2 ms·
There was recently a player who shot up the Chess.com blitz leaderboard under the name Sinister Magnus. They were eventually removed from the leaderboard, presu
by neaden 4y ago
There was recently a player who shot up the Chess.com blitz leaderboard under the name Sinister Magnus. They were eventually removed from the leaderboard, presumably for being an alt of an existing GM, but I don't think anyone has figured it out for sure who they are, it would be interesting test to see if they are able to figure the player out using this.
- rollcat 4y agoInteresting! Why is it not allowed to have alt accounts? And why was such severe action taken, without enough evidence? Why do people want using alts in the first place, in a game with perfect information? In StarCraft II, having alts is tolerated (well, depending on your manners - nobody likes smurfing), but we have sc2revealed.com which takes crowd-sourced reports to try to unmask "barcode" (llllllllllll) players. Many pros try to practice anonymously on the ladder, because SC2 a game of imperfect information, and in a best-of-3 series (like in a tournament), you 1. don't want to use the same opening every match, and 2. don't want your opponent to immediately recognize what you're doing, or work on preparing a counter ahead of time.
- neaden 4y agoYou can have an alt account, and Sinister Magnus is still around, you just can't be on the leaderboard more then once. So SM is presumably the alt of someone who is already on the leaderboard. Similar to StarCraft a GM might want to prep openings without revealing that's what they are doing, so there are reasons for having alts but that applies more for longer time controls rather then blitz. Generally GMs do their prep with a small and usually secret team before a big tournament.