Cheating in chess

[John McKenna]

Never mind failing to notice the distinction between casual and rated games are there not more causual sites than lichess & chessdotcom for tyros and their mums & dads?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Unless the child concludes, as some have, that chess appears to be a game concerned primarily with accusations of cheating and is better avoided altogether."

I always thought that was one of the benefits of school sport - you soon discovered that some players and officials would cheat and you had to decide whether to carry on. It taught you something about life. Admittedly, that was secondary school, and in the case cited here, a big organization is making accusations against a young child, which must have been very upsetting.

[Roger Lancaster]

I'd caution against any belief that all 7- and 8-year-olds are "tyros" at chess - but that doesn't mean they fully understand complicated rules.

[Matthew Turner]

The player was breaking the rules, the system caught him and he was flagged. It was an innocent mistake and the player was unaware that they were breaking the rules.

What rule do you think the player was breaking? As far as I know there is no rule prohibiting someone from playing against a relative (or anyone else) who is a very weak player and gaining rating points by repeatedly beating them. So long as the mother was playing to the best of her ability that's within the rules, is it not?

Ian,
This is the rule they were breaking
"2. Artificially inflating or deflating your rating. This is where a User purposefully loses, or has arranged with an opponent to win. As a result, the User’s rating will artificially increase or decrease."

From the terms of service here https://lichess.org/terms-of-service

Without seeing the games it is difficult to know whether there was evidence of 'purposefully losing' (for example just resigning after 5 moves) rather than one player simply playing badly.

I would also note that I could show you how Lichess worked without creating an account for you and beating you multiple times.

[John McKenna]

I'd caution against any belief that all 7- and 8-year-olds are "tyros" at chess - but that doesn't mean they fully understand complicated rules.

You are in danger of arguing against yourself there, Roger.

Roget, you have pointed out on here a sad lack of parental reponsibility in some cases and at times acts of complete irresponsibility. You cannot expect the service providers to cater for all such things. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

John, judging by the first word and last sentence in your response, it seems you consider some word level delineation is appropriate or was it a typo ?

Apologies to Roger - I was put off my stroke by typing while travelling on the Hayes line.

[NickFaulks]

I was put off my stroke by typing while travelling on the Hayes line.

You were doing what? Are you trying to kill your granny?

[John McKenna]

No danger of that, Nick, I am the oldest surviving member of my immediate family.

The building site workers mainly seem to have exempted themselves from masking so it is not without risk.

[Alistair Campbell]

Let me take this analogy a bit further. The Maths behind the Regan tests and vaccine trials is essentially the same. So there is roughly a 50% chance that a normal chess player (playing without assistance) will play the computer move.

Come again?

[Matthew Turner]

Let me take this analogy a bit further. The Maths behind the Regan tests and vaccine trials is essentially the same. So there is roughly a 50% chance that a normal chess player (playing without assistance) will play the computer move.

Come again?

You can see Ken Regan talking about it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK4cHroH-Zo

[Roger Lancaster]

"Unless the child concludes, as some have, that chess appears to be a game concerned primarily with accusations of cheating and is better avoided altogether."

I always thought that was one of the benefits of school sport - you soon discovered that some players and officials would cheat and you had to decide whether to carry on. It taught you something about life. Admittedly, that was secondary school, and in the case cited here, a big organization is making accusations against a young child, which must have been very upsetting.

Being accused of something when one is innocent is likely to be upsetting, to a major or minor degree, even for adults who can be expected to have had some prior experience of how the world works. I suggest that, for young children, the experience is likely to be worse, verging in some cases on the traumatic. I really don't want to respond further to the suggestion advanced in this thread, albeit by a small minority, that it's somehow the child's own fault through allegedly breaking some rule of which he or she was almost certainly unaware.

I gave one example because the facts there aren't in dispute. I'm aware of a second case where a young boy played some games against his father and was flagged shortly afterwards. In this case, I can't be sure whether it was a similar situation - Lichess won't clarify - but it seems likely. These won't have been the only cases where children have innocently used Lichess [I don't know whether there are similar occurrences on Chess.com] to play rated games against parents or siblings. It's a matter of conjecture how many were accused of cheating as a result of this particular scenario alone but I'd guess that, worldwide, the number runs into hundreds.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Being accused of something when one is innocent is likely to be upsetting, to a major or minor degree, even for adults who can be expected to have had some prior experience of how the world works."

I agree entirely. Some obnoxious manager at work told lies about me behind my back just before I retired and he got a fairly forceful email in return (which he ignored of course.) But it's worse for a child, as they probably expect life to be fair and people to be decent. Junior chess will soon knock that out of them.

[Jonathan Bryant]

From Perpetual Chess:-

"If somebody listening has some very smart idea about some work around where they could cheat and get away with it, it is overwhelmingly likely one of us has already thought of it and has already investigated the way to catch it"

The truth is, you don't have to be very smart.


This guy has been subject to multiple reports to Lichess. Here he is continuing to ply his trade 12 hours ago or so.



[Event "Rated Blitz game"] [Site "https://lichess.org/T0S8Wffn"] [Date "2021.04.09"] [White "oeildefaucon_64"] [Black "freddy1963"] [Result "1-0"] [UTCDate "2021.04.09"] [UTCTime "22:03:13"] [WhiteElo "1959"] [BlackElo "1965"] [WhiteRatingDiff "+6"] [BlackRatingDiff "-6"] [Variant "Standard"] [TimeControl "300+0"] [ECO "C78"] [Opening "Ruy Lopez: Morphy Defense"] [Termination "Normal"] [Annotator "lichess.org"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O { C78 Ruy Lopez: Morphy Defense } { Black resigns. } 1-0






[Event "Rated Blitz game"] [Site "https://lichess.org/Z1SXj6aD"] [Date "2021.04.09"] [White "freddy1963"] [Black "Kapsola"] [Result "0-1"] [UTCDate "2021.04.09"] [UTCTime "21:59:25"] [WhiteElo "1971"] [BlackElo "1964"] [WhiteRatingDiff "-6"] [BlackRatingDiff "+6"] [Variant "Standard"] [TimeControl "300+0"] [ECO "B32"] [Opening "Sicilian Defense: Open"] [Termination "Normal"] [Annotator "lichess.org"] 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 { B32 Sicilian Defense: Open } Nxd4 5. Qxd4 e6 6. e5 Ne7 7. Bg5 Qa5+ 8. Bd2 Qd5 9. Qxd5 Nxd5 10. Nc3 Nb4 11. O-O-O Bc5 12. Nb5 Nxa2+ 13. Kb1 Nb4 14. Bxb4 Bxb4 15. Nc7+ Kd8 16. Nxa8 Ba5 17. Be2 b6 18. Bf3 Ba6 19. Rd2 Bxd2 20. Re1 Bxe1 21. Nc7 Kxc7 22. Bc6 dxc6 23. c4 Bxc4 24. b4 Bxf2 25. g4 Bd3+ 26. Kb2 Bd4+ 27. Kb3 Bxe5 28. b5 cxb5 29. g5 Bc4+ 30. Kc2 Rd8 31. g6 hxg6 32. h4 b4 33. h5 gxh5 { White resigns. } 0-1

[John Cox]

Can someone explain to me why anyone cares what someone's lichess rating is?

[Jonathan Bryant]

Can someone explain to me why anyone cares what someone's lichess rating is?

It's not entirely clear to me, but I suspect it's at least in part due to:-

A lot of non-OBT players who don't have anything to compare so think LIchess is important

People not being able to play OTB and therefore having to use online as a yardstick


for some people.



I suspect for the most part people don't really care about the ratings per se but don't like a system - however inherently imperfect - being egregiously manipulated.

[John McKenna]

Can someone explain to me why anyone cares what someone's lichess rating is?

The reasons why some people manipulate their OTB and/or CC grades and ratings have been gone into previously on this forum.

Online ratings are subject to the same thing but are more visible and can be manipulated at a far faster rate than OTB & CC ones.

Returning to -

"Being accused of something when one is innocent is likely to be upsetting, to a major or minor degree, even for adults who can be expected to have had some prior experience of how the world works."

Who is being accused and what of?

Things have moved on since this thread began...

Anonymous accounts are being marked or closed for violations. (Apart from a few top players who has been caught doing them using an a/c under their real name?) Cheating is no longer the accusation.

The solution that the service providers recommend is - get a new account and sin no more.

What's the problem - injury to anonymous feelings?