They might. Would they be legally binding, particularly with players from other countries? Maybe yes. Maybe no. I wouldn’t bother suing, but some bored COVID confined chess player somewhere else might. I’d just find another site to play on. It’s not like chess.com is the only place online.
I don’t like people who operate like Rensch. That’s why I’ll likely give up playing on his site.
If that’s your view, you probably should. Personally, I don’t want to give the cheaters an understanding of the system so they can develop ways to beat it.
That’s pretty much the position I’ve come to. Given today’s technology, and that the only reasonable way to detect cheating in an online environment is via an algorithm with subsequent human review, if we want to play in a venue with minimal cheating, we have to accept the possibility that some could be wrongfully accused and punished. Preponderance of evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt. Possibly, some sort of FIDE or USCF standards board could review and certify the methodology, but I wouldn’t want it opened up to the accused.
I certainly would not trust FIDE. I would not per se trust US Chess either given the comments from some of the US Chess denizens on this thread. The bottom line for me is simply that if you accuse someone of something, you have the burden of proving it and turning over to the accused everything that you base the accusation upon. Otherwise, the term to be used isn’t accused, it’s accursed.
Frankly, in matters of fundamental fairness I really have no respect for your position in this regard. It’s a relatively “small” issue with online cheating at chess, but it sets a standard for the acceptance of accusatory systems that reek of bias and authoritarianism that do no one any good.
And yes, I closed my chess.com account today as did three of my friends. We all now play on Lichess.org and Playchess. I also still have some time running on my ICC account, but will likely not renew that for other issues not involving cheating issues.
The inability to respect the views of other people is one of the biggest problems facing society. I respect yours. Fairness is kind of mom and apple pie, after all. Due process is important.
I haven’t seen evidence of widespread problems with chess.com sanctioning people who did not actually cheat. Investigate perhaps, but that’s unavoidable. If someone complains, they have to investigate. What I wouldn’t give to play a game well enough that someone questioned if I were using an engine! I have no doubt I would be exonerated.
You wouldn’t give hackers the key to hack your systems, would you? This is the same thing but for lower stakes.
Meanwhile in real life we are trying to balance the need to keep people safe, the need not to destroy everything people have worked for in their businesses and in their financial lives and to not destroy the freedoms we hold dear. Balancing acts are never easy.
Why is a simul being rated in the first place? Can’t you play a game without it being rated?
The simuls were not and are not rated.
One person I know had their chess.com account closed two weeks ago for alleged cheating and they had not played even one rated game on chess.com. All they played were unrated games, most of which were against people they knew and often played over the board games with.
Unfairness and injustice will never be respected or tolerated by me.
Monitoring unrated games seems rather pointless. Even if you suspected that people were using unrated games to hone their cheating skills, why would you want to send up a flare that might help them figure out what they can get away with?
Me either, Brian. But if you publish your anti-cheating controls, as chess.com does, the user can decide whether they are OK with them. You aren’t, so you walked. That’s the way it should work. You don’t need to publish your algorithm to make it fair.
Michael
If chess.com were entirely self-contained, I might agree with you. However, that is not the case. Chess.com rates at least some games using the US Chess online rating system. That makes it US Chess’ business and confers some rights upon the accused. Cases have reached the various disciplinary committees of US Chess. At that point, chess.com can’t maintain the position “trust us.” When the accused is facing sanction that may include membership suspension, the accused has a right to see the evidence.
In fairness to chess,com, they did not file the cases that reached US Chess. They don’t file cases - they prefer to deal with cheaters internally. Whether that is an appropriate stance for games affecting a US Chess online rating is a separate discussion.
However, since chess.com has chosen to use the US Chess rating system, they are going to have to agree to a level of scrutiny. They cannot have it both ways. Unfortunately, that is the case today. Games are online US Chess rated, but when a dispute occurs, chess.com refuses to release the necessary evidence.
Dave Hater
I didn’t fully realize that, but doesn’t it make sense to have some subset of US Chess be the party that chess.com is responsible to if there is an issue with a US Chess rated game? My issue is with turning over the algorithm to the potential (and accused) cheater. I have no problem with turning it over to, say, the Ethics committee. Not saying they would want it, mind you.
Mike I do not know any regular online players to ask-I care about my USCF and ICCF ratings but an internet site prone to disconnections, computer usage, me trying to play late at night after too much wine where nobody knows who you are? My guess would be a lot of online players simply play to relax and have fun and not worry what their rating number is.Maybe I am in a minority with that opinion
Well, i don’t have any stats about the ratio of players taking it seriously to those who don’t, but if you want to play against opponents of a certain strength, you have to mind your rating. I don’t really care to play those several hundred points below me, and the number of games I get from players hundreds of points above me is well under one percent. I set my rating screen at 100 points or less below me to anything above me. Most of the games I get are probably within 50 points either way - I’ve never kept track of this, but that’s my impression.
The Ethics Committee would have an obligation to reveal to an accursed all that chess.com has given it to substantiate an accusation in a proceeding before it where a penalty might be levied against a player accused of cheating. Fundamental fairness anyone?
I will be interested to see where chess.com and some of the other online chess sites are a year from now. Will they be in business as the economic fallout from the pandemic takes hold? Let’s not forget that these are businesses that depend on paid memberships and advertising revenue. The ad revenue also depends on site visit numbers. Sites like chess.com have to maintain a balance between paying members who access the site ad free and the lumpen (free) members who do the heavy lifting that sends advertising dollars into chess.com’s accounts. As the US GDP contracts by a predicted likely 40% going into 2021, many businesses will fail. Chess.com, just like US Chess, is a business. We live in interesting times. Significantly, these times will not be returning to the old, pre-pandemic ways of doing business. Some in business and the investment industry realize this and are already acting. Witness, Warren Buffet divesting himself of ALL of his airline stocks. Over the board chess will not look the same in future, nor will online chess. It may be that online chess is a wee bit more insulated from the initial shocks to the business system than other chess businesses such as Continental Chess, as but one example. Ultimately, the fallout will reach every business on every continent (ok, maybe not Antarctica).
I suspect the tourist business to Antarctica will be heavily affected by COVID, being largely by cruise ship or small plane/helicopter.
Some restaurants in Omaha reopened to eat-in customers today, the traffic levels were not very high, one restaurant reported they were doing better business last week when it was takeout-only. Restaurants rely on the number of customers they can service per shift, and if they’re restricted to 25% or 50% of their prior occupancy rate, that just may not work economically.
City and state governments are starting to see big dropoffs in sales tax revenue, and that’s likely to spark another wave of layoffs. When the real estate tax bills start coming due, we’ll see how many people can afford to pay them.
Right now, Chess.com is locking anything on the main forums complaining about that letter.
(That have a cheating forum you can ask to join).
The main crux of the issue is that Chess.com decided it had a new way to detect cheating in a “few moves”, and pretty much just sent an automated a form letter to anybody the new algorithm decided might be cheating.
I have a feeling Chess.com is going to drive a lot of titled players away.
No doubt that cheating is a huge issue. Personally, what I’ve seen on Chess.com is when players make multiple accounts in order to play games with very few moves with the target account, quickly inflating a new account to say 2500 to 2700 range.
I actually complained about one guy that did that, and as far as I can see, Chess.com didn’t care. I like chess.com forums, but rarely play actual games on the server. I usually use Lichess for playing, and Chess.com for the forums.
Getting back to the form letter, titled players are saying that there is no way to accurately detect cheating in a few moves. They often bring up a few instances in which titled players were falsely accused of cheating in OTB tournaments, when it was proven later, after the person suffered harm to their reputation, that the “engine moves” were in fact already known and widely disseminated in the chess world.
It’s a fact that for years, that large chunks of chess theory has come out from engine-to-engine play, so it has to be expected that some of that theory would be put to use in human-to-human play.
I don’t believe chess.com thinks their algorithms can detect cheating in just a few moves, although a few moves might trigger an alert for more review. I’m sure they take into account stuff like unusual rating spikes or dips, the account’s past record with similar openings or positions, finding “perfect” moves when easy “human-friendly” moves are available, time spent in finding moves, etc.