After all these years ...................

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
I'm not talking about IM strength, i'm talking about correspondence IM strength. There is a massive difference! The chairman of my chess club was British correspondence champion in the early 70's but he's never had an OTB grade much higher than 180 BCF, which would put him somewhere in the top 50 on here. He never used an engine to get that (obviously) but it serves as a good example as he's no IM otb..

We're talking about the same thing. There are no CC IMs on here so there is no comparison. We can make conjectures, speculate and gesticulate all we want but we can't compare toe hair to aeroplanes.

Originally posted by tomtom232
I am aware of this and that's why I think it would be hard to achieve a 2500 rating here. I mean I'm not saying he wasn't using an engine but he went undefeated for a very long time and was not 2500.

Yeah, requires sufficiently high rated opponents to beat to get to a high rating.

Originally posted by Thabtos
Begs the question.

Say an IM spends every second of his given time analyzing positions in his RHP game with every bit of chess he has in him, and then moves.


Say a strong player makes some fairly decent moves on his on and switches on his engine when he thinks the position is crucial, but he gives it enough time to make it look like he's thinking.

How do you tell the difference between the two?

I'm curious about the question that Thabtos raises too - how can you tell the difference between someone using an engine and a really strong player making good moves? Are there unusual moves that are a giveaway or is it a pattern of consistent play? I've only played two games against players rated 2000+ and so I probably haven't been exposed to it.

Originally posted by Marinkatomb
No one seems to have mentioned that in official Correspondence rules, engine use is permitted. If this guy is a correspondence IM, then he probably used an engine to get the title in the first place. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that he'd have achieved a 2400+ rating unassisted on RHP, if that was the case he'd probably be an IM OTB too..

Again, he got the title in the 1980's when no good engines were available. He was using one on here though.

Originally posted by Double G
I'm curious about the question that Thabtos raises too - how can you tell the difference between someone using an engine and a really strong player making good moves? Are there unusual moves that are a giveaway or is it a pattern of consistent play? I've only played two games against players rated 2000+ and so I probably haven't been exposed to it.

the basic method is statistical analysis over a considerable number of games, stripped off of database moves. a matchup rate against engine choices is calculated, and compared to similar rates from the best pre-computer era cc master games. if the matchup rate exceeds that of all known similarly treated cc masters by a large margin, we can statistically say that the possibility of surpassing the by chance is highly unlikely. how unlikely, depends on the number analysed evidence and selected margin (which in practice is quite unreasonably wide). normally we're talking about astronomical odds.

sometimes single moves/games can also add to the evidence, when ridiculous engine silliness that absolutely no human could do happens. like playing on a 100 moves in a dead drawn simple ending etc. but there's been extremely few of these, as a rule of thumb they don't count.

some people have even outed themselves. but the main method is statistical analysis of a large body of games.

Originally posted by Double G
I'm curious about the question that Thabtos raises too - how can you tell the difference between someone using an engine and a really strong player making good moves? Are there unusual moves that are a giveaway or is it a pattern of consistent play? I've only played two games against players rated 2000+ and so I probably haven't been exposed to it.

Strong humans and computers play differently. Strong humans generally play to specific strategies, to a specific plan, whereas engines will quite happily go off on tangents for a 0.01 pawn advantage, after evaluating millions of positions in a matter of seconds. These are moves and evaluations that strong human beings wouldn't even begin to consider, even if they were capable.

Simplistically, if you compare verifiably strong human match-up rates to engines over many games, the level of agreement with engines is far lower than many "top players" on RHP manage to consistently achieve.

While it is true that super-GMs get higher match-ups than regular GMs, who in turn get higher match-ups than IMs, who in turn get higher match-ups than FM's, etc, many players here and on other internet chess sites are capable of extraordinary match-ups; far, far, far in excess of the super-GM range. Even the top echelons of correspondence chess in the pre-computer era had similar match-up rates as today's regular GMs (and less than current super GMs)

There are some really good players at RHP whose match-up stats fall below GM/IM levels. These are the strong human players, who play excellent chess without the need to mimic Rybka or Fritz. And then there are those who, for want of a better word, are cheats.

As I said until a MOD comes on and says he was banned for engine use
then we can but speculate.

The lad is I believe an C.C. IM before computers got good.
There is no doubt he was/is a good chess player.

However using the match up system and comparing it with the OTB games of
all the great players from Capablanca to Kasparov. Wyerstrass scored higher.

He scored higher than the World correspondence champions in the 60 & 70's.

He beat banned users who were blantant engines users.

His play matched up with a computers more than good human players.
(more than Fischer, Kasparov, Capablanca......)

A lot of this evidence was posted, deleted and the posters given bans.

A lot of these threads were quite heated.
Those for banning him were called witch hunters.
Those against were called cheat defenders.

Players with a lower match up were banned week in week out.
I posted either ban him or unban all the others....thread deleted.

But don't knock the system too much. They had to be sure.

It a sad business and as I said he may have been banned for something else.

What are you talking about? Obviously the system needs to be knocked if it took 5+ years and 400 games for the guy to get what he deserved...

Originally posted by greenpawn34
he may have been banned for something else.

and maybe pigs can fly.

Originally posted by wormwood
and maybe pigs can fly.

What do you mean maybe?

Still think you need to cut the boys some slack on this one.

His games were without doubt analysed more than anyone else's.

It takes time when dealing with a proven good player.
And this lad is a proven good C.C. player.
He had to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Put yourself in the postition of the Mods.
They never had a precendent they could fall back on.
Nobody as strong as him had ever beeen banned before.

This was not your 1400 player having a laugh this was a genuine
titled good player.

Also he never used a box in all his games else he would have gone ages ago.
He has human games but he also has these imhuman looking games.
Now you cannot pick and choose games to match up.
They must fit a certain criteria and it must be done over many games.

Agree 99% sure he was banned for engine use but we never get told.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
Still think you need to cut the boys some slack on this one.

His games were without doubt analysed more than anyone else's.

It takes time when dealing with a proven good player.
And this lad is a proven good C.C. player.
He had to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Put yourself in the postition of the Mods.
They never had a precendent they c ...[text shortened]... be done over many games.

Agree 99% sure he was banned for engine use but we never get told.

is the problem not compounded in that some of the Mods are very weak players? or is that just the ones that send me occasional messages warning of a potential forum ban for ranting at someone, if so, then all they have to go on is statistical data, whereas a very strong player, could no doubt tell the difference just through intuition.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
is the problem not compounded in that some of the Mods are very weak players? or is that just the ones that send me occasional messages warning of a potential forum ban for ranting at someone, if so, then all they have to go on is statistical data, whereas a very strong player, could no doubt tell the difference just through intuition.

Game mods are different people from the forum mods.

Originally posted by tomtom232
Game mods are different people from the forum mods.

ok, i did not know 🙂

Originally posted by greenpawn34
Still think you need to cut the boys some slack on this one.

His games were without doubt analysed more than anyone else's.

It takes time when dealing with a proven good player.
And this lad is a proven good C.C. player.
He had to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Put yourself in the postition of the Mods.
They never had a precendent they c ...[text shortened]... be done over many games.

Agree 99% sure he was banned for engine use but we never get told.

whether he's a legitimate player outside of rhp or not should have absolutely no weight on the verdict. either the evidence is there, or it's not.

in this case the evidence was there for years, he never was a 'borderline' offender. it was an open & shut case, lock 'im up & throw away the key, but for some reason (that we're never gonna hear) the admins refused to drop the axe. until now, which is great news, and even gives a glimmer of hope that the dark ages of rhp might end.