scchess wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 4:05 pm
yurikvelo wrote: ↑Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:56 pm
Anti-cheating will work only against straitforward dumb cheater, who just want to go from ELO 1600 to 2400 in few days with singlePV.
If cheater employ "random blunder, random mistake, never top-multiPV, long-term variable ELO curve (up & down)) you will not find him.
Wrong. Totally wrong. You have no idea what you're talking about.
I find myself agreeing again with you once again...and have heard/seen people who actually do the testing agree with you on this as well. I seem to remember a good article years back in Chess Life by...think it was GM James Tarjan (?) on the subject of cheat detection, wish I could find it...I might try the USCF online archive if I can find the time.
The instance cited above - really 4 games with such play is not enough to be definitive...just perhaps enough to raise a red flag for further investigation.
I know online I play a couple of different ways I play:
1. To pass the time - often watching some TV or listening to a podcast... that is to say, not particularly seriously and against clearly weaker players I will sometimes 'just go bonkers'...
2. Training - When I asked an IM friend of mine told me a few years back how I specifically could get better - he emphasized 'making things difficult' for myself - I've played him many OTB tournament games and as long as things are somewhat 'controlled', I play really well. He advised to intentionally sacrifice pawns/exchanges/and in general to go into complications where normally I would not. The idea is get better in unbalanced situations and better tune my 'risk/reward' tendencies. I do this quite a lot now and feel more at ease in the positions...I even enjoy them! Someone else of course might be focusing on some other aspect of the game...
3. Games where I really am trying hard from start to finish. Here, I run a quick check of my games and often find myself with what would seem to be an unusually good score via
Chessbase 16 or
Chess.24 analysis just because they are 'easy' and there for me to look at. BTW, I play even here with my decidedly risky/dubious Black defenses -
Scandinavian gambits and the
Classical Dutch. Relatively rare systems for my opponents and it allows me to further hone my play in them.
To include all 3 types in cheating analysis with the same weight is obviously wrong...and does not even include the obvious fact that your opponents could have their own varied reasons for playing each and every game, giving you easier games to play sometimes. I rarely if ever play tournaments online. Mostly I play 3/0 - and loose too many on time...as
Aimchess is relentless in pointing out. I do occasionally play as slow as 2/12 on
ICC...but online chess is perfect for lots of quicker time controls....even the super GM's don't play with standard OTB time controls online.
I do think every site would require more than just a few games in their 'cheating search' and ultimately a good human player should be equipped and paid to review the data and games themselves before saying someone has cheated. With so many caught cheating that may just be a final level used when the situation is more important - ex: tournaments, especially where $$ is involved.
On
Chess.com my 'daily' rating grew to north of 2300, before I quit at some point for various reasons - ONE was how many people were deemed to be 'cheating'. It's insane how many
chess.com was catching. In a way I did not mind all the cheaters because it forced me to play better...but then these tournaments had no $$ involved. I would have sorely hated the situation if there had been.
I might add that I think one should be required to obtain a
premium membership to play any tournament online where $$ is involved.
That alone should serve to help discourage cheaters. If they get to play with a cheap or free membership, they really have little to lose vs the possible reward and should be able to play in these tournament ONLY upon completion of a hefty number of games played on the site which would then use that date to bounce ones $$ tournament games against. To paraphrase an saying I heard in an old movie about some savvy thieves
"You don't crap where you work".