Cheating in chess

[David Sedgwick]

that player and another player (both from Limerick chess club) were banned by chess.com
mention in the guardian here: scroll down
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/ ... ampionship

Sorry, I don't know if I'm missing something obvious, but what am I scrolling down to?

The last three paragraphs of Leonard Barden's column.

[JustinHorton]

Ah OK, I thought from Martin's comment that there was going to be something about the ban there.

[David Sedgwick]

Ah OK, I thought from Martin's comment that there was going to be something about the ban there.

Leonard wrote in his column: "It remains to be seen what, if any, repercussions follow."

We now know that there have been some.

[Matt Bridgeman]

...one of the surprise break-through performers at the British Online Championship earned the red 'This account has violated the Lichess Terms of Service' marker.

[David Sedgwick]

...one of the surprise break-through performers at the British Online Championship earned the red 'This account has violated the Lichess Terms of Service' marker.

Deleted. I was clearly not referring to the same player as Matt Bridgman.

[Matt Bridgeman]

...one of the surprise break-through performers at the British Online Championship earned the red 'This account has violated the Lichess Terms of Service' marker.

That was subsequent to his "break-through" performance and on the basis of his performance on a different event. It was on Chess.com

But as you can only have one Lichess account, I think that takes him out of the 4NCL Online, Junior 4NCL and ECF Grand Prix Blitz and Rapidplay series. It’s a shame as he’d scored something like 21.5/23 in the events he’d entered.

[Alan Walton]

It’s a shame as he’d scored something like 21.5/23 in the events he’d entered.

That might be the reason his account got flagged!

[Matt Bridgeman]

It’s a shame as he’d scored something like 21.5/23 in the events he’d entered.

That might be the reason his account got flagged!

It’s an interesting question of how much even a promising junior can improve in 10 months? February 2020 player X was a slightly out of form 170-ish level in final over the board comps. Come December they're playing at IM level at the British Online Championship and beyond. To quote a terrible analogy, in bodybuilding there’s a phenomena referred to as newbie gains, where effectively your first year is always your best, and the second you make half as much gain, and half as much again the year after. Okay, it’s not chess, but how often do non-newbie, well trained mid-teen juniors bolt on 400-500 points of performance strength in 10 months? (Not to mention without being able to play any over the board chess.)

[Joseph Conlon]

[Okay, it’s not chess, but how often do well trained mid-teen juniors bolt on 400-500 points of performance strength in 10 months? (Not to mention without being able to play any over the board chess.)

I think its also worth noting that improvements are logarithmic in terms of amount of effort - each gap between, say, 2600 to 2400, or 2400 to 2200, or 2200 to 2000, requiring much more effort than the previous one. Going from 1000 to 1600 I can easily imagine....

[Kevin Thurlow]

"But as you can only have one Lichess account, I think that takes him out of the 4NCL Online, Junior 4NCL and ECF Grand Prix Blitz and Rapidplay series. It’s a shame as he’d scored something like 21.5/23 in the events he’d entered."

Will it, though?

[Matt Bridgeman]

[Okay, it’s not chess, but how often do well trained mid-teen juniors bolt on 400-500 points of performance strength in 10 months? (Not to mention without being able to play any over the board chess.)

I think its also worth noting that improvements are logarithmic in terms of amount of effort - each gap between, say, 2600 to 2400, or 2400 to 2200, or 2200 to 2000, requiring much more effort than the previous one. Going from 1000 to 1600 I can easily imagine....

Yes, for the purposes of this example, player X has bridged the gap from say 1900 to 2400, to the point where they are routinely beating/and or drawing a range of GM's, IM's and FM's. Non-blitz loses are now a rarity.

[Wadih Khoury]

It’s a shame as he’d scored something like 21.5/23 in the events he’d entered.

That might be the reason his account got flagged!

It’s an interesting question of how much even a promising junior can improve in 10 months? February 2020 player X was a slightly out of form 170-ish level in final over the board comps. Come December they're playing at IM level at the British Online Championship and beyond. To quote a terrible analogy, in bodybuilding there’s a phenomena referred to as newbie gains, where effectively your first year is always your best, and the second you make half as much gain, and half as much again the year after. Okay, it’s not chess, but how often do non-newbie, well trained mid-teen juniors bolt on 400-500 points of performance strength in 10 months? (Not to mention without being able to play any over the board chess.)

A possible answer to your question is that the junior ratings, even in Feb 20 are quite understated, especially at the higher end:
- Fide ratings are horribly lagging (I do know some 1900 fide levels juniors still rated 1300-1400)
- ECF old calculation has a massive lag due to taking into account 12 month of data. So effectively a jan 20 grade equates to the average strength of 2019, which is roughly June 2019. So when we look at the ECF grade of a junior in Feb, it is already 8 months out of date. We are now in April 21, so the Jan 20 grade for a junior serious about his chess is actually nearly 22 months out of date! For a junior, especially in a lockdown situation with no activities, I do expect massive improvements. I have seen children that have been stagnating at 120 ECF for ages suddenly exceed 2200 Lichess, and many making massive progress over the year. Chess performance correlates a lot with practice, it is not surprising that the more practice opportunities children have, the stronger they get.


Could you PM me by the way which junior you are referring to? I noticed today one junior (very strong OtB, and performing very well) get a fairplay flag, but when I checked all his recent games they are riddled with inaccuracies and mistakes (as per Lichess's stockfish analysis). I wonder if it is one of those weird cases where parents make the mistake of looking at the game with analysis on from the same IP (or even same account!).
it does make one paranoid.

[Matt Bridgeman]

That might be the reason his account got flagged!

It’s an interesting question of how much even a promising junior can improve in 10 months? February 2020 player X was a slightly out of form 170-ish level in final over the board comps. Come December they're playing at IM level at the British Online Championship and beyond. To quote a terrible analogy, in bodybuilding there’s a phenomena referred to as newbie gains, where effectively your first year is always your best, and the second you make half as much gain, and half as much again the year after. Okay, it’s not chess, but how often do non-newbie, well trained mid-teen juniors bolt on 400-500 points of performance strength in 10 months? (Not to mention without being able to play any over the board chess.)

A possible answer to your question is that the junior ratings, even in Feb 20 are quite understated, especially at the higher end:
- Fide ratings are horribly lagging (I do know some 1900 fide levels juniors still rated 1300-1400)
- ECF old calculation has a massive lag due to taking into account 12 month of data. So effectively a jan 20 grade equates to the average strength of 2019, which is roughly June 2019. So when we look at the ECF grade of a junior in Feb, it is already 8 months out of date. We are now in April 21, so the Jan 20 grade for a junior serious about his chess is actually nearly 22 months out of date! For a junior, especially in a lockdown situation with no activities, I do expect massive improvements. I have seen children that have been stagnating at 120 ECF for ages suddenly exceed 2200 Lichess, and many making massive progress over the year. Chess performance correlates a lot with practice, it is not surprising that the more practice opportunities children have, the stronger they get.


Could you PM me by the way which junior you are referring to? I noticed today one junior (very strong OtB, and performing very well) get a fairplay flag, but when I checked all his recent games they are riddled with inaccuracies and mistakes (as per Lichess's stockfish analysis). I wonder if it is one of those weird cases where parents make the mistake of looking at the game with analysis on from the same IP (or even same account!).
it does make one paranoid.

I'll PM you. But in old money, I suppose I'm not a massive believer in being able to improve from 170-ish level to cruising at 230-240+ type level 10 months later. Just seems a bit unlikely.

[Ian Thompson]

Yes, for the purposes of this example, player X has bridged the gap from say 1900 to 2400, to the point where they are routinely beating/and or drawing a range of GM's, IM's and FM's. Non-blitz loses are now a rarity.

I wonder if players who are cheating online and getting results like this have given any thought to what will happen when they start playing OTB again? How will they explain being 2400 online and still only 1900 OTB, or even 2100 OTB if we assume some real improvement in the last year? Will they perhaps give up OTB chess because they won't be able to face the consequences of being unable to come up with a credible explanation?

[David Sedgwick]

I wonder if players who are cheating online and getting results like this have given any thought to what will happen when they start playing OTB again? How will they explain being 2400 online and still only 1900 OTB, or even 2100 OTB if we assume some real improvement in the last year? Will they perhaps give up OTB chess because they won't be able to face the consequences of being unable to come up with a credible explanation?

I worry that players who have been cheating online, but have not been detected sufficiently for them to have been banned, may have learnt techniques that they can transfer to OTB chess.