On another chess site that I play on the winners of larger tournaments say 100 or more may be asked to annotate the winning game to show understanding of their moves. Sounds like a good idea to me. What do you think?

That IS a good idea!

 

 

i (At 1500 some) could figure out why a computer did something.  but i probably couldn't find the move myself.  

 

But what if a clever cheater has a friend or pays a strong Chess Player at a club cash to explain the moves of the game for him he just cuts and pastes it to the sight and pretends he did it there's no way for anyone to prove it wasn't him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yes if a beginner uses an engine to cheat then they wont be able to explain what is happening but if someone of say a 1700/1800 rating used an engine intelligently to boost their game to 2000+ then they would have enough knowledge to give a very good annotation of their game.

so it seems an attractive idea but in practice it wont catch the cheaters 

The point is, despite being imperfect, it WOULD work towards detering cheaters!

Good point...

The problem is there's no real way of stopping it.  I reported a totally blatant case of cheating, 36 straight victories jumping from 13 to 19 hundred, and absolutely nothing came of it.  Even if it's obvious there's no proof.

Well actually.. that's not proof... nor is it 'obvious' ...

 

I personaly jumped from 1600 to almost 2000 in just over a month with only 1 or 2 losses in that time.. my 'excuse' is that I was in a tournament with a bunch of 1600's and had no issue beating them all.. plus I was studying my opponents opening preferences, it doesn't take long and REALLY helped my game (against that individual)..

 

Point is, there is only 'proof' if you see someone consistently matching up with an engine ... after that, if they can't present a good argument of innocence, I say ban them!

 

 

I agree with PerfectGent. I play around 1400. Pretty sad numbers, so you know I don't cheat, Lol! But even I usually understand why a computer or human opponent did something when I look back on it. I can write in chess notation and reviewing a game can see how someone set up a combination. If I wanted to cheat, this rule wouldn't stop me. 

Beelzebub666 wrote:

The problem is there's no real way of stopping it.  I reported a totally blatant case of cheating, 36 straight victories jumping from 13 to 19 hundred, and absolutely nothing came of it.  Even if it's obvious there's no proof.

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 I do wish people would properly qualify this 100% score and rapid rise. If like myself, and many other good players, you come in new to a site and are given the standard newcomers rating of 1200 then you will be playing others at that rating when your true level is 700/800 above that point.

so obviously you are going to rise quickly with an unbeaten record. 

 

The only time where this argument has any validity is when a player has been around say 1500 for months or hundreds of games and then suddenly starts to win all games and rise quickly. (this is what i meant by properly qualifying the argument) 

ih8sens wrote:

Well actually.. that's not proof... nor is it 'obvious' ...

 

I personaly jumped from 1600 to almost 2000 in just over a month with only 1 or 2 losses in that time.. my 'excuse' is that I was in a tournament with a bunch of 1600's and had no issue beating them all.. plus I was studying my opponents opening preferences, it doesn't take long and REALLY helped my game (against that individual)..

 

Point is, there is only 'proof' if you see someone consistently matching up with an engine ... after that, if they can't present a good argument of innocence, I say ban them!

 

 

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I checked it out in some detail before i reported - the period before the sudden change in ability he was regularly losing to players rated 12-1400, matching his rating which had been steady for a few months.  Then after the change he beat all comers all the way up to 1900s.  About two days after I accused him his month long 36 game winning streak came to an end, now he's just maintaining his inflated rating.  I analysed a half dozen games and though they didn't match my particular engine (chessmaster) it did report 0% error and no disagreement.

As I clearly stated already, it's not proof.  But it is obvious.

that could be deemed proof... depends.. it's one of those things that is slightly circumstantial and needs some giveaway somewhere (misc. opening choice, long book lines, greedy play) ...

Well i dont know about obvious, but it was certainly very suspicious when you consider the sort of stuff the person had been posting in the forums.  hmm, lets see if i can make up an example:

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Hello everyone, i was wondering what opening this is?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What about this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, what name is this opening?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

****

 

It's still hard to tell though, because someone might have just started taking advantage of things allowed in cc, like opening books/databases/analysis boards.  But in this case, you'd have at least expected some draws due to solid play from opponents. 

Any programmers out there? Wonder if a tracking cookie could be made to monitor games being played against games being analyzed? Would stop the single puter user. Then only games being monitored would be rated. Probably would grow into a small program that would need to be downloaded.

A noble idea, but as a frequent chess program player, I can tell you that chessmaster, for example, has a wonderful auto annotation feature and one could just cut and copy the chessmaster's comments. These are not just basic comments, but a very in depth analysis of each move.

hehe, i think when someone annotates their opponent's move with "Yikes!" we could rest our case

just this week we finished our anti-cheating tools :) we have already banned a few people. over the next few weeks we will be fine-tuning the code to automatically catch cheaters. but trust me - it is only if there is OVERWHELMING evidence. and it IS easy to tell.

erik, do you have some kind of computer program you use to catch cheaters, or is it just based on weather their moves match with a chess engine?

I have been playing online chess for quite a while, and know a little bit about programming--dont let anyone fool you when they say they have anti-cheating tools. The "tools" they refer to are nothing more than this: If enough people complain about a certain person, and if his/her rating is too good to be true, and if the player is copping an attitude, then the "tools" caught the cheater. It is nothing more than speculation and logic. The "tools" are probably right more than they are wrong, but there is no form of software in existence than can detect if someone is using a chess program or not.