned will be banned wrongly.

[Roger de Coverly]

Thgis isn't necessarily true at all, and there's a case that they ban lots of people because players who are concerned about cheating want to see a lot of people banned and aren't particularly concerned that some of the people concerned will be banned wrongly.

There's an attitude among some titled players that when a lower rated player defeats one with a higher rating, it's because the lower rated player cheated rather than because the higher rated one played badly. That's even been embedded as a detection method in some, perhaps all of the witchfinder programs.

[JustinHorton]

One thing that really surprised me during the whole banning saga happened when I posted on Reddit, which I had been reluctant to do because I thought a lot of people would call me a cheat. But in fact there was very little of that - what there was, was lots of people saying "who cares?", "so what?" and so on. This led me to believe that in fact, there might be very little downside for chess.com in banning people wrongly.

You might reasonably ask whether Reddit commentors were typical of anything other than themselves. Maybe not, but they might be much more representative of people who use the site than well-informed and experienced players such as users of this forum.

(In general, I think most actual and potential users of online sites either don't care that people get banned wrongly, or simply don't know - perhaps because they assume that people who get banned are rightly banned, which perhaps in its turn could be because the question is rarely if ever raised outwith specialist internet forums. Has there ever been a piece in the mainstream press, or the mainstream chess press, about the issue? I have not seen one.)

[Li Wu]

From a purely business perspective- having a proper system in place to handle Justin's case and others like it properly would have made a net loss on their site

How do we know that?

banning ppl with high false positive rates is very bad for their business- they would lose potential paying customers with not much upside (not banning player X who might be cheating wouldn't hurt playing experience of rest of the site enough to offset potential revenue loss).

Thgis isn't necessarily true at all, and there's a case that they ban lots of people because players who are concerned about cheating want to see a lot of people banned and aren't particularly concerned that some of the people concerned will be banned wrongly.

We don't know this- but I made an guestimate. Players that play daily chess only are a minority, and least likely to pay for premium.

I'll try another angle to try to convince you. Borrowing Bayesian thinking from David Walker:

-How many service providers/companies in general are well renowned for their excellent complaints handling/mistakes rectifying or just customer service in general?

-When you were banned by chess.com- what does this say about their false positive rate in banning cheaters?

-If false positive rate is low, how would your case play out, given you just got banned?

-If false positive rate is high, how would your case play out, given you just got banned?

My answer- customer service and especially complaint/mistake rectifying service is poor across board as CLTV (customer lifetime value) is low for these guys. You learn almost nothing about their false positive rate from their response to your case without actual details (of which you have very little here), except that false positives do exist.

Thinking that online site false positive rate is high should be coming from somewhere else, not from your isolated case.

[JustinHorton]

Borrowing Bayesian thinking

We're not all maths graduates

Thinking that online site false positive rate is high should be coming from somewhere else, not from your isolated case.

So it should, but mine is not an entirely isolated case. (There's a few covered in the thread devoted to the topic, which for the record, began with somebody else's case entirely.)

How many service providers/companies in general are well renowned for their excellent complaints handling/mistakes rectifying or just customer service in general?

I don't know how useful this question is, because

(1) the answer is certainly not "none". I've made an awful lot of customer complaints in my time, few (but not none) have been dealt with well at first go. Most (though not all) have been dealt with adequately in the end.

(2) I am fairly sure that this is the only time I've been provided with literally no information at all about what has caused an issue to arise.

[Li Wu]

Thats fair enough- apologies if I came across as rude/condescending.

I feel very passionate about policing chess cheating/cheating in general, and think wrong conclusions about the topic can do serious harm to our game.

[Li Wu]

It's not easy to fix, and I'm biased towards the sites as I'm used to coming to the problem from the inside.

I admit I haven't seen other threads about unjust bannings apart from your own, but it's extremely hard to know how genuine they are.

[JustinHorton]

No problem, and I do have a very general idea as to what you were talking about, but not remotely enough for it to be helpful!

I'm sure you're right about wrong conclusions, but it really is hard to come to any better conclusions in the absence of chess.com being more informative about what they do and what problems they recognise with it. If they aren't going to do that, then given how they deal with actual problems I don't think we're in a position to assume good faith on their part.

[Li Wu]

I think the following is at least uncontroversial. It's:

1) hard to tell how good/bad of a job a site is doing
2) hard for sites to communicate how good/bad they are doing effectively

[Li Wu]

No problem, and I do have a very general idea as to what you were talking about, but not remotely enough for it to be helpful!

I'm sure you're right about wrong conclusions, but it really is hard to come to any better conclusions in the absence of chess.com being more informative about what they do and what problems they recognise with it. If they aren't going to do that, then given how they deal with actual problems I don't think we're in a position to assume good faith on their part.

Yep agree with this, and with my previous post- even if they are all acting in good faith currently, there is no way for us to tell if, say, in the future their management/strategy changes, are they still acting in good faith with regards to cheat detection/bans? No one is holding them accountable.

[Li Wu]

lol meant to say I agree with the 2nd half of your 2nd paragraph.... not the first setence.

[JustinHorton]

I admit I haven't seen other threads about unjust bannings apart from your own, but it's extremely hard to know how genuine they are.

Well, the thread begins here. No, I really don't recommend reading it from start to finish, but there's a few odd cases raised during its course, and the chap whose case against chess.com kicked it off was reinstated with apologies. It's my opinion that the outcome of that case was instrumental in causing chess.com to adopt their present strategy of pulling up the drawbridge.

[JustinHorton]

I also think that they can't go on forever they way they are now, not if they want to run events on behalf of other organisations, because (as has already been amply demonstrated) they're going to run into grief. There's also the question of what happens if a case really does come to court (but I don't think that will happen in practice since I reckon they'll fold).