11.B Online Cheating

[Vladimir Drkulec]

This is the thread for a discussion of online cheating in CFC events.

[Paul Leblanc]

Just a few thoughts to start the ball rolling.
I've organized about 10 tournaments online over the past 18 months.
Never offer cash prizes. Limit the prizes to trophies, books or chess lessons. This has the added benefit of keeping entry fees low.
Never give in to requests to rate online games as Regular rated events. Quick ratings are less formal and more like fun ratings. Not to be confused with serious chess.
The use of Zoom as an oversight method needs to be backed up by enough assistant arbiters to monitor the cameras. Furthermore, a suspicion of cheating obtained from a camera image is not definitive unless unusually blatant. This leads to the need for a panel of strong players who investigate suspicious behaviour, unusual results and complaints. This is very time consuming and expensive.
Furthermore, the use of Zoom adds technical complexity due to connectivity issues and discourages some players from playing for various privacy and technical reasons.
Are some players cheating? Probably a few. Over-the-board chess will eventually come back and as Warren Buffett said: "when the tide goes out we will see who is not wearing bathing trunks".

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I think the online CYCC is a model for how you can return to rated play even online but you do need to do almost everything Paul Leblanc mentioned. In addition you need double cameras, zoom recordings, plenty of arbiters, a fair play team and computer analysis of all of the games.

[Nikolay Noritsyn]

What's to discuss? This thread about cheating online keeps repeating every meeting with little variation. Could you make public any information about how much cheating has happened in CFC events, CYCC? I would be curious to see the numbers. I would be curious to see names too, I would propose that a list of confirmed cheaters should be available for all to see, with juniors under a certain age having a second chance policy to not make the list on the first offence.

[Pierre Dénommée]

What's to discuss? This thread about cheating online keeps repeating every meeting with little variation. Could you make public any information about how much cheating has happened in CFC events, CYCC? I would be curious to see the numbers. I would be curious to see names too, I would propose that a list of confirmed cheaters should be available for all to see, with juniors under a certain age having a second chance policy to not make the list on the first offence.

Putting in public a list of confirmed cheaters could expose the CFC to a lawsuit. If a cheater is from Quebec, it is illegal to post his name publicly as a cheater, this is an attain to his honour and reputation. If the cheater is refused at a job interview because his name is on the list, he could sue the CFC. Under Quebec Law, in order to avoid a defamation lawsuit, it is not sufficient to tell the Truth: there must be a public interest in the information that had been made public. Although both of us would agree that there is a public interest, the FQE lawyer told the FQE to never publish publicly the name of a cheater because the tribunal definition of public interest is not our definition.

[Victor Itkin]

Putting in public a list of confirmed cheaters could expose the CFC to a lawsuit. If a cheater is from Quebec, it is illegal to post his name publicly as a cheater, this is an attain to his honour and reputation. If the cheater is refused at a job interview because his name is on the list, he could sue the CFC. Under Quebec Law, in order to avoid a defamation lawsuit, it is not sufficient to tell the Truth: there must be a public interest in the information that had been made public. Although both of us would agree that there is a public interest, the FQE lawyer told the FQE to never publish publicly the name of a cheater because the tribunal definition of public interest is not our definition.

We have already heard this horror story several times at previous CFC meetings. Since Quebec Law is so dramatic, may be let's leave cheaters from Quebec alone. But there are few other provinces and territories in Canada. What Federal Law and/or other provinces' Laws say about putting a list of confirmed cheaters in public?

[Vladimir Drkulec]

There was no cheating at online CYCC. The kids were good. Ken Regan's analysis showed nothing of concern. Those that were flagged with superior results in the games in question, their opponents made very obvious errors which they pounced on.

There have been some cheating incidents which have been dealt with. Where the child confessed we reduced the sentence. In every case we are talking about young children.

There were some accusations of cheating which we could not substantiate in other events. If a high rated player plays very badly can we really be surprised that a lower rated player accepts the obvious gifts?

[Vladimir Drkulec]

We have already heard this horror story several times at previous CFC meetings. Since Quebec Law is so dramatic, may be let's leave cheaters from Quebec alone. But there are few other provinces and territories in Canada. What Federal Law and/or other provinces' Laws say about putting a list of confirmed cheaters in public?

If we had a list of confirmed cheaters you could number it on the fingers of one hand. All were young children. A few organizers have scrubbed events before submitting them to the CFC. I can't tell you how many times that has happened. I usually hear of those only after some time.

[Fred McKim]

If we had a list of confirmed cheaters you could number it on the fingers of one hand. All were young children. A few organizers have scrubbed events before submitting them to the CFC. I can't tell you how many times that has happened. I usually hear of those only after some time.

Bob maintains a list of players who have received a suspension from Online CFC play. Most were young juniors. I would guess there are a dozen names. I think in almost every case the player has been "kicked" off of the server.

My personal experience is 2 players caught for cheating out of 400-450 player participations in my online events.

[Pierre Dénommée]

Although the list of cheaters cannot be public, the organisers and the arbiters must have access to the list in order to enforce the suspension.

Making a list public in Ontario and hoping that it will never be transmitted to Quebec would be wishful thinking.

[Pierre Dénommée]

I followed 16 hours of training on online and hybrid chess from the FIDE Arbiters' Commission as well as an ACC (now FPL) training a while ago and I would never fully disclose how arbiters check for cheaters. Such information would only help the cheaters to avoid detection.

[Paul Leblanc]

Nikolay, in my tournaments we had 4 or 5 accounts closed by chess.com. The number of entries was about 700. Maybe 300 individual players because many players played in more than one tournament. These figures are approximate.
Of the accounts closed, one was overturned on appeal to the CFC, one was a false-positive and the rest were new players who subsequently disappeared. I don't have enough confidence in the cheating detection to put my name on a public list accusing anyone of cheating.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I followed 16 hours of training on online and hybrid chess from the FIDE Arbiters' Commission as well as an ACC (now FPL) training a while ago and I would never fully disclose how arbiters check for cheaters. Such information would only help the cheaters to avoid detection.

My belief is that some innocent people are being flagged as cheaters. This is a problem particularly in the case of rapidly improving juniors. I believe that AI will eventually solve the problem of who is and isn't cheating but until then we need to tell kids what is and isn't acceptable behaviour in an online game.

[Pierre Dénommée]

My belief is that some innocent people are being flagged as cheaters.

This usually comes from the platform, not from the arbiters or fair play panel. The closure of an account during a competition can be due to an alleged offence that had been committed during a previous competition in which the control team of the current tournament is powerless to do anything. If a player is suspended in the middle of my tournament for what he did 2 weeks ago, I, as Chief Arbiter, have no authority in the tournament in which the infraction is alleged to have occurred. The Chief Arbiter of the previous tournament may have already approved the suspension, the offence could have occurred outside of our jurisdiction, in a non-CFC rated event or worse, in an event rated ny another Federation that claims exclusive jurisdiction.

[Don Hack]

A bit off topic and may have been covered in the past, but I will ask the question.

The challenges around catching and proving online cheating are well documented.

Hopefully, the bulk of the play will soon be moving back to OTB from on-line.

Is there any need to discuss standardization or guidelines around OTB cheating?

If any cheating policies/guidelines exist, where are they posted?

[Pierre Dénommée]

If any cheating policies/guidelines exist, where are they posted?

FIDE Anti-Cheating regulations

https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/AntiCheatingRegulations

[Paul Leblanc]

The FIDE rules seem to pertain to OTB chess but don't explicitly say that.
Pierre, does FIDE allow online events to be rated without an arbiter present at every playing site?

[Vladimir Drkulec]

The FIDE rules seem to pertain to OTB chess but don't explicitly say that.
Pierre, does FIDE allow online events to be rated without an arbiter present at every playing site?

I don't believe so.

[Don Hack]

FIDE Anti-Cheating regulations

https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/AntiCheatingRegulations

For clarity, I was referring to CFC-specific guidance. I don't think many Canadian events fall into categories A, B, or C.

If there is no specific CFC guidance, then the governance should fall to the individual TD or the governing agency's domain.

If the CFC's board is comfortable with governance at that level, then no further action is necessary.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

The CFC is continuing to work on details of Online Chess regulations. Especially troubling are the allegations of cheating. The following is our current policy.

Any player found guilty of violating a site's Fair-Play policy during a CFC Rated tournament is subject to the following standard suspension from CFC rated online play.
Age under 12 = 4 months

Age under 16 = 8 months
Others = 12 months
Some organizers may have a Fair-Play Committee consisting of strong players to assess games in place of or in addition to the above (relying on a site's policy). Any players found to have received outside assistance by such a Committee will also be subjected to the same penalties.


Any player who has their account closed for a fair-play violation will not be able to play in CFC tournaments in the future on that site, by simply creating a new account, without permission of the site.
There is an Appeals process. The appeals fee is $100 to be paid to the CFC Business Office, and will be refunded if the appeal is successful. Exact details will be determined case by case but will involve the game(s) being re-evaluated using anti-cheating software and expert opinion. The player may be asked to play supervised games to evaluate his ability, and assess his claims of innocence. Any additional costs involved in the appeal will be the responsibility of the player and are non-refundable.

https://www.chesscanada.info/forum/showthread.php?5416-Preliminary-Policy-on-Online-CFC-rated-games

[Pierre Dénommée]

The FIDE rules seem to pertain to OTB chess but don't explicitly say that.
Pierre, does FIDE allow online events to be rated without an arbiter present at every playing site?


No, only Hybrid Chess (three human resources per venue: one local organizer, one local chief arbiter and one local technical assistant, improperly stated as local technical arbiter in the rules) can be FIDE rated.

Online Chess Fair Play Rules are here in the Appendix 1 https://handbook.fide.com/files/handbook/OnlineChessRegulations.pdf .