Cheating in chess

[Eric Gardiner]

Justin,
I know there are certain number of bans overturned and this would appear to be an example where a player could relatively easily argue their case. A human would look at the appeal and I imagine the opening theory aspect would be easily verifiable, so I would have thought an appeal could well be successful.

Matthew, I realise you might not wish to answer this on the forum but I wondered from some of what you have written whether as a GM you have access to more information about the cheating detection processes on Lichess or chess.com than the typical member?

[JustinHorton]

OK, but what is meant by (theory) here

To do it properly, you would have an enormous collection of games, continually updated and use it to build a tree of positions that had been seen before. Even more rigorous would be to add in published analysis from sources like New in Chess Yearbooks and Informator even if it yet to be played in practice.

There's also the question of transpositions

[Matthew Turner]

Justin
Well, I know roughly how many bans are overturned each month by Lichess. I know that a player could demonstrate that their moves were theory and link them to their correspondence chess experience. I know that each appeal to Lichess is looked at by a human. I know that a human could easily verify that moves were theory.
Is that better?

[JustinHorton]

Justin,
I know there are certain number of bans overturned and this would appear to be an example where a player could relatively easily argue their case. A human would look at the appeal and I imagine the opening theory aspect would be easily verifiable, so I would have thought an appeal could well be successful.

Matthew, I realise you might not wish to answer this on the forum but I wondered from some of what you have written whether as a GM you have access to more information about the cheating detection processes on Lichess or chess.com than the typical member?

While this is a fair question to ask, it's also fair to say that it's not much help either way it's answered. You can't judge what is supposed to be a scientific process on the basis of "X says it's fine, but can't say why".

[JustinHorton]

I know that each appeal to Lichess is looked at by a human

On what level of "know" is this

[Paul Cooksey]

I am worried we are are heading to "I think, therefore I am"

[JustinHorton]

Well that at least has a great deal more solid foundation than a lot of other claims I've read on this thread

[Matthew Turner]

Justin,
I know there are certain number of bans overturned and this would appear to be an example where a player could relatively easily argue their case. A human would look at the appeal and I imagine the opening theory aspect would be easily verifiable, so I would have thought an appeal could well be successful.

Matthew, I realise you might not wish to answer this on the forum but I wondered from some of what you have written whether as a GM you have access to more information about the cheating detection processes on Lichess or chess.com than the typical member?

Eric,
I have taken an interest in the fair play procedures and been in on the conference calls with Dr. Regan and the 4NCL Team Captains. I believe all the information contained within those calls is effectively within the public domain and I don't believe there is anything that I have written above which could not have been gleaned by any of the Team Captains.

[Matthew Turner]

I know that each appeal to Lichess is looked at by a human

On what level of "know" is this

The 4NCL Team Captains were told this by a Lichess board member. I don't really see any reason to doubt his word - after all he could have said nothing.

[JustinHorton]

So we're talking about 4NCL games, as opposed to lichess games per se?

[Matthew Turner]

So we're talking about 4NCL games, as opposed to lichess games per se?

No, it is just Lichess policy, nothing to do with the 4NCL.

[Roger de Coverly]

There's also the question of transpositions

That can be handled by storing positions rather than move sequences.

[JustinHorton]

There's also the question of transpositions

That can be handled by storing positions rather than move sequences.

Yes of course, provided that's actually what happens.

[Roger de Coverly]

Yes of course, provided that's actually what happens.

It occurs to me that some of these host servers have been running quite some time and may therefore have core programming that's really quite old. So much so that they may have embedded engines which needed an opening book to prevent them going totally off the wall in the first few moves of a game. The engine opening books probably weren't that deep and similarly the unspecified investigations are based on similar cutoffs.

[JustinHorton]

The 4NCL Team Captains were told this by a Lichess board member. I don't really see any reason to doubt his word

No, that's fair enough, I absolutely would not accept the same assurance from anybody at chess.com though.