Cheating in chess

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MartinCarpenter
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by MartinCarpenter » Sat Dec 18, 2021 12:20 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:29 pm
Joey Stewart wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:14 pm
these people don't have an engine open on the side anymore, they have plugins built into their browser analysing the moves as played on the board and just pick when they wish to copy moves from it.
Don't lichess and chess.com have some form of built in spyware that can detect the use of browser extensions and plugins? You presumably are also claiming that the supposed plugin is a good deal better than the lichess analysis engine. But if lichess believe in their built in engine and use it to detect players who play moves better than their rating, your complaints aren't goimg to make any headway if their engine thinks the play is rubbish.
I don't see how they could possibly do that first from within a web browser tab. Things off the web get very strongly sandboxed these days.

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Joey Stewart
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Joey Stewart » Sat Dec 18, 2021 4:43 pm

I don't understand how people can hack multi million pound video games written in code only known to the studios they made them but I guess there are some clever little criminals online these days if they have enough incentive.
Last edited by Joey Stewart on Sat Dec 18, 2021 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Lose one queen and it is a disaster, Lose 1000 queens and it is just a statistic.

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Stewart Reuben » Sat Dec 18, 2021 5:23 pm

All my opponents cheat at chess, but some cheat more than others.

Roger Lancaster
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger Lancaster » Sat Dec 18, 2021 7:41 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:08 pm
LawrenceCooper wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 9:03 pm
Are you sure you linked to the right game? In this one black makes a number of bad moves and then white hangs a piece. :?
Later Black attempts to deliver mate, but gets mated himself. It's a 3 0 game, so no real time for thought or consulting external devices.
Having looked at the game I'd have to say that, if I'd been the player with the White pieces, I think I'd simply have assumed that Black - after playing respectably well for some time - found himself short of time, as a direct result of which his game went downhill fast. I suppose it just goes to show that those looking for 'cheats' will find some while those who aren't won't.

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Thu Dec 23, 2021 10:02 am

I have been playing some large 10-minute arena events on chess.com, and noticed that the leaderboard is full of 1400s with 15 consecutive wins! I watched one last night and they were clearly winning and had mate in 3, then 2, then 1, and each time took about 10 seconds a move, when I would expect those moves to be played quickly. I played a 1200 recently and I deservedly lost as I put a rook en prise, but the subsequent cadence of moves, and the fact (s)he delivered a complicated mate rather than simplify to an easy win, made me suspicious. (I was only playing on out of inertia at first, then to see how they would finish.) Every so often, I get a message saying you have got rating points back. One player last night seemed to have a good attack, but missed a cunning threat giving a bad position.We were both on 7 minutes then, and he just let the clock run down. Maybe he had an urgent call...

However, I have now played people from 83 different countries, which I find interesting.

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Joey Stewart
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Joey Stewart » Thu Dec 23, 2021 4:23 pm

If you are on chess.com they make very little effort to match you with anyone in your own time zone which, fun though it sounds, more often then not leads to serious connection issues. Cheats also have a tendancy to choose odd countries as their "home" probably half because they use VPNs and half because they think legitimate players are idiots who will think "oh, I had no idea there was somebody in the British Virgin Islands who was such a great player".

Oh and the arena thing, they have a completely screwed up matchmaking system on chess.com (and lichess as well to a lesser extent) which always prioritises pairing players with similar ratings above anything logical like kicking the lower rated guys off the top spots and this gets abused hugely by sandbaggers as well as low level accounts with engine assistance.
Lose one queen and it is a disaster, Lose 1000 queens and it is just a statistic.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by JustinHorton » Thu Dec 30, 2021 5:18 pm

I wanted to raise the question of Instant Move Guys. I guess I'm meeting one of these as man ydays as not (OK, this is partly because I play far too much) and I can't get my head round them.

The main thing about Instant Move Guys is, obviously, the speed with which they move. The guys I'm thinking of aren't just speedy in the opening (that's a question for another day) but all the way through the game: theywill generally, perhaps more than generally, finish the game with more time on the clock than they started. I normally play 5+4 and 7+5, so those increments are the speed at which they play, only faster, so in a forty move game they might be playing at three times my speed.

That's odd enough. The second odd thing is that they are typically (though not always) graded in the 1900s (on lichess I am above 2200). The third and connected odd thing is that my results against them are OK, but no more than OK.

See I could understand if I had a massive plus score (they're much lower-graded, and playing too fast) or a massive minus score (because duh). And occasionally such players do lose very quickly and badly, and sometimes they win very convincingly with suspiciously blunder-free chess (in which case they get blocked if it recurs). But normally, their computer assessment is much like mine, as you might expect from games that tend to be quite close.

I don't understand any of this. I appreciate it's hard to discuss properly without examples, but assuming I am not the only person who has had a similar experience (maybe I am!) here are some of the things that bother me.

1. Why are there so many of these guys? I know that in OTB chess some people naturally play quickly, but not nearly so many as I am coming across. Do they maybe get in the mindset to play bullet chess and find themselves unable to slow down? Or is there something - possibly but not necessarily improper - going on?

2. If these guys are doing something improper why are they not beating me all the time?

3. If If these guys are doing nothing improper how are they able to play well at such a rate?

4. How would you even manage to cheat playing one move every three seconds? (You can do this with an accomplice, yes, but I'm not that paranoid.)

I hope some of this makes sense to somebody, since I'm not sure it does to me.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Dec 30, 2021 6:06 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 5:18 pm
4. How would you even manage to cheat playing one move every three seconds? (You can do this with an accomplice, yes, but I'm not that paranoid.)

Playing 5 0 on lichess, I've had a strange experience where with 2.8 seconds remaining for my opponent and his needing to deliver mate with Queen against bare King, the mate was accomplished using no time on the clock. You have to suspect either some mechanism for handing the game over to an engine or possibly a hack to prevent the server counting time.

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Thu Dec 30, 2021 6:33 pm

How many moves would it have taken from the position in question?

Certainly many could blitz that mate out pretty much instantly OTB if necessary.
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JustinHorton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by JustinHorton » Thu Dec 30, 2021 6:37 pm

I'm not sure that playing one move instantly and playing many good moves at blitz speed are the same problem
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Joseph Conlon
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Joseph Conlon » Thu Dec 30, 2021 6:51 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 6:06 pm
JustinHorton wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 5:18 pm
4. How would you even manage to cheat playing one move every three seconds? (You can do this with an accomplice, yes, but I'm not that paranoid.)

Playing 5 0 on lichess, I've had a strange experience where with 2.8 seconds remaining for my opponent and his needing to deliver mate with Queen against bare King, the mate was accomplished using no time on the clock. You have to suspect either some mechanism for handing the game over to an engine or possibly a hack to prevent the server counting time.
Presumably these are all premoves which take zero time. I don’t think I could win starting from an arbitrary K+Q position with 2.8s on the clock, but think I would have a chance with 6s, and I’m not that fast.

Premoving K+Q vs K is not that hard I think, you shuffle the Q closer supported by the K, and while not every move might work most will.

The fastest players are using keyboard extensions (which are currently legit) and are extremely fast.

Joseph Conlon
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Joseph Conlon » Thu Dec 30, 2021 7:03 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 5:18 pm
I wanted to raise the question of Instant Move Guys. I guess I'm meeting one of these as man ydays as not (OK, this is partly because I play far too much) and I can't get my head round them.

The main thing about Instant Move Guys is, obviously, the speed with which they move. The guys I'm thinking of aren't just speedy in the opening (that's a question for another day) but all the way through the game: theywill generally, perhaps more than generally, finish the game with more time on the clock than they started. I normally play 5+4 and 7+5, so those increments are the speed at which they play, only faster, so in a forty move game they might be playing at three times my speed.

That's odd enough. The second odd thing is that they are typically (though not always) graded in the 1900s (on lichess I am above 2200). The third and connected odd thing is that my results against them are OK, but no more than OK.

See I could understand if I had a massive plus score (they're much lower-graded, and playing too fast) or a massive minus score (because duh). And occasionally such players do lose very quickly and badly, and sometimes they win very convincingly with suspiciously blunder-free chess (in which case they get blocked if it recurs). But normally, their computer assessment is much like mine, as you might expect from games that tend to be quite close.

I don't understand any of this. I appreciate it's hard to discuss properly without examples, but assuming I am not the only person who has had a similar experience (maybe I am!) here are some of the things that bother me.

1. Why are there so many of these guys? I know that in OTB chess some people naturally play quickly, but not nearly so many as I am coming across. Do they maybe get in the mindset to play bullet chess and find themselves unable to slow down? Or is there something - possibly but not necessarily improper - going on?

2. If these guys are doing something improper why are they not beating me all the time?

3. If If these guys are doing nothing improper how are they able to play well at such a rate?

4. How would you even manage to cheat playing one move every three seconds? (You can do this with an accomplice, yes, but I'm not that paranoid.)

I hope some of this makes sense to somebody, since I'm not sure it does to me.
I can give two explanations, one of which is legit and one not.

First, having a rating in the 1900s means someone can enter U2000 arenas and potentially win them, with all the glory that comes from winning an online U2000 arena.

If your real strength is 2200 and you want a rating in the 1900s, one way is to play games where you treat the blitz as bullet. You still try to win, but you move as bullet and this keeps your rating artificially low. If you then take your time when back in the U2000 arena, this is not legit as it is sandbagging.

On the other hand, if someone has ‘real strength’ 2200, but they operate the account as a bullet account both in regular games and arenas, I think this is legit as it is a consistent handicap (in the same way I think an exclusively bongcloud account would be legit). If you wanted to win arenas this would then be a sensible strategy as the only way to win large arenas is to play lots of games and so move fast.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by JustinHorton » Thu Dec 30, 2021 7:06 pm

But either way, if I understand you, you're sayng these are likely to be strong players treating rapid or blitz as bullet? (The sandbagging issue wouldn't really arise, or not against me as I try to play almost exclusively casual games.)

Anyway, thanks, that's very helpful.
"Do you play chess?"
"Yes, but I prefer a game with a better chance of cheating."

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Joey Stewart
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by Joey Stewart » Fri Dec 31, 2021 11:08 am

Regarding the instant movers, I believe it is just the way online chess is going - the idea of taking your time and actually thinking about the moves has been replaced by instant gratification bullet mentality (wins are fast and losses can be quickly forgotten) and for a lot of players this is the only speed they know so are actually playing to the best of their ability.

However.... I find it highly dubious when you see players able to make 30+ moves with less then one second remaining, even with the crutch of pre moves they should not be able to continually predict the opponents moves to the point they never need to change their pattern. Anyone consistently surviving time scrambles in such a fashion needs investigating and if nothing else deserves to be banned for cheating with too fast of a pc setup !
Lose one queen and it is a disaster, Lose 1000 queens and it is just a statistic.

NickFaulks
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Re: Cheating in chess

Post by NickFaulks » Fri Dec 31, 2021 11:26 am

Joey Stewart wrote:
Fri Dec 31, 2021 11:08 am
Anyone consistently surviving time scrambles in such a fashion needs investigating
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