4NCL Online

[Roger de Coverly]

What level of false accusations are people happy with?

How about zero?

In OTB chess, arbiters can be alerted about when the Regan program has suspicion. They should have to catch players in the act or get an admission before taking action.

[JustinHorton]

. I do wonder whether these players will come to (or already) regret the grandstanding done on their behalf.

They might, if you assume it's grandstanding.

[Rhys Cumming]

Martin,
They are not running the software on single games, they are running it on all the available games.

They're obviously not waiting until the end of the season either though, so its definitely <1/40 years.

What level of false accusations are people happy with? Even assuming the stats are working perfectly - very slightly generous - you're still looking at something like 200 or 300 to 1 right <-> wrong.

I'd be much happier if it they waited until the end of the season then grouped it all up but I presume LiChess effectively don't let them do this.

But likely in that one case the player would have pretty good circumstantial evidence to show why their level of play was legitimate (which of course requires a good appeals process).

The issue with your solution is waiting until the end of the season greatly undermines the competitive integrity of the competition. To my knowledge (and I only know what is public) going into this round of fixtures there were 3 teams (now down to 2) who were contesting quarterfinal spots who had players that had got into that position thanks to players who had subsequently been banned by lichess and that doesn't include Northumbria Vikings who would likely been in the same position.

If we just waited to the end of the season we'd be facing a similar issue to the Tour de Frances of the noughties: calling the 27th placed finisher the winner after we had ruled out all teams finishing higher. I think given the player in question was only banned after 8 weeks despite a very high performance throughout shows that they aren't being overly quick on the trigger in these cases.

[JustinHorton]

we'd be facing a similar issue to the Tour de Frances of the noughties: calling the 27th placed finisher the winner after we had ruled out all teams finishing higher

Are you thinking of any edition of the race in particular?

[JustinHorton]

Just an aside, but I doubt that doping in cycling (or athletics, or weightlifting, say) is that helpful a comparison in our particular case. It's probably fair to say that in sporting events, its effect is small, though real, and a major cause of its use is the belief that everybody else is doing it and you have no real chance without it. This might be a good comarison with the use of computers in correspondence play (prior to it being permitted) but not to 4NCL or similar events.

[MartinCarpenter]

What level of false accusations are people happy with?

How about zero?

Absolutely impossible in online chess, unless we do some vastly more (practically impossible) draconian things in terms of technology.

So we have to accept a level of false accusations, and should openly discuss it.

If people decide that you have to ban quite freely to protect the proper functioning of the contest then fine. Just need to be clear that there really isn't any certainty behind it & no consequences.

Which clearly isn't how the people accused (+their teams) are reacting at the moment.

[Rhys Cumming]

What level of false accusations are people happy with?

How about zero?

In OTB chess, arbiters can be alerted about when the Regan program has suspicion. They should have to catch players in the act or get an admission before taking action.

I'm unsure what you are actually proposing Roger. So in a case where a player for a whole season plays perfect stockfish moves every game, you would only ban the person if you had physical evidence of them cheating? That is an option in tournament play because a search or similar might reasonably be expected to find the device, but physical evidence is all but impossible in online play.

[Ian Thompson]

Significantly more than 2 (those are just the teams that pulled out in protest). I don't know the exact figure (those will presumably be released after this final round) but this was the update after 5 rounds:

"Players who were using computer assistance during their games: 12, of which
- 8 were using an engine during their games
- 4 were attempting to gain assistance using other methods during competition games"

The discussion on this thread has been about the reliability of the methods used to catch people using engines during play, hasn't it? So the 4 are in a different category from that.

I don't think it's been said, or even guessed at, what these "other methods" might be, or how the cheating was detected. It's not obvious to me why the 4NCL wouldn't want to disclose what the methods were, unless, maybe, lichess have prohibited them from doing so because they're doing something they want to hide.

[Roger de Coverly]

I'm unsure what you are actually proposing Roger.

Unless the presence of an independent witness can be assured, on line chess is suitable only for training purposes, skittles in other words.

It's noticeable that in the Carlsen events, they've wired it up so that the players can see one another and presumably an arbiter can see the local playing areas as well.

So what's needed is for someone to develop software which combines programs like Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc, with an ability to play chess using it.

Another alternative would be to adopt ICCF style rules where anything goes except possibly impersonation.

Preventative measures might help as well. Do servers broadcast computer lines in real time to spectators? If so, black them out. In OTB chess you wouldn't display the chessbomb or similar coverage anywhere the players could easily see it.

[Rhys Cumming]

Just an aside, but I doubt that doping in cycling (or athletics, or weightlifting, say) is that helpful a comparison in our particular case. It's probably fair to say that in sporting events, its effect is small, though real, and a major cause of its use is the belief that everybody else is doing it and you have no real chance without it. This might be a good comarison with the use of computers in correspondence play (prior to it being permitted) but not to 4NCL or similar events.

The point I was making was more to do with the competition itself rather than the act: a better analogy would be that of Froome's 2011 Vuelta win. He finished 2nd and was subsequently awarded the win last year I believe when Cobo was belatedly disqualified. I think it's fair to say that his win would have been somewhat hollow by only happening after the fact,

My point was simply that waiting until after the completion of an event and then only disqualifying players or teams then when we have sufficient evidence beforehand is a large issue for the competition.

[Thomas Rendle]

I don't think it's been said, or even guessed at, what these "other methods" might be, or how the cheating was detected. It's not obvious to me why the 4NCL wouldn't want to disclose what the methods were, unless, maybe, lichess have prohibited them from doing so because they're doing something they want to hide.

Well, the game being watched by another player who then sent moves via chat would be one obvious method. Someone stronger playing on an account would be another. I remember plenty of ICC accounts got closed for that reason - friends (of vastly different strengths) sharing accounts.

[Rhys Cumming]

I'm unsure what you are actually proposing Roger.

Unless the presence of an independent witness can be assured, on line chess is suitable only for training purposes, skittles in other words.

Having such an extreme aversion to false positives is a legitimate position to take, but I would argue that having a z-score of 4 and a body search showing that the person had a mobile in their pocket has a significantly greater chance of a false positive than a season of only top stockfish moves (not what we have in this case, but an example to show that some statistical evidence exceeds physical evidence).

It seems clear that you don't wish to participate in online tournaments, which is fair enough, but for those that do the tolerable false positive rate is going to be north of 0, the question is just how much.

[Rhys Cumming]

I don't think it's been said, or even guessed at, what these "other methods" might be, or how the cheating was detected. It's not obvious to me why the 4NCL wouldn't want to disclose what the methods were, unless, maybe, lichess have prohibited them from doing so because they're doing something they want to hide.

Well, the game being watched by another player who then sent moves via chat would be one obvious method.

Thankfully there is no evidence at all of two players whose teams have subsequently withdrawn from the 4NCL on their behalf doing exactly this on another platform.

[Ian Thompson]

I don't think it's been said, or even guessed at, what these "other methods" might be, or how the cheating was detected. It's not obvious to me why the 4NCL wouldn't want to disclose what the methods were, unless, maybe, lichess have prohibited them from doing so because they're doing something they want to hide.

Well, the game being watched by another player who then sent moves via chat would be one obvious method. Someone stronger playing on an account would be another.

Thinking of ways that players could cheat without using an engine isn't difficult. Thinking of ways that involve computer assistance and are detectable isn't so easy.

I wouldn't classify either of the methods you suggest as computer assistance. They're both forms of assistance from another person. Computer assistance would be things like looking up previous games on ChessBase, or endings in tablebases, or consulting other online reference material. But how would lichess detect any of that without running some form of spyware on your computer?

[Adam Raoof]

I'm unsure what you are actually proposing Roger.

So what's needed is for someone to develop software which combines programs like Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc, with an ability to play chess using it.

Like Tornelo.com?