7 ms·

> as I'd never be sure my opponent wasn't just putting the moves into a computer and playing whatever it told him to play. As mentioned, cheaters are detected

> as I'd never be sure my opponent wasn't just putting the moves into a computer and playing whatever it told him to play. As mentioned, cheaters are detected and banned. But from another perspective, cheater or not doesn't matter. You know you are playing against someone you have a statistical chance to beat. Same thing in Starcraft where people use map hacks. Who cares? The ranking system matches you with people you have a chance to beat. The challenge lies before you, and unfair advantages or not, there is good reason to believe you can succeed if you play your best game. Play to improve, play to have fun. Sometimes you will lose, no matter how strong you become this fact remains. And if you ever reach a point you believe you can only lose due to cheating, seek mental help.

watwut 6y ago
Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun. Pls, it is quite natural for humans to care about notion of fairness. How and why we loose matters.
- 46756e 6y ago
  Yeah, although this is speculation, I imagine its less of an issue because cheaters would get board somewhat easily. I mean whats the fun in copying what a machine says to win chess games against strangers? Its not like its people they know who might be impressed and if they cheat then their ranking will rise far above their skill, so if they wanted to play a real game, they would then be crushed.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    > I mean whats the fun in copying what a machine says to win chess games against strangers? I mean, what's the fun in beating everyone in Overwatch / PUBG / Fortnite / Quake / Doom / etc. etc. with an aimbot? To win. Because cheaters find winning fun, even if they're not doing it on their own skill. I obviously disagree with the mindset, but cheaters disagree with me (and clearly continue to use aimbots / chessbots / whatever to rack up "their wins"). Generally speaking, their excuses are along the lines of "I don't have the reaction speed of others", or "I don't find games of reaction fun" (etc. etc.). Similarly, a chessbot user would almost certainly say "I don't like having obvious blunders in my games, and a chessbot prevents me from missing obvious blunders". --------- I mean, Centaur Chess is a thing. Human + Computer, if you really wanted to fight fair. But these cheaters don't go towards Centaur Chess servers, they stay on human-only servers and just wanna have an advantage on the opponent. Soooooo... yeah. That's their decision. There's chess tournaments of 24-hours a move, no holds barred. (IE: Chess AIs are allowed to assist you). If you really wanted "blunder free chess", people can play in those communities. Those who continue to use computer-assistance on human-only servers are simply cheaters in my book.
- 1996 6y ago
  > Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun. I've pondered moving to something different-but-close to get again the beginner fun, like shogi. Also, there's more variety of movement with the lances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi#Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi#Movement
- cjohnson318 6y ago
  I had a Romanian stats teacher that sneered at Americans' preoccupation with fairness. She would say, "Why do you use this word fair? Life is not fair. It is a useless idea."
  - lisper 6y ago
    It is not a useless idea. Fairness is something one can choose to strive for, notwithstanding that one will inevitably fall short of perfection. Much like proficiency in chess.
  - SamBam 6y ago
    That seems merely like a way of perpetuating unfairness. I don't know the story, but it sounds like the teacher was in a position of power and someone said she was being unfair. Retorting "life is unfair" when you, yourself, are the agent causing unfairness simply inflicts needless pain. For what -- to teach the lesson that life is unfair? As a parent, I try to parent my kids fairly. I try not to show favoritism. I try to recall which kid had the last cookie most recently. Obviously the kids sometimes don't agree with me and claim I am being unfair, but by valuing fairness at the very least I am trying, and modeling for them a world where they value fairness in turn. (Of course, note, people may value different things. Fairness is its own category in the moral foundations theory[1], and some people rank it as less important than, say, authority or purity.) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory
    - cjohnson318 6y ago
      This was a graduate level class and the teacher did not believe in partial credit. Someone had missed a sign and thought their B was unfair. I agree, kids should be treated fairly and taught to treat others fairly. However, I think it is just as important to teach children resilience in the face of unavoidable adversity. It’s important to feel feelings, but to not let them poison you. Learning to get over a breakup, or an injury come to mind. I’d like to stress unavoidable adversity, in contrast to crimes like discrimination, battery, fraud, etc. So, my harping on “life isn’t fair” is an indirect and misleading way of saying, “it’s important to be resilient”. I apologize for posting my comment without more context.
- Buttons840 6y ago
  > Pls, it is quite natural for humans to care about notion of fairness. Yes, but should we give up things we enjoy because the possibility for unfairness in that thing exists? We may never know whether someone is using a chess engine assistant, but by observing what we can, their moves and game records, we can objectively argue that the match is fair. Statistically speaking, you have about a 50% chance to win. Is that unfair?
geebee 6y ago
Are cheaters really detected and banned? My guess is that there's a lot of lower grade cheating. Here are a few ways that would be difficult to detect: Run a position analyzer only to alert you to the existence of a strong move that you haven't noticed. Don't use it to find the move, just to alert you to when your position is strong. For instance, you might see that your position score is +10, but not realize why - this would indicate it's a good time to put in more thought. You might be missing a subtle blunder. Use lookup moves only for unusual positions to avoid traps in early games. Many eccentric openings are losing propositions against a skillful player who can sidestep the landmines, but are unfamiliar enough that an opponent either 1) falls into the trap, or 2) burns a lot of time avoiding the trap. A cheater could rely on a computer only so far as to avoid the traps, then play normally. Would that be detected? Another cheater move would be to use a computer analyses only when things get sticky. Just for the occasional move. This is a cheating tactic in tennis, too. An unksilled cheater "hooks" constantly when it doesn't matter. A skilled cheater does it only on a critical point. You can call out a line judge, but with the advantage secured, the cheater can appear scrupulous for the remainder of the match (making the person who called the official out appear to be a high maintenance player). That said, over time in high level tournaments, officials often do see the pattern and a reputation eventually develops. Another "advantage" of these cheating methods is that cheaters are usually not totally "drooling at the mouth evil laugh sinister people", I think people could use the methods above and lie to themselves that the weren't "really" cheating. Cheating, like most sin and trespass, often results from temptation and self-deception rather than a determinedly insidious mind. I'm only a little bewildered that people cheat and do these things (or worse). I personally hate the idea that my actual real rating in an in-person game would tank compared to my online record, and I love the human aspect of the game. But it does seem relatively easy to sidestep an algorithm that simply checks for inaccuracies. My guess (hope) is that these algorithms are probably more sophisticated than that. Fraud detection is fascinating to me, but unfortunately this is one of those situations where the algorithm probably does have to be somewhat obscure. EDIT: it just occurred to me that I have done all these things when I play against a computer - though chess.com builds this capacity into computer games (not human games, of course).
- pushrax 6y ago
  I think most people who actually want to cheat regularly on online chess also lack the skills to set up a highly effective and stealthy way to do so. There are a lot of obvious cheaters that you can catch by looking at move times.
rococode 6y ago
Two other points about cheating relevant to non-expert players: - Until expert level you most likely won't to be able to notice in real-time that you're playing a cheater. You'll be blundering and getting out-positioned regularly against legitimate players, so it's hard to notice that for one game a cheater played a perfect game against you, because most likely you made clear mistakes in that game. This is different for experts because they mostly stop making minor mistakes, so they have cause for suspicion when they know they played a strong and consistent game but still got destroyed. You also won't be strong enough to really recognize that some moves are "inhuman", especially because you'll be playing against folks who make weird/wrong moves all the time, whereas experts can sometimes tell if moves are computer-like (typically because there is a natural and obvious move to make and the cheating move is marginally stronger but hard to find). - Cheaters don't stay in low ratings for long. If they aren't detected, they'll be out of your rating in no time, like in 2 or 3 wins. This reduces the chance you'll encounter cheaters, because if a cheater plays 100 games but only 2 of them are in your rating bracket, you're unlikely to ever match against them anyways. Keeping those things in mind, and knowing that reaching expert level (~2000+ elo) takes many years and is unachievable for most adults, online cheating becomes a minor concern at best for anyone who's picking it up as a hobby in adulthood.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  This is 100% true and cheating concerns evaporate (or are confirmed) when one analyzes a game with an engine. Its enlightening to take that game where you're "sure" the other person had computer assistance into an engine and see all the blunders you both had made.
- JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
  > - Cheaters don't stay in low ratings for long. If they aren't detected, they'll be out of your rating in no time, like in 2 or 3 wins. This reduces the chance you'll encounter cheaters, because if a cheater plays 100 games but only 2 of them are in your rating bracket, you're unlikely to ever match against them anyways. If only this applied to Counter-Strike or other FPS. While those that are trying to hack discretely rise to Global fast, there are a lot of cheaters that aim to stay in high Silver or low Nova. Add this to the fact that many cheaters suck at cheating, they can absolutely get stuck in lower ranks because they tactically cannot outplay better opponents without blatantly cheating. This is a bit different from cheating in Chess and Starcraft where mechanical skill and the design of the game makes cheats less impactful. Like, cheating in Dota is really just wider POV, complete map awareness and spell casting macros. But those are just a few aspects of the game. In FPS games, the mechanical skill weighs so heavy that you will have a bad time at any rank against any cheater.

watwut 6y ago

Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun. Pls, it is quite natural for humans to care about notion of fairness. How and why we loose matters.

46756e 6y ago
Yeah, although this is speculation, I imagine its less of an issue because cheaters would get board somewhat easily. I mean whats the fun in copying what a machine says to win chess games against strangers? Its not like its people they know who might be impressed and if they cheat then their ranking will rise far above their skill, so if they wanted to play a real game, they would then be crushed.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  > I mean whats the fun in copying what a machine says to win chess games against strangers? I mean, what's the fun in beating everyone in Overwatch / PUBG / Fortnite / Quake / Doom / etc. etc. with an aimbot? To win. Because cheaters find winning fun, even if they're not doing it on their own skill. I obviously disagree with the mindset, but cheaters disagree with me (and clearly continue to use aimbots / chessbots / whatever to rack up "their wins"). Generally speaking, their excuses are along the lines of "I don't have the reaction speed of others", or "I don't find games of reaction fun" (etc. etc.). Similarly, a chessbot user would almost certainly say "I don't like having obvious blunders in my games, and a chessbot prevents me from missing obvious blunders". --------- I mean, Centaur Chess is a thing. Human + Computer, if you really wanted to fight fair. But these cheaters don't go towards Centaur Chess servers, they stay on human-only servers and just wanna have an advantage on the opponent. Soooooo... yeah. That's their decision. There's chess tournaments of 24-hours a move, no holds barred. (IE: Chess AIs are allowed to assist you). If you really wanted "blunder free chess", people can play in those communities. Those who continue to use computer-assistance on human-only servers are simply cheaters in my book.
1996 6y ago
> Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun. I've pondered moving to something different-but-close to get again the beginner fun, like shogi. Also, there's more variety of movement with the lances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi#Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi#Movement
cjohnson318 6y ago
I had a Romanian stats teacher that sneered at Americans' preoccupation with fairness. She would say, "Why do you use this word fair? Life is not fair. It is a useless idea."
- lisper 6y ago
  It is not a useless idea. Fairness is something one can choose to strive for, notwithstanding that one will inevitably fall short of perfection. Much like proficiency in chess.
- SamBam 6y ago
  That seems merely like a way of perpetuating unfairness. I don't know the story, but it sounds like the teacher was in a position of power and someone said she was being unfair. Retorting "life is unfair" when you, yourself, are the agent causing unfairness simply inflicts needless pain. For what -- to teach the lesson that life is unfair? As a parent, I try to parent my kids fairly. I try not to show favoritism. I try to recall which kid had the last cookie most recently. Obviously the kids sometimes don't agree with me and claim I am being unfair, but by valuing fairness at the very least I am trying, and modeling for them a world where they value fairness in turn. (Of course, note, people may value different things. Fairness is its own category in the moral foundations theory[1], and some people rank it as less important than, say, authority or purity.) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory
  - cjohnson318 6y ago
    This was a graduate level class and the teacher did not believe in partial credit. Someone had missed a sign and thought their B was unfair. I agree, kids should be treated fairly and taught to treat others fairly. However, I think it is just as important to teach children resilience in the face of unavoidable adversity. It’s important to feel feelings, but to not let them poison you. Learning to get over a breakup, or an injury come to mind. I’d like to stress unavoidable adversity, in contrast to crimes like discrimination, battery, fraud, etc. So, my harping on “life isn’t fair” is an indirect and misleading way of saying, “it’s important to be resilient”. I apologize for posting my comment without more context.
Buttons840 6y ago
> Pls, it is quite natural for humans to care about notion of fairness. Yes, but should we give up things we enjoy because the possibility for unfairness in that thing exists? We may never know whether someone is using a chess engine assistant, but by observing what we can, their moves and game records, we can objectively argue that the match is fair. Statistically speaking, you have about a 50% chance to win. Is that unfair?

geebee 6y ago

Are cheaters really detected and banned? My guess is that there's a lot of lower grade cheating. Here are a few ways that would be difficult to detect: Run a position analyzer only to alert you to the existence of a strong move that you haven't noticed. Don't use it to find the move, just to alert you to when your position is strong. For instance, you might see that your position score is +10, but not realize why - this would indicate it's a good time to put in more thought. You might be missing a subtle blunder. Use lookup moves only for unusual positions to avoid traps in early games. Many eccentric openings are losing propositions against a skillful player who can sidestep the landmines, but are unfamiliar enough that an opponent either 1) falls into the trap, or 2) burns a lot of time avoiding the trap. A cheater could rely on a computer only so far as to avoid the traps, then play normally. Would that be detected? Another cheater move would be to use a computer analyses only when things get sticky. Just for the occasional move. This is a cheating tactic in tennis, too. An unksilled cheater "hooks" constantly when it doesn't matter. A skilled cheater does it only on a critical point. You can call out a line judge, but with the advantage secured, the cheater can appear scrupulous for the remainder of the match (making the person who called the official out appear to be a high maintenance player). That said, over time in high level tournaments, officials often do see the pattern and a reputation eventually develops. Another "advantage" of these cheating methods is that cheaters are usually not totally "drooling at the mouth evil laugh sinister people", I think people could use the methods above and lie to themselves that the weren't "really" cheating. Cheating, like most sin and trespass, often results from temptation and self-deception rather than a determinedly insidious mind. I'm only a little bewildered that people cheat and do these things (or worse). I personally hate the idea that my actual real rating in an in-person game would tank compared to my online record, and I love the human aspect of the game. But it does seem relatively easy to sidestep an algorithm that simply checks for inaccuracies. My guess (hope) is that these algorithms are probably more sophisticated than that. Fraud detection is fascinating to me, but unfortunately this is one of those situations where the algorithm probably does have to be somewhat obscure. EDIT: it just occurred to me that I have done all these things when I play against a computer - though chess.com builds this capacity into computer games (not human games, of course).

pushrax 6y ago
I think most people who actually want to cheat regularly on online chess also lack the skills to set up a highly effective and stealthy way to do so. There are a lot of obvious cheaters that you can catch by looking at move times.

rococode 6y ago

Two other points about cheating relevant to non-expert players: - Until expert level you most likely won't to be able to notice in real-time that you're playing a cheater. You'll be blundering and getting out-positioned regularly against legitimate players, so it's hard to notice that for one game a cheater played a perfect game against you, because most likely you made clear mistakes in that game. This is different for experts because they mostly stop making minor mistakes, so they have cause for suspicion when they know they played a strong and consistent game but still got destroyed. You also won't be strong enough to really recognize that some moves are "inhuman", especially because you'll be playing against folks who make weird/wrong moves all the time, whereas experts can sometimes tell if moves are computer-like (typically because there is a natural and obvious move to make and the cheating move is marginally stronger but hard to find). - Cheaters don't stay in low ratings for long. If they aren't detected, they'll be out of your rating in no time, like in 2 or 3 wins. This reduces the chance you'll encounter cheaters, because if a cheater plays 100 games but only 2 of them are in your rating bracket, you're unlikely to ever match against them anyways. Keeping those things in mind, and knowing that reaching expert level (~2000+ elo) takes many years and is unachievable for most adults, online cheating becomes a minor concern at best for anyone who's picking it up as a hobby in adulthood.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
This is 100% true and cheating concerns evaporate (or are confirmed) when one analyzes a game with an engine. Its enlightening to take that game where you're "sure" the other person had computer assistance into an engine and see all the blunders you both had made.
JakeTheAndroid 6y ago
> - Cheaters don't stay in low ratings for long. If they aren't detected, they'll be out of your rating in no time, like in 2 or 3 wins. This reduces the chance you'll encounter cheaters, because if a cheater plays 100 games but only 2 of them are in your rating bracket, you're unlikely to ever match against them anyways. If only this applied to Counter-Strike or other FPS. While those that are trying to hack discretely rise to Global fast, there are a lot of cheaters that aim to stay in high Silver or low Nova. Add this to the fact that many cheaters suck at cheating, they can absolutely get stuck in lower ranks because they tactically cannot outplay better opponents without blatantly cheating. This is a bit different from cheating in Chess and Starcraft where mechanical skill and the design of the game makes cheats less impactful. Like, cheating in Dota is really just wider POV, complete map awareness and spell casting macros. But those are just a few aspects of the game. In FPS games, the mechanical skill weighs so heavy that you will have a bad time at any rank against any cheater.