Cheating in chess

[Matthew Turner]

I think the point is that if I play Mickey Smith 700 rated I am likely to zero. If I play Mickey Adams, I could well have three or more.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Just speaking in general terms, arguments of this nature creep me out: they're making an assumption, and a heavily weighted one at that, in the absence of knowing."

True. I read it as, "Aaaagh!!! it's a super-GM, we had better be careful. This is an 1800, who cares, just ban him."

[Matthew Turner]

"Just speaking in general terms, arguments of this nature creep me out: they're making an assumption, and a heavily weighted one at that, in the absence of knowing."

True. I read it as, "Aaaagh!!! it's a super-GM, we had better be careful. This is an 1800, who cares, just ban him."

The GM gets added protection by a group of titled players signing off the ban. This is the correct thing to do, because the ban can potentially have a much bigger impact on their life than a normal player who is just playing for fun.
A group of senior platform officials will also sign off the ban. This is also correct because there is a much greater possibility of the Super-GM suing or causing reputational damage to the platform.

I'm not saying it is perfect, but nor is it in any way sinister.

[Matthew Turner]

On the other hand false positives wrongly punish only a single individuals, temporarily, and they can openly challenge any accusations and or bans with some hope of clearing their name.

As far as anyone is aware neither chess.com nor lichess have any form of transparent appeal process, nor for that matter any coherent accusation beyond "violating terms and conditions".

In the case mentioned above, given that it was in a local team event, a score of 100% is not of itself evidence of any more than lucky breaks and good form. Raising the issue with the local organisers or team mates of the accused player might seem appropriate.

I have been told to remove the post I made but the details were there, its not a 100 percent score on 8 rounds, somebody else managed that and I dont doubt they did it legimately . It was the grade they achieved in comparison to their normal grade (150 normal to 2550 lichess) and more importantly the lichess analysis scores , IE no blunder or mistakes in the 8 games and an average centipawn loss of around 10, plus looking at the games themselves

As you can imagine, online chess platform are pretty overwhelmed with the increase in play which means checks and bans can take longer to come through. I think this issue has now been resolved.

[Tim Spanton]

The 4NCL has now published a Fair Play report for season 2 :- http://www.4ncl.co.uk/data/4NCL_online_ ... ort_s2.pdf

Very interesting...an ECF Arbiter under the microscope. Not a good look for the ECF.

Perhaps it would be easier if the 4NCL named those players they are sure are not cheating

[Neil Graham]

The 4NCL has now published a Fair Play report for season 2 :- http://www.4ncl.co.uk/data/4NCL_online_ ... ort_s2.pdf

Very interesting...an ECF Arbiter under the microscope. Not a good look for the ECF.

Perhaps it would be easier if the 4NCL named those players they are sure are not cheating

Naming of players is specifically banned in the new 4NCL Fair Play Guidelines.

[John Foley]

The 4NCL Fair Play Report gives the following useful information:

The statistics for Season 2 are below:
- 11 players were banned due to fair play violations;
- 11 other players were banned by Lichess, for whom the weight of statistical
evidence did not support the 4NCL overturning results (e.g. the bans were imposed
as a result of the cheating taking place in non-4NCL games on Lichess);

For the sake of completeness, and to calculate base rates, could the missing data be supplied?

• How many players participated in the 4NCL?

• How many games were played in total in Season 2?

• For those banned players, in how many games were they deemed to be cheating?

• Were these bans before or after any appeals process?

• What is the proportion of "cheaters"?

• What is the proportion of games in which fair play violations occurred?

[Roger de Coverly]

Other than opening moves, which don't count because they're theory, and some endings, where many moves may be equally good, it would be rare to have even one in a game, I would have thought.

i can recall a relatively recent world championship where the coverage showed the top three moves from three engines. Almost all the moves were distinct and almost all gave an assessment of 0.00 or very close.

However it's a valid point that once it' is known that a spectacular or speculative move works or doesn't work, that the subsequent play falls into place. Given that the mathematics of "you aren't good enough to play those moves without assistance even by chance" relies on independence of the samples, it's not so clear how much evidence a single game or handful of games really offers.

[Nick Grey]

John - HM Cath was ITC and a first team game. So 1990s or early 2000s.

[Nick Grey]

Handful of arbiters played and 1 under suspicion. Ok not to play russian roulette. But ought to be banned from arbiting until cleared.

On Lichess I will not sign up though was a new year resolution.

[David Sedgwick]

Handful of arbiters played and 1 under suspicion. Ok not to play russian roulette. But ought to be banned from arbiting until cleared.

There are 25 people in that position. Nothing has been proved against any of them and none of them can be named.

However, you want to single one of them out for shaming.

I hate to have to tell you, but natural justice extends to ECF Arbiters.

[Nick Grey]

No. I do not want to name or shame them. Strange but quote.

Most disappointingly, amongst these 25 are three squad captains and an ECF
arbiter.

And hope cleared.

[Matthew Turner]

Other than opening moves, which don't count because they're theory, and some endings, where many moves may be equally good, it would be rare to have even one in a game, I would have thought.

i can recall a relatively recent world championship where the coverage showed the top three moves from three engines. Almost all the moves were distinct and almost all gave an assessment of 0.00 or very close.

However it's a valid point that once it' is known that a spectacular or speculative move works or doesn't work, that the subsequent play falls into place. Given that the mathematics of "you aren't good enough to play those moves without assistance even by chance" relies on independence of the samples, it's not so clear how much evidence a single game or handful of games really offers.

So this is an important point. Professor Regan argues that whether you select the 'computer' move has some impact on the likelihood of you selecting the 'computer' move on the next turn, but has pretty much no impact on the probabilities for subsequent moves. This is all taken account of in his software. This seems counter-intuitive to chess players because we all think about games in terms of 'lines of analysis', so we would expect there to be much greater interdependence seen in the moves.
Now you need to take some time to consider examples. The spectacular or speculative move that Roger talks about will almost always be discounted by the software because it will be excluded because one side is winning (we talk about winning combination, not 'good' combinations).
We might see an example from an endgame where one side was pushing a pawn through, so a8 naturally follows a7, follows a6, follows a5 follows a4. In the overall scheme of things this isn't very likely and it its impact is fairy small, but it is exactly the sort of thing that people would look for before signing off a high profile case.

[JustinHorton]

"Just speaking in general terms, arguments of this nature creep me out: they're making an assumption, and a heavily weighted one at that, in the absence of knowing."

True. I read it as, "Aaaagh!!! it's a super-GM, we had better be careful. This is an 1800, who cares, just ban him."

The GM gets added protection by a group of titled players signing off the ban. This is the correct thing to do, because the ban can potentially have a much bigger impact on their life than a normal player who is just playing for fun.
A group of senior platform officials will also sign off the ban. This is also correct because there is a much greater possibility of the Super-GM suing or causing reputational damage to the platform.

I'm not saying it is perfect, but nor is it in any way sinister.

You say this, but it may not feel that way to whoever is being banned. Do they get to know who has signed them off, or on what basis? Do they get to challenge any irregularities in the procedure?

[NickFaulks]

This is all taken account of in his software.

How do you know this?