Carlsen resigns on move 2

[Paul Cooksey]

I think chess.com are using a different strength measure than FIDE Elo. "Weak" evidence seems to be the word. Smerdon's view we are trending towards 50/50 might be true. He said he is now more suspicious, I am a bit less.

Justin did misunderstand Hans upstream. What Han's confessed to was manipulating his rating off stream, increasing his rating so people like Nepo would play him onstream. Chess.com contradicting this now. It stuck in my mind because I sometimes manipulate my lichess by playing 3+2, where I am 200 points stronger than 3 0, then flipping to 3 0 to play strong players and drift back down again. I think my conscience is clear

Justin mentions his own issues with chess.com, where everyone, even me, thinks he was treated unfairly. At the time I thought the lesson was have anonymous account so if you are banned unfairly no one else knows. But I've updated that a bit, since I think I now know that cheating algorithms can give false positives for Smurfing. A thing I have also done myself, albeit only by connecting as a guest when I feel winning a lot of games against beginners would improve my mood.

[Mick Norris]

Worth noting, from that report, that they managed to catch - and get a confession from - an (unknown) 2700 who was using computer assistance for a few moves/game, seemingly only in one event.

Which is very good going.

Indeed

I've read the whole report, and once again I don't think there's any substitute for doing so, although again I realise this is a time committment some wouldn't want to make

[Tim Spanton]

One point I don't understand is why quite a few people seem to think cheating online is less serious than OTB. Cheating is cheating....

[NickFaulks]

One point I don't understand is why quite a few people seem to think cheating online is less serious than OTB. Cheating is cheating....

They're both less serious than manslaughter, but that doesn't get you banned from OTB chess. I wouldn't complain if online cheating got you banned from OTB chess starting now, but not retrospectively.

[Tim Spanton]

One point I don't understand is why quite a few people seem to think cheating online is less serious than OTB. Cheating is cheating....

They're both less serious than manslaughter, but that doesn't get you banned from OTB chess. I wouldn't complain if online cheating got you banned from OTB chess starting now, but not retrospectively.

But manslaughter would probably not get you banned from OTB chess while cheating online might

[Matt Bridgeman]

On a side note, I wonder how long it will be before we hear about some sort of sanction for our home grown OTB cheat - the lad who came within a round of stealing the British Under 16 Championship at the beginning of August?

[JustinHorton]

Is the answer to that likely to reside in the term "Under-16"?

[Roger de Coverly]

Is the answer to that likely to reside in the term "Under-16"?

Probably, although you might never hear of him again. In other words a self imposed lifetime ban.

Those very strongly rumoured to have cheated durung the lockdown period in 4NCL and ECF events have reappeared in OTB chess. By very strongly rumoured I mean that they were disqualified from the events and their points anulled. You had to be quick to find out their real names.

[Ian Thompson]

Worth noting, from that report, that they managed to catch - and get a confession from - an (unknown) 2700 who was using computer assistance for a few moves/game, seemingly only in one event.

I wonder if they have, inadvertently, disclosed enough information to identify this player, or some of the other "Anonymous Confessed GM"s?

Giving the precise rating of each player will narrow it down to a fairly small number of players, and you might be able to narrow it down further based on who has, or has not, had an account on chess.com.

I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see someone taking entries from the table and publishing lists telling us the player rated N must be one of a very small number of players.

[Matt Bridgeman]

Is the answer to that likely to reside in the term "Under-16"?

But would we even get a redacted statement minus the name? Or will it simply be he just doesn’t appear to be entering anything anymore? The latter isn’t much of a deterrent. And the lad certainly was part of a selected England junior team environment where junior players were definitely not being punished for online cheating. Probably the nearest they ever came to punishment was having their behaviour pointed out on this Forum with its limited audience.

[JustinHorton]

What would you have people do about that though?

I wonder if they have, inadvertently

Or recklessly

Giving the precise rating of each player will narrow it down to a fairly small number of players, and you might be able to narrow it down further based on who has, or has not, had an account on chess.com.

I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see someone taking entries from the table and publishing lists telling us the player rated N must be one of a very small number of players.

You're not the only person to have had similar thoughts.

[Matt Bridgeman]

What would you have people do about that

Without going into the nuts and bolts of the method he used, a clear statement (not naming the player) that outlines the sanction, and perhaps an unambiguous warning how future cheating by anymore would be treated in terms of selection to England junior events.

[JustinHorton]

I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see someone taking entries from the table and publishing lists telling us the player rated N must be one of a very small number of players.

And indeed

[MartinCarpenter]

Is the answer to that likely to reside in the term "Under-16"?

Probably, although you might never hear of him again. In other words a self imposed lifetime ban.

Those very strongly rumoured to have cheated durung the lockdown period in 4NCL and ECF events have reappeared in OTB chess. By very strongly rumoured I mean that they were disqualified from the events and their points anulled. You had to be quick to find out their real names.

That's one of the areas where people are going to need to be very careful going forward with the interface between online and OTB. It was easy to look at the population statistics for 4NCL online (the paper I linked above) and see that they're entirely abnormal and that some people were definitely cheating.

Pinning down individuals to the sort of level of 'beyond reasonable doubt' that you'd want for serious naming, OTB bans etc is much harder. I would strongly suspect that the 4NCL etc were DQ'ing people using rather more lenient criteria, which is entirely fine/sensible from their perspective, but you do have to accept that nothing was proven against anyone.

[Gerard Killoran]

One point I don't understand is why quite a few people seem to think cheating online is less serious than OTB. Cheating is cheating....

They're both less serious than manslaughter, but that doesn't get you banned from OTB chess. I wouldn't complain if online cheating got you banned from OTB chess starting now, but not retrospectively.

But manslaughter would probably not get you banned from OTB chess while cheating online might

You mean like being convicted for killing his wife didn't stop this individual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kay_ ... born_1943) getting his job back at The S*n?