Cheating in chess

Discuss anything you like about chess related matters in this forum.
Matthew Turner
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Matthew Turner » Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:28 am

Roger Lancaster wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:15 am
Matthew, I respect your right to disagree but I strongly feel you're wrong. I don't want to bang on about this ad infinitum but perhaps I could give you one real life example of the harm that can be caused.

A 7-year-old was playing, quite innocently, online. His mother, a complete beginner at chess, came along and said words to the effect of "That's interesting, show me how it works". So mother set up a separate account and her son played her half-a-dozen games, all of which [if I recall correctly] she lost, to show her. A few days later, the son was accused of cheating.

An appeal resulted in the normal uninformative template response but Alex Holowczak was kind enough to take up the matter and found that the "cheating" was linked to presumed rating manipulation as the two players in those half-dozen games had the same email account. [Of course, this would have been avoided if the games had been "casual" rather than "rated" but could a 7-year-old have been expected to realise that?].

Fortunately, in this case, the child's identity did not come to light. All the same, it was distressing for a young child to be wrongly accused of cheating. It would have been a good deal worse if the child had then been playing in a match or tournament when their identity would have been obvious to all, very possibly including other children at the same school.
Roger,
What are you saying, though? The player was breaking the rules, the system caught him and he was flagged. It was an innocent mistake and the player was unaware that they were breaking the rules. The matter has resolved itself with Alex's help - well done Alex. How would you like the system to operate differently?

Roger Lancaster
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:00 pm

Matthew. I'm probably a cautious person but, even so, I don't pore through the fine print of the rules in every competition I enter. I tend to assume that, if I act sensibly and honestly, nothing untoward is likely to happen. In the case of a 7-year-old, it's not even certain s/he would fully understand those rules.

I believe I'm correct in saying that, in England & Wales, the law broadly assumes that children under 10 can't normally be accused of crimes because they can't always be expected to know the difference between right and wrong. So - even where a young child is using outside assistance, which wasn't the case here - it's morally [and, depending on jurisdiction, very likely legally] wrong to brand them as cheats.

The fact that this individual case was resolved with Alex's help, and I'm grateful to him, is neither here nor there. Most kids just suffer. One way in which I'd like the system to operate differently is in recognising that small children shouldn't be treated in exactly the same way as adults.

Matthew Turner
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Matthew Turner » Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:07 pm

Roger,
So, what are you proposing? Children under a certain age are not allowed to set up an account? Or that children submit their birth certificate with their registration and then they are allowed to cheat as much as they want?

Roger Lancaster
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:25 pm

Matthew. It's not my role to propose. Surely the people who set up these websites didn't believe that chess was played exclusively by adults? I'm certainly not suggesting that children be "allowed to cheat as much as they want" although some tolerance for first offenders would seem sensible. But your response disregards the main feature of my example - that the child in question wasn't cheating in the first place.

John McKenna

Re: Cheating in chess

Post by John McKenna » Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:38 pm

Roget, you have pointed out on here a sad lack of parental reponsibility in some cases and at times acts of complete irresponsibility. You cannot expect the service providers to cater for all such things. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

Roger Lancaster
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:45 pm

John McKenna wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:38 pm
Roget, you have pointed out on here a sad lack of parental reponsibility in some cases and at times acts of complete irresponsibility. You cannot expect the service providers to cater for all such things. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
John. I think you're overlooking the point that many parents aren't computer-savvy and so aren't capable of knowing whether their children are cheating or not. It's even been put to me, in the case of one 8-year-old who was flagged by Lichess [perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly] but whose 4NCL-playing parent insisted he wasn't cheating, that many 8-year-olds were more savvy than their parents. That's probably true but it doesn't necessarily correlate with being able always to distinguish between right and wrong.

John McKenna

Re: Cheating in chess

Post by John McKenna » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:07 pm

Sorry, Roger, but you must not overlook - that does not absolve parents of responsibility.

E Michael White
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by E Michael White » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:10 pm

John McKenna wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:38 pm
Roget, you have pointed out on here a sad lack of parental reponsibility in some cases and at times acts of complete irresponsibility. You cannot expect the service providers to cater for all such things. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
John, judging by the first word and last sentence in your response, it seems you consider some word level delineation is appropriate or was it a typo ?

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:23 pm

Matthew Turner wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:28 am
The player was breaking the rules, the system caught him and he was flagged.
There is a question though as to what the rules actually are, how well or badly they are publicised and whether households sharing a connection could run foul of them.

We seem to have it that players sharing an email address can be accused of rating manipulation if results are one sided. Would that also apply if it was just the IP Address being shared? There's also suggestions that parents watching a game with analysis enabled can trigger accusations.

Ian Thompson
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Ian Thompson » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:27 pm

Matthew Turner wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:28 am
The player was breaking the rules, the system caught him and he was flagged. It was an innocent mistake and the player was unaware that they were breaking the rules.
What rule do you think the player was breaking? As far as I know there is no rule prohibiting someone from playing against a relative (or anyone else) who is a very weak player and gaining rating points by repeatedly beating them. So long as the mother was playing to the best of her ability that's within the rules, is it not?

E Michael White
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by E Michael White » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:29 pm

Matthew Turner wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:28 am
This is how science works you have a hypothesis, then you test it against data. In this case the data very strongly supports the hypothesis. The back testing of data verifies that the anti-cheating process are very accurate at detecting cheating. That is not the same as being infallible.
There's a bit more to it than that. Science is 1. observe natural states 2. Form a theory 3. experiment by changes to some of the states 4. observe the effect 5. check that the current theory predicts/explains the changes. 5. Modify the theory if necessary to explain the effect of those changes.

Statistical inference usually misses out some of the steps by selecting static data, although a statistical approach may use scientific methods in part.

Roger Lancaster
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:37 pm

John McKenna wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:07 pm
Sorry, Roger, but you must not overlook - that does not absolve parents of responsibility.
John. Parents are expected to be responsible but it's unreasonable to expect that responsibility to extend to areas where they don't have the requisite level of knowledge. But, before we go too far down the issue of responsibility towards children, I'd like to point out that I instanced the 7-y-o only as one clear example - without getting bogged down, as we have before, in a discussion about statistics - of where the platforms are getting it wrong.

Alan Walton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Alan Walton » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:41 pm

The platform didn’t get it wrong because it will not know the specific details of the individuals involved; it just noticed from the games some inclination of rating manipulation

After the investigation this showed it was a mistake by the individuals involved not doing this activity as casual games

No harm done but the platforms procedures are perfectly fine in this regard

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JustinHorton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by JustinHorton » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:50 pm

Alan Walton wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:41 pm
the platforms procedures are perfectly fine in this regard
Roger Lancaster wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 11:15 am
An appeal resulted in the normal uninformative template response
"Do you play chess?"
"Yes, but I prefer a game with a better chance of cheating."

lostontime.blogspot.com

NickFaulks
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by NickFaulks » Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:51 pm

Alan Walton wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 1:41 pm
No harm done
Unless the child concludes, as some have, that chess appears to be a game concerned primarily with accusations of cheating and is better avoided altogether.
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