4 ms·

I was under the impression it's really hard to have a communication device that's not discoverable on you. In Vegas you could make a lot of easy money playing

by jayski 4y ago

I was under the impression it's really hard to have a communication device that's not discoverable on you. In Vegas you could make a lot of easy money playing poker if you can communicate with the other players, people have done just this and got caught. which leads me to believe a tournament of this much importance could also prevent it.

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
You only hear about the ones who got caught, right?
- cestith 4y ago
  In a casino, they only have to suspect cheating to ask you to leave. In a GM tournament I don't think the judges or sponsors could just say someone's playing better than usual and is therefore banned. There needs to be a little more evidence than a one-in-twenty win happening. Less likely things happen every day.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Well casinos also have the much much much easier task of not having to keep gaming pure, but simply to keep it profitable. They don't have to prove you are cheating, because if you are taking in more money than you should be statistically, they can make you leave and ban you, no recourse. They only have to prove you cheated when they want to put you in prison for it and take their money back. That could possibly mean that the public info on casino cheating trends towards very advanced and profitable cheating instead of average cheating, but I am not a statistician.
  - cwillu 4y ago
    And with poker specifically, cheating doesn't really affect their profit directly: the casino rakes the pot regardless of who wins it.
dkarras 4y ago
The difference with chess compared to casino games is that at this level of play, you only need 1 or 2 BITS of outside information to gain a huge advantage. You can decrease it to 1 bits if you agree on the meaning of the signal beforehand. It is enough for a high level player to receive a signal that signifies that the current board position is critical. They will be able to find the correct move themselves. So cheating at this level is not like an engine giving you moves to play. It is more like a signal that says "your opponent blundered, if you take advantage you will win", or "if you find the critical move in this position you'll most probably win". Just have that signal at the correct moment and a 2500+ ELO player will, with little effort, figure out the winning move. That single bit of information can change the entire outcome.
- robotresearcher 4y ago
  Chess moron here. Why not assume that bit is set at every move?
  - dkarras 4y ago
    I mean in theory you could, but there are time limits, mental limits, psychological effects in play. That opportunity is not always there so you can't expend the mental energy (and time) to treat every position as an entirely new chess puzzle by making yourself believe that it has a winning solution. Most of the time there isn't but you can't know that there isn't so most moves would consist of you giving up (because there is no such move). Then you'd get used to giving up. Yet you don't know when to give up exactly and move on because there may or may not be a valid answer. When you know there is a valid answer though, your strategy for time planning changes, your psychological approach changes because you know there is a solution. When you know there is a solution, you can afford to expend the mental energy that produces hyperfocus which is costly and can't be sustained for the entirety of the game. Your dopamine circuitry kicks in and you search for the solution that you know exists. A programming analogy may be: When you are programming you are solving problems but you don't approach it with the assumption that every line of code can be buggy. You just assume things are right and keep on writing best you know how - or you'd never make progress. Sometimes there are bugs, only later you can find and fix them. Asking a chess player to assume every position is critical is like checking every line of code for bugs each time you read them just in case. If you know there is a bug you have methods to search for it, but you can't program while checking every line over and over again by assuming they introduce bugs.

by jayski 4y ago

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago

You only hear about the ones who got caught, right?

cestith 4y ago
In a casino, they only have to suspect cheating to ask you to leave. In a GM tournament I don't think the judges or sponsors could just say someone's playing better than usual and is therefore banned. There needs to be a little more evidence than a one-in-twenty win happening. Less likely things happen every day.
mrguyorama 4y ago
Well casinos also have the much much much easier task of not having to keep gaming pure, but simply to keep it profitable. They don't have to prove you are cheating, because if you are taking in more money than you should be statistically, they can make you leave and ban you, no recourse. They only have to prove you cheated when they want to put you in prison for it and take their money back. That could possibly mean that the public info on casino cheating trends towards very advanced and profitable cheating instead of average cheating, but I am not a statistician.
- cwillu 4y ago
  And with poker specifically, cheating doesn't really affect their profit directly: the casino rakes the pot regardless of who wins it.

dkarras 4y ago

The difference with chess compared to casino games is that at this level of play, you only need 1 or 2 BITS of outside information to gain a huge advantage. You can decrease it to 1 bits if you agree on the meaning of the signal beforehand. It is enough for a high level player to receive a signal that signifies that the current board position is critical. They will be able to find the correct move themselves. So cheating at this level is not like an engine giving you moves to play. It is more like a signal that says "your opponent blundered, if you take advantage you will win", or "if you find the critical move in this position you'll most probably win". Just have that signal at the correct moment and a 2500+ ELO player will, with little effort, figure out the winning move. That single bit of information can change the entire outcome.

robotresearcher 4y ago
Chess moron here. Why not assume that bit is set at every move?
- dkarras 4y ago
  I mean in theory you could, but there are time limits, mental limits, psychological effects in play. That opportunity is not always there so you can't expend the mental energy (and time) to treat every position as an entirely new chess puzzle by making yourself believe that it has a winning solution. Most of the time there isn't but you can't know that there isn't so most moves would consist of you giving up (because there is no such move). Then you'd get used to giving up. Yet you don't know when to give up exactly and move on because there may or may not be a valid answer. When you know there is a valid answer though, your strategy for time planning changes, your psychological approach changes because you know there is a solution. When you know there is a solution, you can afford to expend the mental energy that produces hyperfocus which is costly and can't be sustained for the entirety of the game. Your dopamine circuitry kicks in and you search for the solution that you know exists. A programming analogy may be: When you are programming you are solving problems but you don't approach it with the assumption that every line of code can be buggy. You just assume things are right and keep on writing best you know how - or you'd never make progress. Sometimes there are bugs, only later you can find and fix them. Asking a chess player to assume every position is critical is like checking every line of code for bugs each time you read them just in case. If you know there is a bug you have methods to search for it, but you can't program while checking every line over and over again by assuming they introduce bugs.