ratings question

Originally posted by Squelchbelch
I'd say half of the first 2 pages of the player tables probably regularly use "help", yes.
I'm in a better position than you to know this.

We have at least 1 FM playing on this site, plus some bogus GM's. The FIDE Master has a similar rating on RHP to that of his OTB FIDE rating.
There are a distinct lack of truly strong players here for the reaso ...[text shortened]... ask GM Kosten why he doesn't want to play at RHP.
I bet I know what his reply will be...

No doubt you're better placed.I was only checking if I understood you correct,not disputing your claim.

this is interesting, how do you spot someone using a chess engine.

Originally posted by kaminsky
this is interesting, how do you spot someone using a chess engine.

One way, I suppose, is to look at their rating graph. If it has a steady baseline about 1300 for a long while and then suddenly is growing fast up to 2200+. Then it is quite obvious that they have some silicon help of some kind.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
One way, I suppose, is to look at their rating graph. If it has a steady baseline about 1300 for a long while and then suddenly is growing fast up to 2200+. Then it is quite obvious that they have some silicon help of some kind.

you mean like the chess equivalent of a boob job?

Originally posted by Squelchbelch
2200+ = Fritz (probably 50% or more of the time)

True or not, the sad fact is that the mere possibility that this is so makes me sad. I feel sorry for the strong players who bleed over every move, only for their achievements to be belittled by others. I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. If a player is cheating, they are only cheating themselves anyway. They should be pitied.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
One way, I suppose, is to look at their rating graph. If it has a steady baseline about 1300 for a long while and then suddenly is growing fast up to 2200+. Then it is quite obvious that they have some silicon help of some kind.

It seems to me that anyone with half a brain could use computer help and go undetected indefinably. The ones that get caught are just the ones with no common sense. Like you say, someone who plays at weak club player level for a while then shoots up to master level is just to stupid to hide what they are doing.

whats the best free download to see these engines are like .

and what rating would you give it

Originally posted by kaminsky
this is interesting, how do you spot someone using a chess engine.

You do this by using engine move matchup %'s in many objectively chosen games against strong opposition.

You look at the suspect's moves once the game goes out of book; ie hasn't been played before on a big database such as the 4.3m www.chesslive.de.

Next, you need to set up your engine so that you can look at it's top 3 choices for each move in a strictly consistent time interval. I use 30 seconds per move because with the hash table this allows quite high level analysis on a decent pc, but also allows for practical analysis.
With an average game with 20-30 non-book moves the analysis takes about 1.5 to 2 hours including write-up. If you allow 60 seconds per move the analysis takes ages & I tried this with a few games & there's very little difference in the end results between the longer & shorter time periods.

There should be at least 20 moves in the games once they go out of book so that the end results aren't skewed by for instance a blunder then a forced win in a few moves.

The expected matchup %'s for both top pre-computer era CC human players & OTB super-GM's are known to the game mods, so anyone who consistently tops these stats is either an unknown genius who chooses to grace RHP with his play or an engine user.

The figures for top human play are about
Top 1 match = 60%
Top 2 match = 75%
Top 3 match = 85%

and they take into account obvious & forcing moves & so on.

There was an argument in this forum that various moves should be discounted from analysis, but the figures given above would then also need re-calculating.