Chess.com FAQs and Discussion on Cheating

But the language used by costelus was as follows:

"I made them public only after receiving their definite, clear answer: player B in that thread is *NOT* cheating."

I don't think that this can be reasonably interpreted to mean that costelus inferred that this was the case based on the fact that this player's account has yet to be closed.  I read it as saying he received confirmation.  Perhaps costelus can clarify for us.

And my inner pedant demands that I point out on the semantic side that "inconclusive", as you've afforded for in case #2 (which I concede includes my "still under review" case), is neither clear nor definite by anyone's definition.

Any reasonable authority with the power to dole out punitive measures, as is the case with the administrators of this site, should take the innocent until proven guilty principle to heart if they are to remain fair and reasonable.  Part of that is the concept of reasonable doubt, and I'm thankful that the decision to find a player guilty of cheating and ultimately to eject them is weighed carefully.  The lynch mob mentality that comes with deferring these decisions to a "court of public opinion" is, I suspect, one of the many reasons that discussion of cheating has been centralized to this thread as the naming and shaming that was occurring over and over in the forums was damaging the reputations of honest players based on nothing more than paranoia and suspicion -- the court of public opinion is notoriously unfair.

And costelus, I'll finish by saying that by posting that game here, you have in effect made the accusation of cheating, even if only implicitly, so don't act so incredulous.  If your motives for posting the game were sincere you would have instead posted the game in the Game Showcase forum where a game that is worthy of "praise and congratulation", to use your words, belongs and omitted the link to the thread that contains the explicit accusation and any other allusions to engine use.

Nobody I guess will understand anything from this discussion. I try to summarize the facts (and only the facts, not my opinions).

1. Two strong players, Ozzie_c_cobblepot and Chessnut23 played the following game: http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=13651572

2. By chance, I analized this game using an engine (Fruit). The engine showed that the playing strength of Chessnut23 is at least at the level of a super-grandmaster. This is what the engine showed, of course, it can be wrong.

3. Given this fact, I asked for other's opinion in this topic:  http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/computer-game-analysis  I did not made there a cheating accusation, if you read carefully I said at the beginning of the thread: "I must mention that this player has been a top player at chess.com for a very long time. For sure he was investigated many times for cheating and things are very clear: B is definitely not a cheater."

4. As advised in that topic, I reported Chessnut23 for cheating.

5. The result of the completed chess.com investigation is that there is no cheating in this case.

6. Therefore, I must admit I was wrong when I suspected Chessnut23 of cheating. I am convinced that he is a grandmaster who wants to remain anonimous. But many other people here would like to learn from his games (and they have a lot to learn)...

No system is perfect, and there are also numerous examples of innocent people being wrongly convicted and punished.  Which is the lesser of two evils?  That's most definitely subjective and likely also quite contentious.

And I agree that virtually everything is speculative at some level, however for the question of why some speculative thought should be considered more innappropriate than others, the simple answer is that the strength of validity is made by virtue of the amount of evidence there is in support of the speculation in question.  As I mentioned earlier, reasonable doubt is the measuring stick used in the American legal system and it is a subjective one, hence the imperfection in the system that leads to your OJ Simpsons and wrongful convictions....

Why even bother with a names list if that list contains names that are no longer associated with this website?

Transparency, and evidence of action.  It demonstrates that there is an active and effective program of detecting and ejecting offenders and wards off (most of) the paranoia that was rampant prior to this disclosure being made.

I still think cheating is rampant at live chess.  I will no longer play any games over 5 minutes.

I often find myself suspicious of those people with ratings in the 2500+ here on chess.com who are NOT titled (being as many titled players are in the 23 and 2400's in online chess)...  Of course they may just be good (but non-competetive) players... but cmon... surely if you're that good and that involved with chess you've played in SOME event!

I thought the no engine rule WAS in effect streetfighter?

I play OTB alot, maybe 5 times a week, often with USCF experts, masters and class A players.  Regardless of rating its just bizarre to me when players seem to make nearly ALL the right moves in the endgame.  Or when players execute an attack perfectly and GM games and most of them have footnotes describing a "more accurate" way they could have handled things.  Only on the internet do people with 2 years playing experience destroy everyone they face in an accurate manner whilst in the most hair raising positions.

I'm just resigned to the fact that only the most obvious of these cretins will be caught, and even those will find a way to log back in under a different name, a little wiser and more cautious than before.  

I've long since abandoned correspondence.

The only time cheaters really get me angry is when I've wasted a half hour on a game only to look over it later and come to the realization that this person was in all likelyhood cheating.

Option #4 was to close the accounts of those suspected of cheating.  I've repeatedly stated that endorse this zero tolerance approach above the other three, but with a small modification:  Close the accounts of those with sufficient evidence to conclude that they are cheating.  I think that closing accounts based merely on suspicion is a fast track to alienating most of your user base -- look what happened with MirceaH, who was confirmed to have been cheating and imagine what would happen if a non-cheater were banned.

As for the airport security analogy, if you truly compare the two processes, it really just means that we're all subject to intensive screening.  Only those of us who don't pass the screening get denied access to the flight, or the site as the case may be.  I think this is entirely appropriate.

I thought this forum was just for listing cheaters - it has become too much to wade through now...

The Grobe: the only evidence that somebody is cheating would be a video in which the person is seen opening up the game on chess.com, then opening an engine and analyzing the position. That is the only clear evidence. Since it's hard to believe that such evidence can be obtained, do you think that chess.com should not ban anybody?

I have a question for streetfighter: what makes you believe that the game I'm talking was not engine-based? There is nothing malitious in my question, I'm just simply asking. That game is not tactical, for each move there is more than one possible good choice. Yet, almost always, the engines seem to consider Black's choice as optimal. So, when do you think a game is engine-driven and when do you think it is not? Thanks!

Why does it have to be so polarized?  It's not a case of all or none, it's a case of determining whether there is sufficient evidence to conclude that a player is cheating and taking action based on that analysis. 

I trust that there are parameters in place to determine what threshold of evidence is required before the decision to ban a player is made, and I trust that they are set up so that the decision is not made lightly.

I don't think that the airport screening policy is 100% effective, or really anywhere close to it, but it's certainly better than no policy.  Again, it's not a question of catching either all or none of the offenders, it's about taking a pragmatic approach to the problem, and devising a policy that best utilizes your resources to most effectively mitigate the issue with minimal collateral damage, particularly to your reputation or the general good will towards you.  If we take the all or none approach we might as well simply throw our hands up now regardless of our common ethical stance on the issue because you'll never find a 100% effective solution.

I don't know that I have sufficient expertise to make this judgement, honestly.  Off the top of my head I'd say that a combination of being reported at least once, a high correlation of agreement with engine analysis in multiple games, and -- this is critical -- the opportunity to pose a defence against the evidence against you would probably be a good place to start the discussion.  This last step gives legitimate players the opportunity to privately provide their credentials.  There's probably also some stylistic analysis that could be done to detect the differences between the style of play of an engine versus a human, but again I'm no expert.

Is there any chance you guys could finish this discussion by messaging each other?

Why?  This discussion is exactly what this thread is for.

Yes, under such a system I'd say there's a judgement call every time an account is closed, and many times that a successful defense was mounted.  I'm sure credentials aren't the only reasonable explanation, but the most obvious example I could come up with.

Apparently this is the norm here, a lot of players with no OTB rating whatsover just walk in and play much better than grandmasters. Of course they don't cheat, as Erik and the staff found using their state-of-the-art detection methods. These super-secret methods do not imply only matching the moves against an engine, since it is obvious that, even if you get close to 100% agreement in multiple games, you are still OK.

Given this, I promise I will never ever report anybody for cheating. It is obvious that I am wrong and I have no idea that chess.com gathered the best players in the world. And me, a stupid ignorant, think that they cheat!

The aforementioned throwing up of the hands....