It’s not getting much buzz but the US team is crushing the Pool D opposition after six rounds.
Jeffery Xiong has five wins and a draw.
Carissa Yip has four wins.
Welsey So has three wins and three draws.
Team US made it to the quarterfinals. It will play the winner of China-Ukraine on Friday.
Second-ranked China is in trouble because it was upset by India.
This was set up much like the soccer world cup. Interesting format.
With round robins being used it does allow checking for engine use without needing to do so before the next round is paired. It still needs to be done before the next stage is set.
Indeed. The FIDE President has an interesting series of questions about cheating issues in online play. His take is similar to mine. when the consequences for cheating are very low, there is less disincentive to cheat. Raise the cost and you will lower the occurrence.
Whilst I agree that the penalties for cheating, online or over the board, should be severe, the issues that arise are proof and due process to protect the rights and reputation of the accused. When dealing with Olympiad players the issue of reputation is more prominent for the stronger teams with players of a higher level who potentially risk lost income from reputations damaged by a false cheating charge. Given that many of these players come from EU nations with significant protections of citizens’ rights, including the right to earn a living, this makes for a potentially difficult position for FIDE. FIDE’s rules require a hearing at which the due process rights of the accused are acknowledged. This potentially includes discovery where the accused will need to be given full access to the algorithm used as the basis of the cheating charge. Only then will the accused be able to mount a defense with his/her own expert witness(s). It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time.
There is also competitive Othello.
They don’t have a “Regan test.”
But there is a cheating scandal.
msoworld.com/2020/08/fair-play- … ification/
Interesting. I’ve heard of the game, but never looked into it.
Two things of interest in this Othello cheating situation.
- They consulted expert Othello players who looked at the moves made by the player in question.
- They also looked at the moves an Othello engine made compared with the suspect. I’d be interested to know if the algorithms used by Othello engines are known to the public. If they are, the bringing of a cheating charge is less problematic in that the accused can more readily mount a possible defense.
- They gave the suspected cheater an opportunity to present a case that, based on prior experience playing the game, he had not been cheating.
Thanks for the link!
Re 2. I hope you understand that “Othello engines” are like (in chess) the Stockfish engines, Houdini engines, etc. You do not need to know the algorithms used by the playing engines to recognize that the moves made match the top line of an engine way too often to be coincidence. You do not need to know the algorithms used by the playing engines to recognize that the moves are made with suspicious timing (too long on obvious moves, too short on complex ones). Those pieces of evidence are sniffed out by the on-line sites or might get examined if a game is reported by an opponent. The main difference between chess and Othello is that chess now has a rather long history of comparisons between human play and computer play that can be used to flag potential cheaters—I suspect that Othello more likely relies upon strong opponents realizing that they’ve been had.
Do you actually think that FIDE or CCA or US Chess (or any other tournament organizer) is going to kick an IM or GM out of a tournament on the basis of cheating without having a (non-conflicted) strong player verify that the moves made wouldn’t reasonably be made by another strong player?
Yes, they offered him a chance to clear himself. Knowing full well that there was not a chance he would take them up on it.
Over lunch, I was thinking that might be the case with the Othello engine. I do understand the point about not needing the algorithm of any Othello or chess engine to see what the engine views as the best move for comparison with the suspect moves of the player. If that was what ICC, Chess.com, Lichess and other chess platforms were doing, there would be no problem from the standpoint of a person accused of cheating defending his or her self. That is, of course, not the situation with those platforms and therein lies the rub that Dvorkovitch is addressing in his letter.
As to your question, my question to you is, after reading Dvorkovich’s letter, do you really think his and FIDE’s concerns center on players in nondescript rated tournaments like US Chess runs on ICC and Chess.com? Dvorkovitch acknowledges that there will be legal challenges. Do you think it likely that micurating-ant players are his focus and concern? If you do, I have to conclude that we live in two very different worlds. It seems pretty obvious that he’s concerned about how to handle FM, IM and GM cheating in online events where there are increasingly large money prizes up for grabs. If you think that there aren’t GMs and IMs willing to cheat online for money, I have a couple of bridges around the US that I’d be willing to convey Quit Claim deeds to you at excellent prices discounted just for you.
Dvorkovitch is clearly weighing standards of proof of cheating and the process for making reasonable determinations of cheating that will stand up to expected litigation. In that regard, he’s much more enlightened and cognizant of the potential litigation pitfalls than anyone I’ve come across at US Chess.
If a titled player is stupid enough or lazy enough to just play computer lines, they’ll get caught. However, I’m sure there is a great deal of concern about a titled player using a computer only occasionally—unlike a class player, a strong player will have a better idea when to override a computer choice (or perhaps not even care what the computer choice is—computer moves in non-tactical positions are sometimes inscrutable). Someone doing that would not, for instance, likely fall into the trap of making moves with metronomic timing. And they wouldn’t be matching computer lines move after move. The only likely clue would be that they never seem to miss a tactic, something that wouldn’t be noticeable within a single game, but would require multiple games, possibly even multiple tournaments, to detect. I’m sure the hope is that someone doing that will slip up and play one of those moves that only a computer would play—an unnecessarily complicated move when something simpler would do quite nicely.
Stupid people and greedy people (often one and the same) are more likely to get caught. That said, it’s not just the titled players cheating with strategic use of computer moves. There are a couple of players at ICC who are very adept at this. One of the IM’s who gives a regular simul there had complained about one in particular for several years. Speedtrap has never caught him. The IM won’t play the guy in his simuls any more, but the guy keeps playing and winning tournaments. I doubt that he’s had to pay to renew his ICC membership in a long, long time. It’s been suggested to me by a long time regular in Bill Goitchberg’s tournaments here in New England that the longer OTB chess is on hiatus due to the pandemic, the more motivation there will be for some players to turn to online tournaments in an attempt to supplement their lost OTB winnings with online prizes.
One of the things that is often quite apparent with lower level players cheating on any of these sites is that they make moves with great rapidity. I lost a game to a player on ICC last month who dropped two pawns in the first eight moves and then literally powered back to win the game. I had used about fifty minutes on my clock while he had used just under six minutes. I referred the game to Speedtrap and they agreed he had cheated. I don’t know that they would have caught him, but for my complaint. My general impression, admittedly subjective, is that 40% to 50% of players in online tournaments cheat and most are never caught.
FIDE’s solution might be found in the 1956 Spanish film Calabuig. In the film a local priest plays a telephone game with a lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse keeper receives assistance from another person with one move, a move that wins the game for the lighthouse keeper. When the priest learns what has happened, he remarks to the keeper that people who cheat at chess will not go to heaven. Write that into the FIDE ethics rules…
White won all six games in the second round of the US-Russia.
But Russia scored 3 1/2- 2 1/2 in the first round.