#40 Yeah, as a skeptic, I can't really get behind it, it's obviously not evidence-based, but rather faith-based. For those who are ok with that, good on you, but I can't.
That's okay. I'm not forcing you. I can't prove God exists. It's only through His working in your heart that will change you.
So this is a therapy session with a cheater? :D
As long as you have complete privacy while playing there will be some cheating, by players who are too weak to resist the temptation.
I started my online "career" at unregulated sites, I played the most at www.pogo.com/chess , a silly free site with lots of different games, one of them was chess. The site was absolutely filled with chess programs. Even for that silly site there were downloadable "autoprog" interfaces, where you could plug your chess program to play automatically without the need for you to use a mouse to move, so you could cheat even in bullet (I searched for it after I saw some cheaters talking about it in chat).
To play there, you would have to pick opponents really carefully, it was a constant witch hunt:
Step 1: look at the amount of games played (if low, never play them, because not enough evidence)
Step 2: look at the win % (even a 60% win rate was suspicious, 70% was pretty much a sure thing and 80% was yeah right).
Keep in mind that the site was full of progs, so even getting a 60% win rate in the midst of all those progs was insanely hard.
Now, even with this extreme opponent screening and selection, you would still get progged every day!
Alot of people "only progged those who progged" (I wonder how many times they were right). Alot of proggers preteneded to be GMs or other celebrities. Back then Bobby Fischer was still alive and I remember this one progger pretending to be him (lol). The biggest cheaters were like celebrities on that site. They got fame for what they did.
Some told huge lies, I had a good friend on that site, who was part of a group of anti-prog players. He was very strong but could not move fast. Many people suspected him of cheating, but I never did, because I had talked with him in skype, I knew his wife, I knew his friend, he showd me pictures of his kids and family... then the pressure to prove himself became to much and he played some challenge games at playchess and WCN, he got flagged a cheater by those sites. Then he pretty much disappeared after many years of online friendship and lying about being legit.
I have always been 100% against cheating. And I have never cheated in chess. But still, I have gotten the temptation to do so many times over the years, because when you get cheated enough you start wanting some payback.
But I love chess too much to do it. So I take the punches from the cheaters, for the honour of chess. Cheating is ugly and it ruins the game for the human player, because playing against computers is not enjoyable at all. It's ugly chess by a calculator. Instead of another strategic mind communicating with yours over the moves.
My respect to all who play honestly in the middle of all this cheating.
"Honour is a gift man gives himself".
As long as you have complete privacy while playing there will be some cheating, by players who are too weak to resist the temptation.
I started my online "career" at unregulated sites, I played the most at www.pogo.com/chess , a silly free site with lots of different games, one of them was chess. The site was absolutely filled with chess programs. Even for that silly site there were downloadable "autoprog" interfaces, where you could plug your chess program to play automatically without the need for you to use a mouse to move, so you could cheat even in bullet (I searched for it after I saw some cheaters talking about it in chat).
To play there, you would have to pick opponents really carefully, it was a constant witch hunt:
Step 1: look at the amount of games played (if low, never play them, because not enough evidence)
Step 2: look at the win % (even a 60% win rate was suspicious, 70% was pretty much a sure thing and 80% was yeah right).
Keep in mind that the site was full of progs, so even getting a 60% win rate in the midst of all those progs was insanely hard.
Now, even with this extreme opponent screening and selection, you would still get progged every day!
Alot of people "only progged those who progged" (I wonder how many times they were right). Alot of proggers preteneded to be GMs or other celebrities. Back then Bobby Fischer was still alive and I remember this one progger pretending to be him (lol). The biggest cheaters were like celebrities on that site. They got fame for what they did.
Some told huge lies, I had a good friend on that site, who was part of a group of anti-prog players. He was very strong but could not move fast. Many people suspected him of cheating, but I never did, because I had talked with him in skype, I knew his wife, I knew his friend, he showd me pictures of his kids and family... then the pressure to prove himself became to much and he played some challenge games at playchess and WCN, he got flagged a cheater by those sites. Then he pretty much disappeared after many years of online friendship and lying about being legit.
I have always been 100% against cheating. And I have never cheated in chess. But still, I have gotten the temptation to do so many times over the years, because when you get cheated enough you start wanting some payback.
But I love chess too much to do it. So I take the punches from the cheaters, for the honour of chess. Cheating is ugly and it ruins the game for the human player, because playing against computers is not enjoyable at all. It's ugly chess by a calculator. Instead of another strategic mind communicating with yours over the moves.
My respect to all who play honestly in the middle of all this cheating.
"Honour is a gift man gives himself".
@SilentLucidity:
I've played against you and lost. Why? Because I do not win against a computer or against GM´s.
Your apology honors you. But the reason I can not understand. If you are so good, why do you play with computers? If you are so good, you can also play against me without computer support and you will win.You wanted to promote your simultan tournament and therefore you play with computer support? This is ridiculous or sad.
Anyway - I get a daily note that I had lost against cheaters and therefore I would get points back. I do not want to know the dark digit. This is sad, but I am proud not to cheat and still win. And when I lose it is my fault, because I am not good enough.
I've played against you and lost. Why? Because I do not win against a computer or against GM´s.
Your apology honors you. But the reason I can not understand. If you are so good, why do you play with computers? If you are so good, you can also play against me without computer support and you will win.You wanted to promote your simultan tournament and therefore you play with computer support? This is ridiculous or sad.
Anyway - I get a daily note that I had lost against cheaters and therefore I would get points back. I do not want to know the dark digit. This is sad, but I am proud not to cheat and still win. And when I lose it is my fault, because I am not good enough.
@NoLuckOnlySkill and @Beltham , well said. I feel like I have received the insight into the world of cheating I was looking for when I posted this.
I don't even have a chess engine installed on my computer or phone and have never even used one save for the Stockfish engine embedded in Lichess which allows us to analyze our games afterwards.
And personally, I don't even find the prospect of cheating tempting, not even with this knowledge of how pervasive it apparently is. I want to be a stronger player and I have zero interest in taking pride in something that's not there.
@Beltham wrote "If you are so good, why do you play with computers? If you are so good, you can also play against me without computer support and you will win."
Absolutely. If the strength were really there why endure the discomfort of knowing you're a cheater? Kind of like if you want to be honest about your past why lie as you do so? So strange.
I don't even have a chess engine installed on my computer or phone and have never even used one save for the Stockfish engine embedded in Lichess which allows us to analyze our games afterwards.
And personally, I don't even find the prospect of cheating tempting, not even with this knowledge of how pervasive it apparently is. I want to be a stronger player and I have zero interest in taking pride in something that's not there.
@Beltham wrote "If you are so good, why do you play with computers? If you are so good, you can also play against me without computer support and you will win."
Absolutely. If the strength were really there why endure the discomfort of knowing you're a cheater? Kind of like if you want to be honest about your past why lie as you do so? So strange.
#44, 45 Why? Not because I want to, that's for certain. It's a bad habit, and one I was escaping up until that point for this account. I just made a very dumb decision.
Sometimes you would encounter some theoreticl line in say the Grunfeld for 8moves straight by 6 or 7 players during a morning session...
the problem with getting the rating points back is that it will give you a inaccurate rating especially if the games were played a long time ago. for example I got back 20 points but I should have gotten back less because I already played 2 games in between that I won and I would have gained less if I won against the cheater with a higher rating, it's common sense.
When I was much weaker and younger I cheated a bit, and got banned for it repeatedly all over the place. Now, this might be a rare sort of case, but I cheated out of sheer curiosity. I wanted to see how these engines beat people, and mostly, when they saw sacrifices. I loved to see those beautiful sacrifices, I'd often play normally and only actually check the engine move when the evaluation shifted dramatically.
Unsurprisingly when I managed to ween off of the engine use, my faster games were full of unsound sacrifices with the simple thought of, "This looks like something Stockfish might play"
Though I think I actually did manage to gleam some positional understanding out of playing a sort of mix-and-match of my moves and the engine moves, and now play the odd bit of centaur correspondence chess. If nothing else, I now understand how engines work pretty well, and am fairly confident I could identify very subtle cheaters because of my experience.
But that's probably just overestimating my patzer self!
Unsurprisingly when I managed to ween off of the engine use, my faster games were full of unsound sacrifices with the simple thought of, "This looks like something Stockfish might play"
Though I think I actually did manage to gleam some positional understanding out of playing a sort of mix-and-match of my moves and the engine moves, and now play the odd bit of centaur correspondence chess. If nothing else, I now understand how engines work pretty well, and am fairly confident I could identify very subtle cheaters because of my experience.
But that's probably just overestimating my patzer self!
This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.