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Thread: 5A1. Chess in a COVID-19 Environment

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nikolay Noritsyn View Post
    If you are able to set up a system of clear rules on what happens when "Any player found guilty" but where the player does not concede that he has indeed cheated - I will gladly volunteer to analyze games and give my opinion on possible cheating. Until then, I don't feel comfortable of being responsible for someone who is possibly not guilty being banned.
    We will keep that in mind. Thank you.

  2. #12
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    I only have experience with chess.com screening for cheating in our BCCF tournaments and they seem to do a good job.
    I think we're asking for trouble if we set up our own complaints department. Why not accept the service provider's
    judgement and spare us the agony of arguments and appeals?
    Paul Leblanc
    Treasurer, Chess Foundation of Canada
    CFC Voting Member

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Leblanc View Post
    I only have experience with chess.com screening for cheating in our BCCF tournaments and they seem to do a good job.
    I think we're asking for trouble if we set up our own complaints department. Why not accept the service provider's
    judgement and spare us the agony of arguments and appeals?

    Right now if the chess server bans the player for play during a CFC rated event they are automatically banned for a period of time from CFC online events. The problem is that they go elsewhere on a different server and play and possibly cheat again. They can't do that because they are banned for a period of time. If we don't take this action, we can't have online play CFC rated. No one will play online if cheating is rampant.

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Leblanc View Post
    I only have experience with chess.com screening for cheating in our BCCF tournaments and they seem to do a good job.
    I think we're asking for trouble if we set up our own complaints department. Why not accept the service provider's
    judgement and spare us the agony of arguments and appeals?
    So at first I thought similarly, but then I got access to some documentation (not chess.com specific) that explained the statistical approach more thoroughly.

    Now, I am not a stats guy, but it seems the challenge is that whereas such processes work quite well at the upper end (like someone playing at a 3000 level is clearly unlikely), people getting auto-caught at the lower levels may include false positives. I know of at least three Canadian cases that are currently escalating through American tribunals to get their online suspensions overturned. In all of those cases, we're looking at juniors who seemed to be improving too quickly.

    Finally, in regards to your last sentence regarding arguments and appeals, well as soon as we start taking online platform suspensions and extending them into CFC suspensions, well then we are going to be hit with arguments and appeals. So, as I've previously provided internally, we need some kind of appeals process:

    from an internal email of mine last month:

    SOLUTION: This is something that the pending CFC Online Committee could develop fullycompletely. In a nutshell, when someone is "caught" cheating based on"statistical evidence", that they can appeal to have theirskill level ratified. The most obvious way is that they provethemselves at an OTB event. However, even without that, we could set thefollowing online:

    1) player must be on a Zoom call (or equivalent features)
    2) with camera on for video
    3) with microphone on too
    4) with sharing of full screen
    5) allowing Zoom Host "RemoteControl" (for random Task Manager checks)
    6) absolutely no headphones nor anything else near/in ears
    7) second camera behind the player, capturing most of the room, under desk, etc.
    8) no more than one bathroom break per hour

  5. #15
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    Regulation of bathroom breaks is a bit iffy and might violate human rights laws against discrimination against people with certain disabilities. When you gotta go, you gotta go. Some people have to take diuretics for high blood pressure or other reasons and one break per hour might not be enough. As an IT person the only way I would hand someone control of my computer would be if I had a computer that I used only for playing chess and nothing else ever. I would probably wipe the computer and reinstall the operating system after each tournament which might not be feasible.

    None of those cases in that appeal involve CFC rated chess so they are not even within our jurisdiction.

  6. #16
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    Due to a rash of account closings in April I posted the following:

    http://www.chesscanada.info/forum/sh...unt-suspension

    With everyone going online to play chess when regular over the board play is largely impossible, a trend has emerged.

    First off, chess.com has countermeasures which will catch cheating. I am not fully aware of what they are but some of them can result in a false positive for cheating.

    Most of the false positives seem to be centred around a certain behaviour.

    I am not omniscient but a number of kids who I know to be of good character have been caught up in this accusation of cheating. When I question their parents, the facts of the case seem to boil down to the same or similar circumstance. They opened a new window on their desktop or changed the focus from the chess.com window that they were using and opened something else on their desktop. In one case the boy was doing homework in word at the same time as playing a game. This is not advisable as a practice but it is hardly cheating. Long ago I recall one of my good friends doing his homework while playing an over the board game. In another case, the girl found the game a bit slow and boring so she was watching a movie at the same time as she was playing a slow game, again in a different tab or window on her browser. So if you do this you are likely to draw attention and an accusation, particularly if you play particularly well in the game in question.

    Chess.com has the capability to analyze every game though I am occasionally skeptical of the results of this analysis particularly when it says that I played a game with very high accuracy on the order of 98%. My komodo engine usually gives slightly lower evaluations.

    Chess.com usually offers a way to reinstate your account. Their immediate offer is that you can get your frozen account back, if you admit to the cheating. If you actually did cheat, this is probably the way to go. If you did not cheat, do not admit to a crime that you did not commit. Appeal the suspension.

    In a communist or socialist country if you are tortured and induced to confess to your crimes, admitting to crimes you didn't commit usually meant that you immediately or after a period of time disappeared or were killed for those non-existent crimes. If you declined to admit your "crimes" you usually did not die. I think the torturers and those behind the charges had to fill out more paperwork if they killed someone who did not confess and presumably there was a lot of that paperwork. Later when the regimes fell, the paperwork would still be around to help convict the overzealous torturer and their bosses. In a similar vein, if the police or prosecutors charge you with a crime you didn't commit, you often hear of false confessions for crimes the supposed guilty parties could not have committed. This is usually a very bad idea.

  7. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aris Marghetis View Post

    5) allowing Zoom Host "RemoteControl" (for random Task Manager checks)
    There are too many security risks involved with giving total remote access to a computer. I agree with Vlad. Another option would be to restore your computer from a saved backup image image from an external hard drive.

    Even if I thrust you, your computer could be infected by a malware or someone else could already be in control of your computer. Allowing remote control to anybody is unsafe. This can never be done on a computer with a hard drive full of sensitive information. Furthermore, it would be easy to fool the system by running any operating system in virtuabox. You would be remotely controlling the virtual machine, but the cheater could easily use the host computer to cheat.

    The player could be running Linux or BSD in which case the way in which the task manager is accessed would be different.

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pierre Dénommée View Post
    There are too many security risks involved with giving total remote access to a computer. I agree with Vlad. Another option would be to restore your computer from a saved backup image image from an external hard drive.

    Even if I thrust you, your computer could be infected by a malware or someone else could already be in control of your computer. Allowing remote control to anybody is unsafe. This can never be done on a computer with a hard drive full of sensitive information. Furthermore, it would be easy to fool the system by running any operating system in virtuabox. You would be remotely controlling the virtual machine, but the cheater could easily use the host computer to cheat.

    The player could be running Linux or BSD in which case the way in which the task manager is accessed would be different.
    Yes, images would be one way to do it. I have some old Dell boxes lying around that have XP or Windows 7 with reinstallation disks and I had gotten reinstalling the operating system and all drivers down to a science. I have used cloned disk images extensively but in the case of Dell the disks provided by the manufacturers seem to be just as quick.

    Anyway, giving access to your primary computer that you do banking and such to anyone else is such a VERY BAD IDEA. Same goes for sharing your email passwords or PIN.

    One reason that I only use the president@chess.ca account rarely is that others have access and it is not secure.

  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pierre Dénommée View Post
    There are too many security risks involved with giving total remote access to a computer. I agree with Vlad. Another option would be to restore your computer from a saved backup image image from an external hard drive.

    Even if I thrust you, your computer could be infected by a malware or someone else could already be in control of your computer. Allowing remote control to anybody is unsafe. This can never be done on a computer with a hard drive full of sensitive information. Furthermore, it would be easy to fool the system by running any operating system in virtuabox. You would be remotely controlling the virtual machine, but the cheater could easily use the host computer to cheat.

    The player could be running Linux or BSD in which case the way in which the task manager is accessed would be different.
    Yes, I understand and appreciate your point. I guess if the rear-side camera is good enough, we can skip this step, and replace it instead with something like:

    "the overseeing CFC rep can at any time ask the player to show his Task Manager"

    Another possibility, which was Fred's good idea, especially as the pandemic winds down, is that the appealing player is simply matched against a CFC rep to play against, in a semi-public place (can include a local chess club). As long as there's a way for an appealing player to prove themselves without any cheating doubt.

    The CFC rep-player would be appointed by the CFC, which could actually be a new CFC Online Commitee that receives appeals to Fair Play -related suspensions.

  10. #20
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    Our club organized the "slow" online event (though not the CFC rated yet, as it was a tryout). One of the members got banned. Seems he was new the chess.com and they believed that he can not play that good. At the end chess.com suggested to create a new account and move one.
    Other occasion my opponent was banned because he played too well to chess.com thinking. At the end chess.com put the title to his name and restored his nickname.
    On the third case, I suspected that the player played too good for a human. After several days the person's account was closed.
    Conclusion - cheating happens, with the human intervention it is possible to resolve some situations.

    Discussions on the supervision - I hope there will be reduced requirements of supervision for the club style CFC rated games. In OTB games the arbiter is a player too. The same might be in online tournaments.
    .*-1

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