Cheaters(!)

I agree with Eugene that don’t think detection methods should be publicly discussed, it would take away the only weapons we have.

I also don’t believe 10~20% of the players use AI, it is much less than that in kyu ranks. But probably 10~20% of the players ranked above 3d do.

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I believe this is very common in correspondence games for Kyu players. For example, when you play very difficult moves very well and make a silly move, they make big mistakes. These moves make me realize that they made it themselves. :rofl::joy::sweat_smile:

My estimate in the kyu range is more like 1%. Because of a minority of cheaters we tend to become paranoid. After someone beats me badly I tend to suspect cheating, but after checking with a bot I see that the AI graph goes up and down, and some of my opponent moves that looked like strong moves were actually mistakes.

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Thank you OGS moderators for your hard work.

If I may chip in with my two cents: in tournaments held by national associations in recent years, both online and IRL, I believe much much more harm has been caused by paranoia against cheating than by actual cheating. Unfounded accusations with long repercussions, preemptive measures that effectively prevented some people from joining tournaments, etc.

I have no idea how many “botters” there are, but I’m 3d on OGS and have never suspected any of my opponents of doing it.

On the rarer occasions when I played with someone I knew, I trusted them not to cheat. When I played against someone I didn’t know, which has been most of the time, then if they did use a bot then I never noticed it and it didn’t affect me.

I think the principles of “benefit of the doubt” and “presumption of innocence” go a long way. Paranoia is bad for everyone involved.

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I suspect you overestimate your ability to distinguish with confidence cheating from other reasons people have for making moves.

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Yes, we can sometimes find ourselves forcing a player to falsely accuse him of playing well. I agree that this is harmful and upsetting for both parties. And it’s definitely against the nature of the game. But sometimes, even 3-5 moves in a game where people spend hours, days or months, abuse is bad. Often times, people exposed to it are not aware of it. Sorry, I don’t want to get stuck in an unresolved point too much. I just mean maybe more than 1%. As much as I want you to be right. Another thing is that a player does this undetected for so long that it eventually becomes 3-5 dans. So originally the room was kyu. Also, if you participated in the tournaments in the last 2 days, you could experience losing to 15kyu and 4kyu. :crazy_face:

People tend to judge against the direct disclosure of important information on the basis of the issue. No, I should have elaborated over and over again why I thought so, right? Maybe you are right. It’s not nice to judge people, but if I’m already doing that, I’d rather admit my mistake. Thank you for feedback.

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Sorry, I’ve come to the conclusion that this problem is more serious than ignored. The community reading this entire post may conclude that I tend to judge, if you like. I’m not afraid to emphasize this and take risks. Maybe, I may have taken a step towards being aware of the size of the problem physically. This is my reward.

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Strong players have the right to play against humans, if that’s what they want. Otherwise they would choose a grey account or an offline bot.
Ans also a botter who does not consistently cheat may not have a consistent level, which may lead to some defeats or victories that should not be there and give problems to the ranking system.

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Take it easy, @OnoKakafeniks

This is a very difficult problem to deal, almost impossible. I was playing on Fox. At the end game, my opponent started verbally abusing me, accusing I played too slow, though all I did was to use the 60 seconds byo-yomi till the last 10 seconds to place the move. I almost responded: dummy, don’t you understand you are losing and can resign if you don’t have time?

But I chose to focus on the game and made sure I did not make any mistakes to secure the win.

In bot cheating scenario, at least we are shown weakness of our plays, thus learn something. So no need to be frustrated.

If you still can’t stand them, Wallstreet has a famous saying: if you can’t beat them, join them. :joy:

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That’s why the majority of players tend to show poor sportsmanship. Because they lose, they suspect honest players of cheating and begin to either cheat themselves or abuse the system in some other way such as stalling, sending distracting/offensive messages, throwing games, reporting innocent etc. What the site needs instead is some way to discourage new players from following Wallstreet advice.

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We do - warnings and bans and concerted detection effort by moderators.

As I said:

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I don’t know where you play. I have not played in a server with majority of players showing poor sportsmanship, in which case, I am not playing.

I’ve played over 1000 games on OGS. I did have bad experience very occasionally, but don’t have one single game with a strong feeling that my opponent cheating.

If I did encounter AI cheaters, my sense is my stupid mistakes caused me way more losses. So I don’t worry about what others do.

Btw, there was a :joy: in the end of my statement of my prior post. That indicates it was a joke. Like I said, take it easy, Go is about fun, not live or death.

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'We welcome well thought out and researched input. ’ I think you have found a way to be taken to yourself or to get away from the center of the subject. Your past post didn’t seem very polite either and seemed to direct. . For a post whose purpose is courtesy. Anyway, it doesn’t make sense if it won’t help or if the only result is to increase the tension.

Maybe there should be some sort of log of all the bans open to the public. :woman_shrugging:
In my opinion, eliminating cheating is more about psychology than about policing.

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I also think that everyone feels from time to time that if someone is promoting the flow of useful information on a forum, it is unnecessary for them to be overly polite. Please share the information you think is wrong and choose the method of creating synthesis instead of coming to a conclusion based on differences of opinion.

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I am against this. In some cases, accounts are easily linked to real people and could have consequences even outside OGS.
We don’t want to do public shaming, or at least I don’t like the idea.
And we are almost always willing to give more chances to those who confess and tell us they want change, even after years.

Could you elaborate on that, please?

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I think it’s important to determine the reason for mass cheating and eliminate it instead of focusing solely on the cheating methods. Do people do it because of stats? Maybe they do it to ‘punish’ whoever won against them? Is winning a game more important than reputation for them and why? That sort of questions.

Maybe there’s a way to implement some kind of trust system that would discourage stat building and promote fair play.

Maybe the actual account information should remain hidden, but not the fact of the ban. For example:

I think a player has a certain level. So after winning a certain amount of games, he has to lose at a certain place. There may be exceptional cases, but I don’t need to go into that. Maybe there is a level meter running parallel to the level calculator. Assuming that the person will perform in a certain performance range, after a certain amount of play, he can establish some kind of limit value axis and detect extreme performances. Maybe I would dream that it is possible to do this move by move, but even the first one can be a difficult and laborious method to create. So it’s kind of like an antivirus bot.