Cheating: Trust and Traitors in Chess

@mkubecek And where do you get that I can't say "the cheater" To generalize... Well, just as I say "the cheater" I say "the man" to refer to all men. The proof of this is that I don't give names, precisely because I am generalizing. Also, I think I already told you that I don't know who the guy is, and so you can see that I haven't even taken the task of looking to see who you're talking about, precisely because for me it's irrelevant since, (Once again, I tell you I repeat) I am referring to cheaters in general. Oh, perhaps you are determined to focus the thoughts and ideas of others at your convenience.
When I was a child we had a nickname for the type of person who entered into a discussion with far-fetched arguments. We used to say "You're coming to take the square root....This is not philosophy class..."

Well, the purpose of common language is for people to understand each other. If you are going to use words and their combinations that have certain meaning and then later claim that you in fact mean something different by them, it goes against that purpose.

@dreadpresence said in #48:
> the root of the problem: Opacity in cheat detection. How are we ever supposed to get "awareness" without any education on how to detect cheaters? And how are we ever supposed to trust chess websites if we see nothing of the internals?
First, it's not nothing, the basic overview of the methods is known. Complete transparency sounds nice in theory but in practice, vast majority of users wouldn't be able to reproduce the process anyway so that the people who would actually benefit most from it would be (potential) cheaters as they would get valuable information what to avoid to minimize the risk of being caught.

Ngl I feel like most of the people who throw around cheating accusations are just salty that they lost 10 rating points. I have really good games sometimes. I have really bad games sometimes.

I get being paranoid about cheating especially when you have no clue what the person is doing behind the other side of the screen. But stockfish evals in blitz endgames don’t tell much.

I’ve been accused of cheating once or twice. It wasn’t nice and it hurts. People need to first and foremost consider a few things when they think their opponent is cheating.

1. Am I being affected by other things right. Is work getting to me. Have I been tilting. Am I getting enough sleep (looking at people complaining during marathons)

2. Have I been accusing a lot of people recently. Whether internally or externally if you’ve been making a multitude of accusations, in Kramniks case gotten a reputation for it, then a large majority of your accusations are founded on a likely reason of, they don’t payed better and I’m mad.

3. How quickly did I “notice”. If your grand method of noticing cheating was, they left the game for 20 seconds, or “they basically premoved” a sharp move then you honestly gotta rethink your methods. Some people are low rated but have played tons of games and have seen a thing or two. Some people actually calculate beyond impulsive moves after opening (it’s a method I have yet to master).

No way am I defending cheaters. But some days are better than others. Sometimes you have that 2100 performance in your clubs tournaments. Some days you come back down to earth. Some days you might be better of taking a nap instead.

I think the hardest thing for people who are cheating paranoid to understand is that it’s okay to lose. Especially at the highest level players. For people like Kramnik or Magnus they’ve been playing since they could move the pieces. They are under pressure to win (maybe not Kramnik so much) and when they lose it’s a mind breaker.

So really before you accuse someone just remember, it’s okay to be human and make mistakes in the game

I think cheating is more in Higher time control so more blitz bullet can be good althoug if you cheat in slow time controls you will also be banned for sure

No-one knows the true extent of cheating in chess, both online and offline. As a result, everyone argues for the own felt reality, and differences range from chess being flooded with cheaters and the rare occasion of cheaters at all. Acutally, I think the number of undected cases in online chess is rather high. And despite the best efforts of the websites to find the black sheeps, I believe that the answer lies somewhere else. If one sites bans you, you just go somewhere else, make a new account, etc. In addition, chess.com is, in my opinion, too forgiving. They usually allow cheaters easily to come back, with Hans Niemann being the most prominent case, lately. And even if they had banned him before his clash with Magnus, that would not have affected his FIDE tournament participation.

So, at least for high level chess (top x%), my suggestions are the following:
- All accounts have to be linked to your personal data (which is acutally true for most master players)
- The websites work together with FIDE, the local chess federations and each other. You cheat somewhere, you are banned everywhere
- require two cameras for tournaments with prize money
- Something like a three strike (or even less) rule is implemented. You can be forgiven once or twice, but after that your chess career just ends, forever.

And even with these rules implemented, there will be probably cheating, as there is still doping in sports with contronls and lifetime bans, but at least there will be lifetime bans and players who misconduct will not be seen again. And I know there are many people out there, that believe that lifetime bans are too harsh. But I am not one of them. Putting people in jail for the rest of their lifes is wrong, but keep cheaters away from professional sport is something different. And in my experience (with online gaming in general, rather than chess alone), you cannot trust convicted cheaters to not cheat again.

And to come to the point of the article: Actually, I do not mind the cheaters too much, it would just destroy the fun I have playing the game and I am still far away from winning any prize money or big prestige at all. But, I would still not trust some online super star, unless he or she performs similarily offline. I trust in the capability of the websites to close accounts, who were used for cheating and that is at least enough for me. But at the high level, I think without working together and have a common jurisdiction, you cannot stop cheating, because even if detected, there are too few consequences. To come back to the Niemann case (not because he is the most despicable case, but everyone knows it): After cheating several times on chess.com and lying publically about it, there should have been a generall chess ban.

I initially wrongly assumed that GM Kramnik's metric concerned moves made with 10 seconds and more, but in fact it deals with moves played with 10 seconds and left. This looks strange.
It also means that a cheater who makes every more in 2-5 seconds, plays as a strong GM and then starts playing quickly, dropping pieces left and right, would end up at the opposite end of GM Kramnik's table, at its very bottom rather than at the top!
Given that there are quite some such players in online chess, I think that this metric is pretty bad at determining cheaters.
It is actually even worse. Imagine a hypothetical situation that you invite 9 such cheaters and 1 honest player (with an average time consumption) for a 3+1 blitz event. The only honest player will be placed first (= most suspect) according to GM Kramnik's metric, way ahead of the others who drop pieces left and right with a few seconds left.

@Sahyadrirai Well, notice that it is exactly the other way around because Chess-bot takes advantage of the few milliseconds that you spend thinking to find the refutation of your move... needless to say if it takes you 4 or 7 seconds. When the Lichess and Chess.com pages learn to detect this type of software during a game on remote computers, they will take the first step to end this pandemic. Well, the cheater and the software design (Chess-bot) manage to evade the ban.
The cheater, for his part, plays the game and when he begins to feel the opposite advantage he releases the beast and of course the arepa turns upside down... It also happens that they release the beast and then they make blunders on purpose, to disguise the trap. There are countless patterns that give you an indication of this, for example:
1- You play in a 1 minute bullet and in the opening you manage to get 9 or 12 seconds doing pure pre move (note something in the opening is where we humans can play faster, because many times it is known territory, for that is the pre move and the gain in seconds) and yet you lose due to time because the pace of the game is much faster in the middle game than is when humans think the most because critical positions are given.
2- Another pattern is that a high percentage of these players' games do not reach the end, because it is much easier for a machine to find mate in the opening or middle game. even in demonic and chaotic positions.
3- They usually waste the mate on 1 once or twice so that the analysis can show them the impression or the error.
4- The green button next to the nickname name usually flashes, this already raises suspicions, especially at the beginning of the game just before the first move.
And many other patterns that over the years I have seen and tried to overcome, I no longer argue, I no longer accuse, I no longer fear 2700, I fear more 1500 or 1100, since in that range many strange things are seen. ...Surely someone will say they are ghosts and science fiction, but eliminate the [redacted] and you will see how geniuses are not so geniuses anymore.

@mkubecek If that is the purpose, there will always be ambiguities and everyone will want to interpret it according to their understanding. Therefore, we must study so that this understanding reaches its excellence.