If i suspect a cheater i analyze all games. Then confer with mutual opponents of player in question see if they feel the same. Then we check move times during which phase of game and account history. If i really feel like it is suspicious only then i report. I have only twice. Both times i was right. Thats all i can do. Not yell cheater! And cry about it.
whoa this is a sensitive topic.
my own experience is that it helps to investigate carefully by yourself before sending a complaint, and then write your reasoning clearly. out of over 50 reports, i've had close to 100% success rate..
the most troublesome case was of a cheating FM (OMG yeah you read it right. i should add that his username didn't start with T) that took two reports.. the first one was actually dismissed, but then i waited for him to play more games and then it became clear enough i guess..
my own experience is that it helps to investigate carefully by yourself before sending a complaint, and then write your reasoning clearly. out of over 50 reports, i've had close to 100% success rate..
the most troublesome case was of a cheating FM (OMG yeah you read it right. i should add that his username didn't start with T) that took two reports.. the first one was actually dismissed, but then i waited for him to play more games and then it became clear enough i guess..
Common sense says their accounts should be closed.
@angrymonkey is a cool nickname! It can be sold on auction and fetch the owner lots of money. Monkeys cannot play chess though. So they hope to get attention by insulting mods. Best thing to do is not reacting with angry posts feeding the trolling angry monkeys. Nobody takes monkeys seriously. That makes the monkeys even angrier. This monkey eats lots of bananas. Becoming a fat and angry monkey. They throw lots of banana peels everywhere. Watch your step and be careful not to slip and fall.
The secrecy over the methods creates the feeling that cheaters aren't handled well.
I guess you think that if cheaters knew your methods, they would get more clever.
I'm still pretty sure some cheaters get away with it on this site and on all sites, because how do you prove part-time progging? Make 1 prog move in a critical position, play all other moves yourself. How do you catch that?
I understand your frustration as mods. But the frustration of players is huge also.
Why is there no ip bans?
I remember this cheater Adrianant who I reported, he got flagged, not too long after I play against Adrianant2, same guy, admitted he was same guy in chat, still progs, reported and he got flagged again.
You can just make a new name and keep progging?
I completely understand that people want harsher punishments when the same guy progs them twice with different screen names.
I guess you think that if cheaters knew your methods, they would get more clever.
I'm still pretty sure some cheaters get away with it on this site and on all sites, because how do you prove part-time progging? Make 1 prog move in a critical position, play all other moves yourself. How do you catch that?
I understand your frustration as mods. But the frustration of players is huge also.
Why is there no ip bans?
I remember this cheater Adrianant who I reported, he got flagged, not too long after I play against Adrianant2, same guy, admitted he was same guy in chat, still progs, reported and he got flagged again.
You can just make a new name and keep progging?
I completely understand that people want harsher punishments when the same guy progs them twice with different screen names.
"Why is there no ip bans?"
There are and they are dished out regularly. We just don't label the account as IP banned because why would we?
There are and they are dished out regularly. We just don't label the account as IP banned because why would we?
@Clarkey
Glad to hear there are ip bans! Why is it not general knowledge? Maybe I have missed it? This is important information that things get handled.
Thanks for telling me though. Makes me sleep better, I'm serious.
Thanks for doing the cheater busting work. I do the same work, but without all the "secret knowledge and access" that you guys say you have. So forgive me for being frustrated from time to time.
Glad to hear there are ip bans! Why is it not general knowledge? Maybe I have missed it? This is important information that things get handled.
Thanks for telling me though. Makes me sleep better, I'm serious.
Thanks for doing the cheater busting work. I do the same work, but without all the "secret knowledge and access" that you guys say you have. So forgive me for being frustrated from time to time.
@BestSiteEver we already dish out IP bans. As @Clarkey said, there's no point labelling the account as IP banned. Sometimes you can work it out though, if you find an account labelled as a cheater which hasn't signed in for a long time, it usually means they've been IP banned.
@oldnewb that's a tricky question. I haven't dealt with the reports queue for a while because of real life commitments, but from what I remember, it was usually accounts with around 100 games who had the highest incidence of cheating. I think that's probably because those are obvious about it get auto-banned by lichess (so we don't handle the reports) and by 100 games there's a large enough sample size to determine whether someone is in fact cheating. I think when you get to really high numbers - like 20,000 games plus, the sample size becomes effectively meaningless, because it's more likely you will have had those rare, elusive "perfect" games. Too many is suspicious, but one or two 000 or low centipawn average games? It's not impossible for a relative patzer to get 000 and <10 centipawn loss. It's really rare though.
Now, as to restrictions on tournaments, I know that new accounts have to have played at least 20 games to enter a tournament. For certain tournaments this restriction may be raised. This is because the obvious cheaters will be filtered out by that stage, and more than 20 games is an unfair restriction on the vast majority of legitimate players.
In terms of @Lukasz83 first post I don't think I can add anything more than what @Clarkey said in post 5 ("I love how many people complain about how we deal we cheaters when they have no idea. :)") and the more fleshed out response @NoJoke gave in post 20.
Simply put, you're free to criticise the site and the way it's handled - of course you are - but also bear in mind that your criticism comes without complete information. The admins who have responded to you have been in those positions for years now, and this is the single largest criticism the admins face: "why don't you do more about cheaters?" Simply, you don't know the amount of work, effort, time and resources put into preventing and stopping cheaters. This is especially relevant when Clarkey created and produced a significant amount of the cheat detection software/methodology we use to help crack down on cheaters.
I can't see this thread going anywhere, so I'm quite heavily leaning towards closing it.
@oldnewb that's a tricky question. I haven't dealt with the reports queue for a while because of real life commitments, but from what I remember, it was usually accounts with around 100 games who had the highest incidence of cheating. I think that's probably because those are obvious about it get auto-banned by lichess (so we don't handle the reports) and by 100 games there's a large enough sample size to determine whether someone is in fact cheating. I think when you get to really high numbers - like 20,000 games plus, the sample size becomes effectively meaningless, because it's more likely you will have had those rare, elusive "perfect" games. Too many is suspicious, but one or two 000 or low centipawn average games? It's not impossible for a relative patzer to get 000 and <10 centipawn loss. It's really rare though.
Now, as to restrictions on tournaments, I know that new accounts have to have played at least 20 games to enter a tournament. For certain tournaments this restriction may be raised. This is because the obvious cheaters will be filtered out by that stage, and more than 20 games is an unfair restriction on the vast majority of legitimate players.
In terms of @Lukasz83 first post I don't think I can add anything more than what @Clarkey said in post 5 ("I love how many people complain about how we deal we cheaters when they have no idea. :)") and the more fleshed out response @NoJoke gave in post 20.
Simply put, you're free to criticise the site and the way it's handled - of course you are - but also bear in mind that your criticism comes without complete information. The admins who have responded to you have been in those positions for years now, and this is the single largest criticism the admins face: "why don't you do more about cheaters?" Simply, you don't know the amount of work, effort, time and resources put into preventing and stopping cheaters. This is especially relevant when Clarkey created and produced a significant amount of the cheat detection software/methodology we use to help crack down on cheaters.
I can't see this thread going anywhere, so I'm quite heavily leaning towards closing it.
First of all, I would like to thank everyone who contributed towards the thread. Let me start off with one thing: You don't like cheaters, because it ruins your experience. Games become unfair, arena leaderboards are wrecked, and cities wither with people running away from the fire. "It makes online chess comparable to competing in a boxing tournament where some of the participants have guns and will not hesitate to shoot you if given the chance."
It's the same for us! We don't like cheaters, because it ruins your experience. It's ruining our leaderboards. Some of us moderators also play in tournaments and pairings, and before we became a moderator we were also interested in chess and enjoy playing it, like you do. That's why we have and use these tools:
- Closing account <- tool exists
- IP ban <- tool exists, moderators can see this information (it's not news: ja.lichess.org/privacy) as well as a lot more to find duplicate accounts
- IP range ban <- see above
- Validation of chess accounts <- the lichess software lets you put an email, and guards a rating barrier, and has a team of email-reviewing admins to keep master titles from wrong hands; a range of filters are also accessible to mods to review
- Allowing to play in tours people who has account at least e.g. 1 month. <- established in official tournaments, but in game count (it's not practical to force a time duration because cheaters can still run it and hurt everyone if they have old enough puppet accounts)
I would like to quote something Cynosure said on Reddit a while ago: "On this note, we're very pleased with our present cheat detection, where we look at a range of factors to detect and mark cheaters. In line with the lichess ethos, we must necessarily strike a balance between being minimally intrusive and pragmatic."
While the cheat detection and punishment system can always be tuned harsher, it would not always be viable. Lichess is proud for its openness and that we can serve you a chess service you know and love without hassle.
"It's high time to do something about it." - We're always trying to do something about it, when we can. You can help by finding suspicious cases and reporting them.
It's natural to be frustrated from time to time, but always remember that asides from lichess doing all the automated bans, there are also many humans with a vivid or boring or standard or busy life like you who are reviewing these reports. Sometimes, we might have missed a detail. Sometimes, we head home after getting stuck outside the door for a few hours because we can't find our keys and was in a bad mood. Sometimes, we were going to play some other game or read a book but decided to spend some time on lichess reviewing or checking out the forum posts. It's not every time we reply in detail, especially when we want to keep our replies helpful and correct - because that's what we want to see mods write.
We don't act on impulse when we review cheaters because we know if we mis-mark a user, someone innocent is going to go through a lot of trouble not being able to play proper games and worry if their internet service provider is cheating on them. There are a lot of things that bothers a mis-marked user, just as we are worried when we lock ourselves out of the door.
To make better decisions, we need better data, not more tools. I hope that addresses most of what you've thought of. For details I missed (I'm sure I missed some), try searching the forums for old posts where other moderators discussed this.
It's the same for us! We don't like cheaters, because it ruins your experience. It's ruining our leaderboards. Some of us moderators also play in tournaments and pairings, and before we became a moderator we were also interested in chess and enjoy playing it, like you do. That's why we have and use these tools:
- Closing account <- tool exists
- IP ban <- tool exists, moderators can see this information (it's not news: ja.lichess.org/privacy) as well as a lot more to find duplicate accounts
- IP range ban <- see above
- Validation of chess accounts <- the lichess software lets you put an email, and guards a rating barrier, and has a team of email-reviewing admins to keep master titles from wrong hands; a range of filters are also accessible to mods to review
- Allowing to play in tours people who has account at least e.g. 1 month. <- established in official tournaments, but in game count (it's not practical to force a time duration because cheaters can still run it and hurt everyone if they have old enough puppet accounts)
I would like to quote something Cynosure said on Reddit a while ago: "On this note, we're very pleased with our present cheat detection, where we look at a range of factors to detect and mark cheaters. In line with the lichess ethos, we must necessarily strike a balance between being minimally intrusive and pragmatic."
While the cheat detection and punishment system can always be tuned harsher, it would not always be viable. Lichess is proud for its openness and that we can serve you a chess service you know and love without hassle.
"It's high time to do something about it." - We're always trying to do something about it, when we can. You can help by finding suspicious cases and reporting them.
It's natural to be frustrated from time to time, but always remember that asides from lichess doing all the automated bans, there are also many humans with a vivid or boring or standard or busy life like you who are reviewing these reports. Sometimes, we might have missed a detail. Sometimes, we head home after getting stuck outside the door for a few hours because we can't find our keys and was in a bad mood. Sometimes, we were going to play some other game or read a book but decided to spend some time on lichess reviewing or checking out the forum posts. It's not every time we reply in detail, especially when we want to keep our replies helpful and correct - because that's what we want to see mods write.
We don't act on impulse when we review cheaters because we know if we mis-mark a user, someone innocent is going to go through a lot of trouble not being able to play proper games and worry if their internet service provider is cheating on them. There are a lot of things that bothers a mis-marked user, just as we are worried when we lock ourselves out of the door.
To make better decisions, we need better data, not more tools. I hope that addresses most of what you've thought of. For details I missed (I'm sure I missed some), try searching the forums for old posts where other moderators discussed this.
Very well said guys.
Looks like lichess is doing what it needs to do, good job. Nice to know ip bans are in effect too.
Looks like lichess is doing what it needs to do, good job. Nice to know ip bans are in effect too.
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