5 ms·

Turning the tables on chess cheating?

34 points by blast 5y ago

tibbar 5y ago
The article suggests just allowing engines and scoring players by how far they can deviate from the engine and still win. But this is no longer chess - it’s more like golf - so it doesn’t solve the problem of people cheating at chess.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  It's also not even clear that a specially tuned chess engine couldn't generate an "optimal" set of deviations from the default engine behaviour such that the person playing those moves would win anyway.
neilv 5y ago
Why is cheating reportedly such a big problem in chess? I have a guess about it in online shooter video games: I've been thinking it might be mostly adolescents and teens who are still developing a sense of character, and who enjoy the "winning" part and/or the god-mode griefing of others.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  one word: money
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  It's just like any other sport that attracts cheating, doping, and so forth. Lance Armstrong got his whole cycling team using illegal steroids, baseball pitchers put goo on the ball to make it curve harder, and there was a lady who won the Boston Marathon by taking the subway to near the finish line instead of actually running the whole race. The usual incentives of money and recognition are enough to motivate an awful lot of crappy behaviour, in sports and everywhere else.
  - 542458 5y ago
    The other thing is that it’s (in the absence of specific bot detection) really really easy to cheat at online chess. Just crack open your chess app of choice and crank the AI skill to max. With marathons you have to sneak on and off the course, with steroids you have to find a safe and reliable source of steroids and even then still train a ton, with shooter games you have to find an aimbot specifically designed for your game of choice - but here any old chess app with a bot function works as a cheat.
    - a1369209993 5y ago
      > with shooter games you have to find an aimbot specifically designed for your game of choice One thing I'd really like to see is a aimbot that uses machine learning to detect character heads from raw screen graphics. Bonus points if it runs as a smartphone app that can interface with a (preferably off-the-shelf, to maximize the number of people who can use it) USB mouse. Because fuck anti-cheat DRM.
      - temporarrry0923 5y ago
        This exists for CSGO. I know several people in the CSGO cheating scene that do this. (Note that it is OVERKILL for regular competitive matches, since VAC sucks, there are open source cheats that have been undetected for years. it's only worth it on third party anti cheat platforms like Faceit or ESEA). However, a direct memory access (DMA) card that reads player positions from the RAM is more popular as it just requires an arduino between the mouse to overwrite some of the mouse movements to aim towards a head (in addition to the DMA card). it requires a few hundred bucks in hardware and skill in firmware to make sure the DMA card cannot be detected. But in exchange you play on a semipro level mostly undetected. Search "Project EPO" and "Lohouse" on youtube for more info; he's a real skilled programmer who even sent a build to a famous youtuber in order to bring awareness to it. I was deep into the CSGO cheating scene, and yes, it is just as toxic and cringe as it sounds, 99% 14 y/o toxic skids.
        moehm 5y ago
- JauntyHatAngle 5y ago
  It's a problem in any game, chess is just a low barrier for entry to cheat and is easy to hide. Open a new browser tab and off you go, don't make too many perfect moves and pepper your game with decent evaluation but not perfect and it's hard to prove you're cheating.
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  I think more some people put a value on the external experience of 'winning' over the internal experience of the game or being true to themselves. That somewhat combined with cultural or enviromental attitudes and expectations towards cheating. I suspect these more than age group.
cratermoon 5y ago
The writing is kind of a confused mess. It jumps around without making connections between paragraphs, has no unifying structure, and somehow credits the actor Michael Caine with knowing a lot about a subject because he happens to play an expert in those subjects? Does that make Richard Chamberlain an expert in medicine because of his long-running role as Dr. Kildare?
onecommentman 5y ago
Chess is an art, it only has meaning because humans give it meaning, and has a human audience. Keep the win-tie-draw scheme but apply bonus points in top-tier tournaments for “beautiful” wins, as determined by a large-ish group of Master and above players in near-real-time. Like style points in Olympic sports. The Internet makes such a scheme workable, and the chess community gets more entertaining games to watch as a result.
- saurik 5y ago
  https://youtu.be/xXiVpFE3Zs0 https://youtu.be/xXiVpFE3Zs0 <- watch from 1h05m40s until at least the "punchline" at 1h08m10-30s
dannyz 5y ago
At least right now, cheating in chess online has not happened at the very highest level of the game. There have been GMs that have been caught cheating but as far as I know never a top 100 player. The ideas in the article seem focuseed on solving a problem that does not yet exist. On the topic of combined human/engine chess, this is something that does exist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess. It hasn't really gotten any serious traction, but I think it would be something interesting to see. I suspect that chess engines are so far advanced now though that humans would add nothing.
- mxwsn 5y ago
  Tangentially related, but I found this article on positions that humans understand better than engines fascinating: https://www.chess.com/article/view/10-positions-chess-engines-just-dont-understand https://www.chess.com/article/view/10-positions-chess-engine... Especially Hikaru's game where he "outsmarted" an engine. At the very least, it shows by proof of existence that humans can augment engines in some corner cases.
  - SilasX 5y ago
    lol with that five-bishop endgame I would be scared to death of an accidental stalemate.

34 points by blast 5y ago

The article suggests just allowing engines and scoring players by how far they can deviate from the engine and still win. But this is no longer chess - it’s more like golf - so it doesn’t solve the problem of people cheating at chess.

dane-pgp 5y ago
It's also not even clear that a specially tuned chess engine couldn't generate an "optimal" set of deviations from the default engine behaviour such that the person playing those moves would win anyway.

neilv 5y ago

Why is cheating reportedly such a big problem in chess? I have a guess about it in online shooter video games: I've been thinking it might be mostly adolescents and teens who are still developing a sense of character, and who enjoy the "winning" part and/or the god-mode griefing of others.

cratermoon 5y ago
one word: money
throwaway81523 5y ago
It's just like any other sport that attracts cheating, doping, and so forth. Lance Armstrong got his whole cycling team using illegal steroids, baseball pitchers put goo on the ball to make it curve harder, and there was a lady who won the Boston Marathon by taking the subway to near the finish line instead of actually running the whole race. The usual incentives of money and recognition are enough to motivate an awful lot of crappy behaviour, in sports and everywhere else.
- 542458 5y ago
  The other thing is that it’s (in the absence of specific bot detection) really really easy to cheat at online chess. Just crack open your chess app of choice and crank the AI skill to max. With marathons you have to sneak on and off the course, with steroids you have to find a safe and reliable source of steroids and even then still train a ton, with shooter games you have to find an aimbot specifically designed for your game of choice - but here any old chess app with a bot function works as a cheat.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > with shooter games you have to find an aimbot specifically designed for your game of choice One thing I'd really like to see is a aimbot that uses machine learning to detect character heads from raw screen graphics. Bonus points if it runs as a smartphone app that can interface with a (preferably off-the-shelf, to maximize the number of people who can use it) USB mouse. Because fuck anti-cheat DRM.
    - temporarrry0923 5y ago
      This exists for CSGO. I know several people in the CSGO cheating scene that do this. (Note that it is OVERKILL for regular competitive matches, since VAC sucks, there are open source cheats that have been undetected for years. it's only worth it on third party anti cheat platforms like Faceit or ESEA). However, a direct memory access (DMA) card that reads player positions from the RAM is more popular as it just requires an arduino between the mouse to overwrite some of the mouse movements to aim towards a head (in addition to the DMA card). it requires a few hundred bucks in hardware and skill in firmware to make sure the DMA card cannot be detected. But in exchange you play on a semipro level mostly undetected. Search "Project EPO" and "Lohouse" on youtube for more info; he's a real skilled programmer who even sent a build to a famous youtuber in order to bring awareness to it. I was deep into the CSGO cheating scene, and yes, it is just as toxic and cringe as it sounds, 99% 14 y/o toxic skids.
      - moehm 5y ago
JauntyHatAngle 5y ago
It's a problem in any game, chess is just a low barrier for entry to cheat and is easy to hide. Open a new browser tab and off you go, don't make too many perfect moves and pepper your game with decent evaluation but not perfect and it's hard to prove you're cheating.
Gustomaximus 5y ago
I think more some people put a value on the external experience of 'winning' over the internal experience of the game or being true to themselves. That somewhat combined with cultural or enviromental attitudes and expectations towards cheating. I suspect these more than age group.

cratermoon 5y ago

The writing is kind of a confused mess. It jumps around without making connections between paragraphs, has no unifying structure, and somehow credits the actor Michael Caine with knowing a lot about a subject because he happens to play an expert in those subjects? Does that make Richard Chamberlain an expert in medicine because of his long-running role as Dr. Kildare?

onecommentman 5y ago

Chess is an art, it only has meaning because humans give it meaning, and has a human audience. Keep the win-tie-draw scheme but apply bonus points in top-tier tournaments for “beautiful” wins, as determined by a large-ish group of Master and above players in near-real-time. Like style points in Olympic sports. The Internet makes such a scheme workable, and the chess community gets more entertaining games to watch as a result.

saurik 5y ago
https://youtu.be/xXiVpFE3Zs0 https://youtu.be/xXiVpFE3Zs0 <- watch from 1h05m40s until at least the "punchline" at 1h08m10-30s

dannyz 5y ago

At least right now, cheating in chess online has not happened at the very highest level of the game. There have been GMs that have been caught cheating but as far as I know never a top 100 player. The ideas in the article seem focuseed on solving a problem that does not yet exist. On the topic of combined human/engine chess, this is something that does exist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess. It hasn't really gotten any serious traction, but I think it would be something interesting to see. I suspect that chess engines are so far advanced now though that humans would add nothing.

mxwsn 5y ago
Tangentially related, but I found this article on positions that humans understand better than engines fascinating: https://www.chess.com/article/view/10-positions-chess-engines-just-dont-understand https://www.chess.com/article/view/10-positions-chess-engine... Especially Hikaru's game where he "outsmarted" an engine. At the very least, it shows by proof of existence that humans can augment engines in some corner cases.
- SilasX 5y ago
  lol with that five-bishop endgame I would be scared to death of an accidental stalemate.