Player ability?

Originally posted by Quits
If this is true than it is extremely sad. Especially if talented players are leaving because of such tactics.

Of course it's true. And wormwood and skeeter know exactly who these cheaters are and are disgusted, disgusted I tell you! at the wide-spread cheating on this site. Almost as disgusted as if they really were from Tunbridge Wells. And that's why they, like so many disgusted, high-quality players, have both...

stayed here...!?


Methinks the boys do protest too much.

Richard

when did answering questions of newcomers become protesting? I see someone with a problem I can help with, I do it. it's as simple as that.

Originally posted by Erekose
Most people don't have to worry about this. Its very rare encounter cheaters rated below 2100.

I don't know about the second part. There are a fair few people I've played who start making consistently impressive moves once they get into a lost position.

If people wanted to cheat judiciously at critical points in the odd game then that would be very hard to detect, but it's not something I'd lose sleep over. It's online chess and the stakes are pretty much zero.

Of course at the top of the table you'd expect it to be more endemic and it would indeed be seriously annoying, but for us schmos - yeah, not something to worry about.

Originally posted by hunterknox
I don't know about the second part. There are a fair few people I've played who start making consistently impressive moves once they get into a lost position.

If people wanted to cheat judiciously at critical points in the odd game then that would be very hard to detect, but it's not something I'd lose sleep over. It's online chess and the stakes are ould indeed be seriously annoying, but for us schmos - yeah, not something to worry about.

In OTB chess, I often play my best moves after I have messed up and gotten myself into a lousy position. I think sometimes I am lazy, and then get annoyed at myself for messing up, and then bear down the rest of the game. It's given me a reputation for being a swindler, or a lucky chess player.

One time in the US Amateur Team championship, I screwed up and dropped a rook in a very wild position. I complicated the #%$%# out of the position and ended up mating the guy a rook down. I think the pressure of knowing that other players were depending on me really helped me focus.

As I was recording the score out in the hall, three high school-age kid were standing there, and then one of them says to me "Man, you are a swindling machine! How do you pull off so many swindles?"

For a split second I was proud, but then I thought about it and simply replied "Well, first you have to get yourself into a worse position..."

Originally posted by Paul Leggett
In OTB chess, I often play my best moves after I have messed up and gotten myself into a lousy position...

Yeah, I get that too. It's why I started playing the Grob. Forces me to concentrate.

Mind you I tend to think that anyone who beats me is cheating somehow!

Originally posted by hunterknox
Yeah, I get that too. It's why I started playing the Grob. Forces me to concentrate.

Mind you I tend to think that anyone who beats me is cheating somehow!

All that said, I agree with you completely. There's no money or anything else involved here, and I just don't worry about it. There's enough grief in my life without me having to go looking for it!

I've played a lot of good people here, and they are the only ones with meaning to me.

(i am new so not sure how to quote but this is in response to the comment about improving your play when a position is lost)

I find that the second hardest thing to do in chess is actualy wining the won game because at my level I invariably make a careless mistake and the opponent is putting in everything he's got because he is down. And so,I do think you play better when you are losing.

The hardest thing to do is figuring out why a move is bad when it's not on of the ones you've studied in a given opening.

Originally posted by Quits
I am new to this site and I don't want to start a thread that will be immediately deleted as I have a serious inquiry about player ability.

I am far from a great player but I have noticed alot of beat around the bush type accusations of cheating. Now I am not saying that this is not the case, but I am very curious about how it would be possible to accuratel ...[text shortened]... eir opponent is truly cheating or merely taking the time to accurately consider the best moves?

I understand that statistical analysis of a comparison to engine moves will reveal engine use over a number of games.

I agree with your comment that time is not really a factor in CC. While you can lose a game if your game calendar expires and the skull is claimed, a "clock" is not really part of the game, as it is in OTB. The CC calendar is more about managing game load or life demands, and not about time pressure strategy in a game of chess. A clock is definitely part of the game and its strategy in OTB. In CC not so much. To say that a clock is part of the game in CC chess, as some do, is kind of misleading. Though I do claim skulls relentlessly and do not want CC games to drag out.

I have played a fair amount of OTB and I understand that CC is a different game as time is not really a factor even in one day games. A person could take 12 hours to decide on a move and play better than they ever could OTB.

Can anyone here beat a computer or is it impossible?

David Tebb & Gatecrasher (2 of the Games Mods) are no longer active here.
The profile notes in User 465997 say:
"Good games, I hope! But these days, increasingly I hope in vain. The collapse of anti-cheating measures in here means engine-users now go unpunished. OK, we have what we have. Not much I can do about it..."
which seems to support this.
A quick glance at page 1 of the player tables shows that plenty of 2200+ rateds are making several hundred moves per month & losing very few games indeed.
It's sad that Russ has thrown in the towel to the engine users, but there you go.

My subscription was due to renew in January but I cancelled it.
I'm only a 1600 rated here, so very rarely will I play any cheats, but it's an ethos thing & to me, the current RHP ethos is rotten at the core.

Originally posted by Zygalski
David Tebb & Gatecrasher (2 of the Games Mods) are no longer active here.
The profile notes in User 465997 say:
"Good games, I hope! But these days, increasingly I hope in vain. The collapse of anti-cheating measures in here means engine-users now go unpunished. OK, we have what we have. Not much I can do about it..."
which seems to support this.
...[text shortened]... y any cheats, but it's an ethos thing & to me, the current RHP ethos is rotten at the core.

But just because you can beat some-one doesn't mean you did it with the engine
is there any way to tell NO - So how do you know?

Originally posted by tim88
But just because you can beat some-one doesn't mean you did it with the engine
is there any way to tell NO - So how do you know?

How do I know?
I perform match rate analysis with a program called Batch Analyzer, Houdini & a quad-core pc is how 😉

Originally posted by tim88
Can anyone here beat a computer or is it impossible?

I believe that it is highly unlikely for an unassisted club standard player to beat an "identity" that uses one of the top analysis engines at full strength such as Fritz, Rybka, Hiarcs etc. and to do so would likely take almost all the analysis time available to the player to achieve what would almost have to be a better than perfect game. I actually think that it would be difficult for an unassisted master strength player to do so either, although they may be able to "quality assure" an engine's output much better.

I play over the board club standard chess (150 ECF, 1800+) and although I rarely play a correspondence game with any intensity these days I have only to plug such a game in to an analysis engine like Crafty, Fritz or whatever to see streams of relevant variations that I never considered. You have only to look at a pre computer correspondence tournament book, for example The Potter Memorial early 1970s, and see that the strong, up to master strength OTB players who took part, made the type of errors that would come to the fore about four or five moves later. You rarely see that kind of mistake being made at high level these days because it is easily within a computer horizon. Very good players such as FM Pete Sowray and Johnathan Penrose have given up correspondence chess and are on record as saying why. If that calibre of player finds competing with computer engines unfulfilling it doesn't take much to guess the likely status of who is left. Playing unassisted on ICCF I have won one game from forty odd in the last twelve years and that was against a guy who was active in the 1950s and was clearly unassisted also. Over the board I have beaten the holder of an ICCF SIM title so they are not that strong without lots of time or lots of help. In fact I would go as far as to say that most who play correspondence chess with any degree of serious expect to use engine assistance.

I think many players like me who were reluctant to give up a semi social or "unassisted" type of CC came to sites like RHP because they appear to give some form of protection against (at least) persistent engine users. When such measures are no longer apparent it will not be long before such players will give up. Like Zygalski above I have decided not to resubscribe here and am on record as saying that I will never pay to play a game of CC/turn based chess again. I'm lucky in that my circumstances allow me to play a good 50 games a year of standard OTB chess but others are not.

I do not hold with the notion that "you won't meet computers below 2000" or whatever arbitrary ceiling an authoritative sounding poster selects. I know players of 170-180 ECF grade here who seem unable to top 2000 and yet have seen others I know to be considerably weaker sail on into the 2000's in a barefaced and carefree fashion. You raise an eyebrow and they're like "What's the matter?" I know there are lots of variables, time spent, gameload, level of opposition, level of mind expansion and so on. When computers first started being used in CC most organisations grading distribution charts had one tidy bell curve develop a cancerous bulge towards the upper end. The sensible got out then!!

On these forums I have "advertised" some of my annotated games where I have happily explained my moves warts and all in the hope that some of RHP's higher rated players might be encouraged to explain some of their games and show us some proper chess. No-one expects them to give away chunks of their opening preparation, but it would be nice to see some of the more complex games explained or replicate the hours of analysis some sacrifice required. Many cynical players believe that those "identities" would be revealed as babbling idiots without their computer engines or would have to find ways to describe "I guided the engine fifteen moves along the second best line when it gave me a +2.00 assessment" in an alternative but believeable prose.

Unless websites who offer CC style server chess for non assisted players are able to provide their subscribers with a reasonable degree of protection from computer abusers, they will be left with engines at the top a few casual players at the bottom. My hope is that OTB clubs will benefit from an influx of internet introduced players but my fear is that most will simply give up playing because they won't be able to get anything out of it.

Originally posted by Ragwort
I believe that it is highly unlikely for an unassisted club standard player to beat an "identity" that uses one of the top analysis engines at full strength such as Fritz, Rybka, Hiarcs etc. and to do so would likely take almost all the analysis time available to the player to achieve what would almost have to be a better than perfect game. I actually think ...[text shortened]... y give up playing because they won't be able to get anything out of it.

That sounds truly sad, but at least you got other options for playing OTB or so. But not only does this behaviour stop honest players from playing CC (or in particular on RHP) but it also kills the fame of the remaining true ones. I would like to know, how many players actually manage to climb into the above 2000 level without engine help - it will be fewer then now for sure, but how many? I am very curious about what the human mind can achieve and looking at some of the top players' gameload on this site I am extremely amazed. I can hardly keep up with six games, but a hundred? I would like to pay my respect to those, but each time I see it there is spoiling by-taste to it.

On the other hand, this kind of 'looking at high ratings and fall into awe' is also a source for many cheaters to go that route. For myself I am trying to separate the things - awe for the OTB champions' games, respect for the personally annotated games in the forums and the way people treat each other and (up to now)meetings with interesting players that even start to pm from time to time... I hope this will carry my interest in chess far beyond the time, once chess will be solved...

Originally posted by Zygalski
David Tebb & Gatecrasher (2 of the Games Mods) are no longer active here.

This is a massive PR blunder.