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I’ve seen a video of Magnus Carlsen playing on Lichess before. Does Irwin ever accidentally flag him or people like him? Do these sorts of folks have to be veri

by CSSer 4y ago

I’ve seen a video of Magnus Carlsen playing on Lichess before. Does Irwin ever accidentally flag him or people like him? Do these sorts of folks have to be verified in some fashion?

timetraveller26 4y ago
Not lichess, but Alireza Firouzja (World Rank #3) was banned from chess.com when he was younger. It was some time ago so probably their cheat engine detection, and also lichess's should give less false positives.
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  > Not lichess, but Alireza Firouzja (World Rank #3) was banned from chess.com when he was younger. This has turned into a bit of an urban legend. The automated system flagged him based on both his rapid rise in rating and reports from several verified titled players. On inspection by a human, he was cleared. Danny exaggerates when he tells the story cause it's a funny anecdote. This was also a very old version of the anti-cheat like you mentioned. Personally, part of the reason I prefer chess.com is their much better cheat detection than Lichess.
- pgwhalen 4y ago
  My understanding is that that was not about his actual play, but instead about his rapid rise in rating.
have_faith 4y ago
What it looks like to cheat is more than just playing relatively accurate moves. Average move time, centipawn loss over multiple games, blunder/mistake frequency across multiple games, strengh of moves while in time trouble, etc. Cheaters tend to stand out when you look at a short history of games.
- personjerry 4y ago
  - Snowflame 4y ago
    Are you trolling? No it isn't? If nothing else, the time issue is a huge one. Cheaters have very consistent seconds-per-move while actual masters make obvious moves instantly and pause on tougher moves.
    - hgazx 4y ago
      I suppose that only completely newbie cheaters would think of taking the same amount of time to make each move. It’s like the first rule of pretending to be a human: add a random delay to all of your actions.
      - synu 4y ago
        In general you’re right, but there are some tells because humans don’t have a random delay. It’s connected with the complexity (from the perspective of how humans think, which is different from engine calculation) of the position. One of the things that makes cheaters stand out is they will have a random weird delay on various obvious moves.
      - IntrepidWorm 4y ago
        And yet time and time again, chess streamers and content producers run across people with newly formed accounts and perfect win records playing the best engine move at regular measured intervals. If you are cunning enough to hold off on the best move for a few extra seconds to appear unaided by an engine, or if you blunder X% moves in your game (or simply play the 3rd or 4th rated move which still probably wins against most humans), chances are you'd do fine learning some chess strategy and playing the game unaided. People keep asking why one would cheat at chess. I'm sure there are some bad actors who aim to disrupt the game, in a manner consistent with cheater motivations in other games. I'd imagine many cheaters are simply looking for some quick dopamine after being frustrated by a plateau in their skill.
      - 4y ago
- tzs 4y ago
  That would clearly work for someone who is cheating by letting an engine do all the work, but how about someone who mostly plays the game themselves just using the engine rarely? Give Nakamura a minute with Stockfish any two times of his choosing in each game, and he would have probably won the Candidates. Heck, just give a good player a blunder alert that tells them after they have made a blunder that they have done so and it could make a big difference. There were games in the Candidates where a player would make a blunder that would completely turn the game around if the opponent found the one move that exploited it, but the opponent didn't see it. The first player could have then saved themselves but had not yet realized they blundered so didn't. Then the other player realized what was going on and exploited the blunder.
  - Rodeoclash 4y ago
    I don't think it's that helpful if you're letting Stockfish make a move or two for you per game, or at least at the level I'm at. The engine is so good that it often makes moves that are incomprehensible, setting itself up for an attack in n moves where n is often 10+. If you did want to cheat (but what's the point?) a chrome extension that prevented you from making moves where you lost more then some certain amount of centipawns would be the way to do it.
    - throwaway81523 4y ago
      Anand talked about that a while back. He said even 1 bit of information from Stockfish per game would result in a significant amount of rating points, and be quite hard to detect. I.e. you are in a position where you could choose to play a solid move, or alternatively to launch a risky combination. Stockfish explores the combination and gives you a 1 or 0 saying whether it will work. I believe cheat detection is done partly by humans. Computers flag something as suspicious and then they show the suspicious moves to some grandmasters who might immediately say "no human would do that", or else "yeah that move looks weird but I could imagine someone making it", that type of thing. There was a youtube of Nakamura looking at such a position a while back. The person had a chance to sac some material in order to simplify to a trivially winning endgame, but instead carried out a ridiculously complicated maneuver that kept the material. Just the sort of thing a computer would do, and Naka pointed it out.
colechristensen 4y ago
High level humans and chess engines play differently. You can see commentary on chess YouTube videos when they run across cheaters. Also the chess engines people use are accessible, you can compare what a suspected cheater does with what the cheater does and if they’re exactly the same consistently, you have a pretty strong signal. One of the bigger tells are strange moves that set up a many move series resulting in a victory, things that humans just can’t find quickly.
- toolslive 4y ago
  It's not that simple. I'm an amateur player (2200 at lichess) but there are plenty of situations where I simply _know_ the best variation. Plenty of chess players analyze their own games using an engine and then use their memory when they are confronted with the same position. The same with opening theory: when I'm using my opening preparation, I'm playing at GM level as these are just the moves played by GMs in that position, and I did not need to find/calculate them, I just know them.
  - mwt 4y ago
    Your explanation doesn't really distinguish high-level human play (not obvious cheating) from engine play (obvious cheating). There are probably plenty of games in which your first 20 moves (or 5-10 for me) are in GM databases and evaluated favorably by the engine, ass a 2200 you're probably booked up pretty well. But you know computer moves aren't so common in openings; they're much more common in complex middlegames and late games when the computer can calculate more combinations that we can and is able to produce lines that break intuition and principles but are strictly best.
    - toolslive 4y ago
      My point is that high level human play online can be caused by computer analysis offline. One cannot observe a difference, as the moves are exactly the same.
      - 4y ago
edanm 4y ago
> Do these sorts of folks have to be verified in some fashion? As far as I understand, yes. In Chess.com at least (not sure about Lichess), there will be some kind of human verification for very high-level players, asking to prove that they are IMs or GMs. They can stay anonymous, but they will have the rank appear IIRC. I'm not sure on all the details, I'm very (very very) far from that level :)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
than3 4y ago
I would assume they verify titled players to avoid any potential liability or defamation legal issues but they aren't the most professional bunch so who really knows. There are a lot of questionable practices they've done over the years as an organization. As for Irwin, its detection rate, and thresholds, it has fairly high false-positive rates inherent in the model. From my experience, if you get banned don't expect any kind of due process. They aren't professional, they don't respond. Not even the legal contact on their charity. Not everyone gets banned for cheating. They do ban people from the lichess site for many other unprofessional reasons such as contributing to the project (when they don't like what you had to say on an issue and you weren't spamming). I have to wonder how many similar-named accounts got axed alongside mine when they decided to go after me for what I disclosed. Its not like my github username was connected in any way to my lichess account (or that similarly named). Needless to say, I don't use their platform anymore because its more bots than anything else, and I don't volunteer my time to people that don't deserve it. As a side note, their lack of standard professional practices make me wonder what kind of fraud is actually going on behind the scenes. As a business, the only arguably beneficial reason for not following GAAP+ other standard business practices is to commit a fraud.

by CSSer 4y ago

I’ve seen a video of Magnus Carlsen playing on Lichess before. Does Irwin ever accidentally flag him or people like him? Do these sorts of folks have to be verified in some fashion?

timetraveller26 4y ago

Not lichess, but Alireza Firouzja (World Rank #3) was banned from chess.com when he was younger. It was some time ago so probably their cheat engine detection, and also lichess's should give less false positives.

CSMastermind 4y ago
> Not lichess, but Alireza Firouzja (World Rank #3) was banned from chess.com when he was younger. This has turned into a bit of an urban legend. The automated system flagged him based on both his rapid rise in rating and reports from several verified titled players. On inspection by a human, he was cleared. Danny exaggerates when he tells the story cause it's a funny anecdote. This was also a very old version of the anti-cheat like you mentioned. Personally, part of the reason I prefer chess.com is their much better cheat detection than Lichess.
pgwhalen 4y ago
My understanding is that that was not about his actual play, but instead about his rapid rise in rating.

have_faith 4y ago

What it looks like to cheat is more than just playing relatively accurate moves. Average move time, centipawn loss over multiple games, blunder/mistake frequency across multiple games, strengh of moves while in time trouble, etc. Cheaters tend to stand out when you look at a short history of games.

personjerry 4y ago
- Snowflame 4y ago
  Are you trolling? No it isn't? If nothing else, the time issue is a huge one. Cheaters have very consistent seconds-per-move while actual masters make obvious moves instantly and pause on tougher moves.
  - hgazx 4y ago
    I suppose that only completely newbie cheaters would think of taking the same amount of time to make each move. It’s like the first rule of pretending to be a human: add a random delay to all of your actions.
    - synu 4y ago
      In general you’re right, but there are some tells because humans don’t have a random delay. It’s connected with the complexity (from the perspective of how humans think, which is different from engine calculation) of the position. One of the things that makes cheaters stand out is they will have a random weird delay on various obvious moves.
    - IntrepidWorm 4y ago
      And yet time and time again, chess streamers and content producers run across people with newly formed accounts and perfect win records playing the best engine move at regular measured intervals. If you are cunning enough to hold off on the best move for a few extra seconds to appear unaided by an engine, or if you blunder X% moves in your game (or simply play the 3rd or 4th rated move which still probably wins against most humans), chances are you'd do fine learning some chess strategy and playing the game unaided. People keep asking why one would cheat at chess. I'm sure there are some bad actors who aim to disrupt the game, in a manner consistent with cheater motivations in other games. I'd imagine many cheaters are simply looking for some quick dopamine after being frustrated by a plateau in their skill.
    - 4y ago
tzs 4y ago
That would clearly work for someone who is cheating by letting an engine do all the work, but how about someone who mostly plays the game themselves just using the engine rarely? Give Nakamura a minute with Stockfish any two times of his choosing in each game, and he would have probably won the Candidates. Heck, just give a good player a blunder alert that tells them after they have made a blunder that they have done so and it could make a big difference. There were games in the Candidates where a player would make a blunder that would completely turn the game around if the opponent found the one move that exploited it, but the opponent didn't see it. The first player could have then saved themselves but had not yet realized they blundered so didn't. Then the other player realized what was going on and exploited the blunder.
- Rodeoclash 4y ago
  I don't think it's that helpful if you're letting Stockfish make a move or two for you per game, or at least at the level I'm at. The engine is so good that it often makes moves that are incomprehensible, setting itself up for an attack in n moves where n is often 10+. If you did want to cheat (but what's the point?) a chrome extension that prevented you from making moves where you lost more then some certain amount of centipawns would be the way to do it.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    Anand talked about that a while back. He said even 1 bit of information from Stockfish per game would result in a significant amount of rating points, and be quite hard to detect. I.e. you are in a position where you could choose to play a solid move, or alternatively to launch a risky combination. Stockfish explores the combination and gives you a 1 or 0 saying whether it will work. I believe cheat detection is done partly by humans. Computers flag something as suspicious and then they show the suspicious moves to some grandmasters who might immediately say "no human would do that", or else "yeah that move looks weird but I could imagine someone making it", that type of thing. There was a youtube of Nakamura looking at such a position a while back. The person had a chance to sac some material in order to simplify to a trivially winning endgame, but instead carried out a ridiculously complicated maneuver that kept the material. Just the sort of thing a computer would do, and Naka pointed it out.

colechristensen 4y ago

High level humans and chess engines play differently. You can see commentary on chess YouTube videos when they run across cheaters. Also the chess engines people use are accessible, you can compare what a suspected cheater does with what the cheater does and if they’re exactly the same consistently, you have a pretty strong signal. One of the bigger tells are strange moves that set up a many move series resulting in a victory, things that humans just can’t find quickly.

toolslive 4y ago
It's not that simple. I'm an amateur player (2200 at lichess) but there are plenty of situations where I simply _know_ the best variation. Plenty of chess players analyze their own games using an engine and then use their memory when they are confronted with the same position. The same with opening theory: when I'm using my opening preparation, I'm playing at GM level as these are just the moves played by GMs in that position, and I did not need to find/calculate them, I just know them.
- mwt 4y ago
  Your explanation doesn't really distinguish high-level human play (not obvious cheating) from engine play (obvious cheating). There are probably plenty of games in which your first 20 moves (or 5-10 for me) are in GM databases and evaluated favorably by the engine, ass a 2200 you're probably booked up pretty well. But you know computer moves aren't so common in openings; they're much more common in complex middlegames and late games when the computer can calculate more combinations that we can and is able to produce lines that break intuition and principles but are strictly best.
  - toolslive 4y ago
    My point is that high level human play online can be caused by computer analysis offline. One cannot observe a difference, as the moves are exactly the same.
    - 4y ago

edanm 4y ago

> Do these sorts of folks have to be verified in some fashion? As far as I understand, yes. In Chess.com at least (not sure about Lichess), there will be some kind of human verification for very high-level players, asking to prove that they are IMs or GMs. They can stay anonymous, but they will have the rank appear IIRC. I'm not sure on all the details, I'm very (very very) far from that level :)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

than3 4y ago

I would assume they verify titled players to avoid any potential liability or defamation legal issues but they aren't the most professional bunch so who really knows. There are a lot of questionable practices they've done over the years as an organization. As for Irwin, its detection rate, and thresholds, it has fairly high false-positive rates inherent in the model. From my experience, if you get banned don't expect any kind of due process. They aren't professional, they don't respond. Not even the legal contact on their charity. Not everyone gets banned for cheating. They do ban people from the lichess site for many other unprofessional reasons such as contributing to the project (when they don't like what you had to say on an issue and you weren't spamming). I have to wonder how many similar-named accounts got axed alongside mine when they decided to go after me for what I disclosed. Its not like my github username was connected in any way to my lichess account (or that similarly named). Needless to say, I don't use their platform anymore because its more bots than anything else, and I don't volunteer my time to people that don't deserve it. As a side note, their lack of standard professional practices make me wonder what kind of fraud is actually going on behind the scenes. As a business, the only arguably beneficial reason for not following GAAP+ other standard business practices is to commit a fraud.