4NCL Online

[Ian Thompson]

Then the account got closed, and it became almost impossible to find the games...

If you know when the player was active, there is this - https://database.lichess.org/; or this if he didn't play/you don't want bullet games - http://www.legittorrents.info/index.php ... a7384c0e0f.

[DavidWalker]

Or from the lichess home page, go Tools > Advanced search, then you can type the player name into the search form.

[Angus French]

Re the latest cheating allegation and apologies if this information has already been provided but is it known whether the player's games failed both the lichess and the Ken Regan s/w tests? Have any appeals been lodged?

[Roger de Coverly]

Re the latest cheating allegation and apologies if this information has already been provided but is it known whether the player's games failed both the lichess and the Ken Regan s/w tests? Have any appeals been lodged?

The integrity standards expected in the OTB play in the normal 4NCL would be somewhat different to those of the social chess in the bar in the evening. Those accused may be guilty of applying the standards of the latter in the former.

Is there a different moral standard of being a fraud by pretending to be a strong player to being a strong player but using external assistance to appear to be an even stronger player?

I'm aware of "banter blitz". Has this spread to lower levels as "streaming"? If it's regarded as entertainment or teaching, it shouldn't be rated or engine checked.

[Rhys Cumming]

Re the latest cheating allegation and apologies if this information has already been provided but is it known whether the player's games failed both the lichess and the Ken Regan s/w tests? Have any appeals been lodged?

Yes, I believe the games failed both the lichess and Ken Regan tests (exact figure of the score in the Regan test I am unaware of, but Surbiton are welcome to release). I don't know whether an appeal has been lodged or not.

[Joseph Conlon]

Or from the lichess home page, go Tools > Advanced search, then you can type the player name into the search form.

Thanks David (and Ian); that's very helpful. Not sure how I had missed this previously, shows the way the brain can get stuck on thinking something is impossible.

Now I can go back to idly speculating about who among a relatively small pool of players this could have been....

[Matthew Turner]

Re the latest cheating allegation and apologies if this information has already been provided but is it known whether the player's games failed both the lichess and the Ken Regan s/w tests? Have any appeals been lodged?

Angus,
The Regan test isn't really a pass or fail test, it gives a probability that a player could play a certain set of moves naturally. As I understand it, if a player is banned from participating in the 4NCL then in addition to their account being flagged by Lichess, they will have had a z score of over 4 on the Regan test. This equates to a 1 in 30,000 chance that the player played the games without assistance.
I don't know if appeals have been lodged. Despite Surbiton's reservations, I think the 4NCL has a genuine desire to establish a robust appeals process and I would not be surprised to see a successful appeal (or indeed more than one). That is not (necessarily) to say that the original flagging/banning was wrong, but it seems very feasible to me that an appellant could submit sufficient information to bring the original judgment into doubt. I would stress that is a general comment and not intended to relate to any particular case or cases.

[Roger Lancaster]

Angus,
The Regan test isn't really a pass or fail test, it gives a probability that a player could play a certain set of moves naturally. As I understand it, if a player is banned from participating in the 4NCL then in addition to their account being flagged by Lichess, they will have had a z score of over 4 on the Regan test. This equates to a 1 in 30,000 chance that the player played the games without assistance.
I don't know if appeals have been lodged. Despite Surbiton's reservations, I think the 4NCL has a genuine desire to establish a robust appeals process and I would not be surprised to see a successful appeal (or indeed more than one). That is not (necessarily) to say that the original flagging/banning was wrong, but it seems very feasible to me that an appellant could submit sufficient information to bring the original judgment into doubt. I would stress that is a general comment and not intended to relate to any particular case or cases.

I am led clearly to believe that the "robust appeals process", if that is what it proves to be, and some are sceptical, will apply only to the second holding of Online 4NCL and will therefore have no application to Surbiton's situation or that of players banned earlier in the competition. In such cases, the earlier set of competition rules apply where the aggrieved party has to lodge a successful appeal with Lichess.

[MartinCarpenter]

I'm genuinely intrigued how a good appeals process would work. In particular on what grounds could you hope to succeed?

Obviously if there's a simple mistake been made somewhere in processing the data you could appeal on that.

Otherwise I think you're basically reduced to trying to take the adopted anti cheating policy apart? Now, there is definitely legitimate scope for questioning it.

I don't think the 'true' confidence is 1/30,000 - more like ~1/5000 - and don't like the idea of a false positive ratio of hundreds to 1. But banning with that rate of confidence is clearly still a reasonable decision on a matter of legitimate policy for the 4NCL so not really grounds for an appeal. That reduction to 1/5000 incorporates most of the likely grounds for appealing.

I suppose that lower rated players - who often have FIDE ratings out by hundreds vs their actual playing strength - might be able to demand a retest vs their ECF conversions. But I imagine/hope the 4NCL would be doing that already.

[Thomas Rendle]

I'm genuinely intrigued how a good appeals process would work. In particular on what grounds could you hope to succeed?

Ok, I'll try to give some ideas. Let's say you've played only 5 games and 4 of those show it's very likely you were using a computer, on their own not enough but put together it doesn't look good for you.

For these games you can show:

a) You were aware of all/almost all the moves before the game. Perhaps from an article, online video, Chessable course or correspondance game (that might not have shown up as 'known theory'.

b) You had specific preparation for a certain game. Look, my opponent played these 17 moves already before and so I did some work with an engine. Perhaps you can even send over the file that you created before the game.

c) It's a position you've played a lot (either over the board or online) and all the ideas are well known to you.

d) Your opponent blundered early on and the moves were rather easy to find after that.

There may be other examples/reasons/excuses. Of course it's rather lucky (or unlucky given you've been flagged up for cheating) that these should occur in only 5 games, but it would cast reasonable doubt.

Below I give an example of c) as I've had this type of position after 8 moves many, many times. The game was played online at a 10+2 time limit. I'm sure most players could find individual examples of these things happening in their games.

1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. Bb5 g6 4. Bxc6 bxc6 5. f4 Bg7 6. Nf3 Nf6 7. d3 O-O 8. O-O d6 9. Bd2 Qb6 10. Na4 Qb5 11. b3 Rb8 12. Qe1 Nd7 13. c4 Qb7 14. Bc3 e6 15. Bxg7 Kxg7 16. e5 d5 17. Qf2 d4 18. Ng5 Qc7 19. Qh4 h6 20. Ne4 Qd8 21. Qxd8 Rxd8 22. Naxc5 Nxc5 23. Nxc5 Bb7 24. Rae1 Bc8 25. g4 f6 26. exf6+ Kxf6 27. Re5 g5 28. Ne4+ Kg6 29. fxg5 hxg5 30. Rxg5+ Kh6 31. Rf6+ Kh7 32. Rf3 Kh6 33. Rh3# 1-0

[Matthew Turner]

Martin,
I think Thomas has explained very well what might be grounds for an appeal.
You need to establish an appeals panel with figures respected in the chess community who have an open mind as to whether the appellant is guilty or innocent. It is a very tough question as to what constitutes sufficient grounds for an appeal to be successful and I am not sure that you can have hard and fast criteria. Ultimately then, people would need to have faith in the people hearing the appeal.

[Roger de Coverly]

There may be other examples/reasons/excuses. Of course it's rather lucky (or unlucky given you've been flagged up for cheating) that these should occur in only 5 games, but it would cast reasonable doubt.

In the absence of other evidence, there should be sufficient reasonable doubt on a mere 5 games that the accusation shouldn't be made in the first place.

Something the 4NCL could do, but lichess or chess.com almost certainly wouldn't is to compare the standard of play on line to that over the board. For that matter, it should also repeat the test on the basis that the rating used as one of the inputs was several hundred points wrong.

[Peter Hornsby]

There may be other examples/reasons/excuses. Of course it's rather lucky (or unlucky given you've been flagged up for cheating) that these should occur in only 5 games, but it would cast reasonable doubt.

In the absence of other evidence, there should be sufficient reasonable doubt on a mere 5 games that the accusation shouldn't be made in the first place.

Something the 4NCL could do, but lichess or chess.com almost certainly wouldn't is to compare the standard of play on line to that over the board. For that matter, it should also repeat the test on the basis that the rating used as one of the inputs was several hundred points wrong.

Chess.com have done that regularly in the appeals process for 2020 Chess.

Some teams in that tournament video and audio record themselves playing so that if they were banned they could submit that as proof of their innocence.

[Matthew Turner]

In the absence of other evidence, there should be sufficient reasonable doubt on a mere 5 games that the accusation shouldn't be made in the first place.

Of course it is easier to get a higher z score over more games and the initial rating used has more influence. I have been arguing with FIDE officials that for low rated juniors they should be looking to run tests over fewer, not more games. Now I realise that I am also up against RDC too I'll probably just give up

[NickFaulks]

I have been arguing with FIDE officials that for low rated juniors they should be looking to run tests over fewer, not more games.

Just out of interest, which ones?