eastendboy mendalshtam only closed that account and started another one. He had inadvertently used an engine in a few games only, thinking it was allowed as is the case on may sites.
Indeed I mentioned earlier he was in that very strong tournament group cuendillar won and showed us in an earlier post.
Note that mendalshtam/achmatova has a FIDE rating of over 2200, so he clearly has a lot of ability.
http://www.chess.com/members/view/achmatova
Hehe, exactly what I thought: people LOVE to play advanced chess against humans. After all, if you want tough advanced chess, you go to ICCF.
This is my belief as well, which is why I feel that formalizing advanced chess on this site is not the panacea that some would have you believe. The fact is that with or without formalized advanced chess there will always be a need to detect and eject cheaters from the non-advanced pool. This is why the focus should be on improving the both mechanisms by which players are entered into the queue and the methodology for detection -- these will always be required.
Despite the length of this thread, I still don't think there's been any serious discussion about setting up another type of chess category to allow rated Advanced Chess. There are many, many people who enjoy this kind of chess already (I have yet to find anyone consistently rated 2500+ here who isn't already playing it according to my own Rybka analysis) and there are undoubtedly many others who would learn to enjoy it if it was available since it's an interesting mix of chess and hardware (high geek quotient!).
Simply saying that Advanced Chess is already allowed in unrated games completely sidesteps the issue. If you don't allow rated games then you're not acknowledging the legitimacy of that type of chess. You may not like it and you may not want to participate in it but you can't deny it's legitimacy since it's also played at the elite level by Anand, Kramnik et al.
In some respects, I think the allowance of rated Advanced Chess games would discourage cheating since I imagine there are players who would like to "come out of the closet" so to speak. There are also advantages to drawing a clear line between engine use in Advanced Chess games and standard chess games. By doing so, you avoid the problems we've seen in the past with players like mandelstam who ended up closing his account because he didn't realize he was cheating. No one can deny that he was a valuable member of the community or deny his chess skills since he was a 2200+ FIDE player who contributed a lot to the forums etc.
If chess.com wants to be the best the chess site in existence they need to allow Advanced (or Freestyle) otherwise they're not serving a large base of customers.
I dont think that at the moment there is a great demand for advanced chess on this site.
As the creator of the advanced chess group i can tell you we only have 24 members. a few recent engines allowed tournaments have been very poorly supported.
So on this evidence i dont think it worth investing the time and effort for erik to set up a rated advanced option.
With all due respect, I don't think you can know that for sure. The fact that Advanced Chess has been associated with cheating means that people aren't likely to let their interest in it be known for fear that they'll be branded as cheaters.
If, for example, one of the top players here was active in the Advanced Chess group you created, do you honestly think it would go unnoticed by Costelus the vigiliant watchdog? Hell no it wouldn't. He'd view it as one more piece of evidence and would hound that person until he was run out of town.
Until you de-stigmatize it by allowing rated Advanced Chess games, we'll never know how much interest there is. I fall back to the point that I made earlier: What harm would come from implementing it? Giving it a trial run? At worst, nothing much changes. At best, it helps to solve multiple problems and generates some extra cash for chess.com.
Hehe, exactly what I thought: people LOVE to play advanced chess against humans. After all, if you want tough advanced chess, you go to ICCF.
This is my belief as well, which is why I feel that formalizing advanced chess on this site is not the panacea that some would have you believe. The fact is that with or without formalized advanced chess there will always be a need to detect and eject cheaters from the non-advanced pool. This is why the focus should be on improving the both mechanisms by which players are entered into the queue and the methodology for detection -- these will always be required.
But what about my point that having sanctioned Advanced Chess would give the chess.com admins more freedom to crack down by removing the economic incentives to look the other way? Surely, you can't think that money plays no part in the decision to ban users.
The point about engine users wanting to play against humans is purely speculative as far as I can tell. It's based on preconceptions that are undoubtedly true in some cases but the extent to which they are accurate is unknown. The only way to tell for sure is allow Advanced Chess in rated games and see what happens.
Eastendboy wrote: "If, for example, one of the top players here was active in the Advanced Chess group you created, do you honestly think it would go unnoticed by Costelus the vigiliant watchdog? Hell no it wouldn't. He'd view it as one more piece of evidence and would hound that person until he was run out of town."
Knowing costelus the amount that I do, I believe he would do the opposite - he would compare the games in the advanced category with the games from the regular category and make conclusions based on the data. Lest we forget, costelus is one of the few who have contributed data to the discussion.
Eastendboy wrote: "If, for example, one of the top players here was active in the Advanced Chess group you created, do you honestly think it would go unnoticed by Costelus the vigiliant watchdog? Hell no it wouldn't. He'd view it as one more piece of evidence and would hound that person until he was run out of town."
Knowing costelus the amount that I do, I believe he would do the opposite - he would compare the games in the advanced category with the games from the regular category and make conclusions based on the data. Lest we forget, costelus is one of the few who have contributed data to the discussion.
Of course (sarcastic). You're constantly reminding Costelus to not disclose names and private information so I have my doubts about what he'd do in this situation but I have no doubt he'd use the group membership to deliver the coup de grace.
My point was that if you're already cheating, the last thing you want to do is draw ANY attention to yourself. To freely associate yourself with anything engine related is asking for trouble. Hence my point about it being impossible to know how much interest there is in advanced chess.
How much interest is there, really, among the people who are not already doing it?
Is that the million dollar question?
Personally I'm not interested in it at all. I don't have a program and I don't really want to buy one to install on my Mac, while I eat my veggie burger driving my Prius.
I hope he had a macro when he had to change all the 18s to 22s.
richie - I think the whole point is that the cheaters will NOT come out.
I think it may have predated global-search-and-replace.
How much interest is there, really, among the people who are not already doing it?
Is that the million dollar question?
Personally I'm not interested in it at all. I don't have a program and I don't really want to buy one to install on my Mac, while I eat my veggie burger driving my Prius.
Judging by the top of the rating list, there are at least several hundred players who are interested in it. Even after we very generously conclude that there no titled players participating despite the fact that some are able to defeat or draw Rybka-like playing styles at will.
I think you'd be surprised how many people and what type of people are interested in this kind of chess.
I may be way off, but I don't anticipate the people deliberately circumventing the system right now subsequently participating in that which was disallowed which they had previously illegally participated in.
I guess the whole idea that the current system provides a monetary incentive for chess.com to look the other way is a political potato that's too hot to handle.
I think that the possibility that there will be an exodus from this site if they do not look the other way also needs to be taken into consideration as a mitigating offset to the conflict of interest you've identified.
I guess the whole idea that the current system provides a monetary incentive for chess.com to look the other way is a political potato that's too hot to handle.
I think people are afraid that their voice will be shut out of the argument here if they discuss this compelling and viable perspective.
I don't pretend to understand the business nuances of the marketplace, so I have no comment here.
I think that the possibility that there will be an exodus from this site if they do not look the other way also needs to be taken into consideration as a mitigating offset to the conflict of interest you've identified.
Agreed but if one were cynical enough it could be concluded that the public posting of the names is designed to prevent just such an exodus. Do enough to seem active, but not so much that it cuts into the bottom-line.
Perhaps approaching this from another angle would be more productive. What are the downsides to implementing the system I've proposed? We're in agreement that it might not solve the problem but I haven't yet heard someone make the case that it will worsen it. So why not?
I think that the possibility that there will be an exodus from this site if they do not look the other way also needs to be taken into consideration as a mitigating offset to the conflict of interest you've identified.
Agreed but if one were cynical enough it could be concluded that the public posting of the names is designed to prevent just such an exodus. Do enough to seem active, but not so much that it cuts into the bottom-line.
Perhaps approaching this from another angle would be more productive. What are the downsides to implementing the system I've proposed? We're in agreement that it might not solve the problem but I haven't yet heard someone make the case that it will worsen it. So why not?
Why change a system to get the SAME result? a change is designed to bring about some improvement, if it doesn't accomplish this goal then it is a waist of resources.
I think that the possibility that there will be an exodus from this site if they do not look the other way also needs to be taken into consideration as a mitigating offset to the conflict of interest you've identified.
Agreed but if one were cynical enough it could be concluded that the public posting of the names is designed to prevent just such an exodus. Do enough to seem active, but not so much that it cuts into the bottom-line.
Perhaps approaching this from another angle would be more productive. What are the downsides to implementing the system I've proposed? We're in agreement that it might not solve the problem but I haven't yet heard someone make the case that it will worsen it. So why not?
I'd prefer they spend their time on other things like live chess. If computer-assisted humans at the top of the best lists becomes a problem to further expansion, then maybe, but it's not nearly as important as live chess.
I think that the possibility that there will be an exodus from this site if they do not look the other way also needs to be taken into consideration as a mitigating offset to the conflict of interest you've identified.
Agreed but if one were cynical enough it could be concluded that the public posting of the names is designed to prevent just such an exodus. Do enough to seem active, but not so much that it cuts into the bottom-line.
Perhaps approaching this from another angle would be more productive. What are the downsides to implementing the system I've proposed? We're in agreement that it might not solve the problem but I haven't yet heard someone make the case that it will worsen it. So why not?
Why change a system to get the SAME result? a change is designed to bring about some improvement, if it doesn't accomplish this goal then it is a waist of resources.
Hope? Possibility? To boldly go where chess.com has never gone before?
I'm no developer but the technical implementation seems trivial.
Hehe, exactly what I thought: people LOVE to play advanced chess against humans. After all, if you want tough advanced chess, you go to ICCF.