Hello Lichess and everyone,
This is my first post although I use the site for quite a while and I absolutely love it. It is the best chess site I have ever used.
However, Lichess is undoubtedly infested with cheaters right now and must take action. Lichess is the chess site with the biggest awareness against these losers of life, but I think more can be done, using the tools of analysis.
I had recently a match vs a player with rating 1900+ and in the middle of the game I started to realize I was playing with a machine (he has been reported).
I lost and then analysed the game to see that he had only one inaccuracy. Searched further his previous matches and saw that he usually won with completely flawless games (1 inaccuracy the maximum error) while when he lost he had several mistakes and blunders.
I think that it is possible even for a Grandmaster to have a bad day, make mistakes and blunders sometimes. It happens to everybody and it's human. But this steady inconsistent performance throughout matches shows that the cheater periodically uses a machine to win matches and then tries on his own (becoming a loser naturally). Also it is very suspicious to be absolutely flawless in blitz games. To play so accurately and so fast, I think even Kasparov would not be able to do this.
Consequently, all these cheaters have succeeded to rate up and infest the ratings of 1900 and up. That makes virtually impossible to progress in rating unless you become one of them.
*Proposal*
Instead of waiting for a cheater report in order to take action, Lichess can automate the procedure.
- Compare average inaccuracies,mistakes,blunders per game with recent game and if there is too much difference, flag the player for possible cheating.
- Analyse time per move and if average time per move has steady period throughout a series of games, then flag for possible cheating.
- Analyse if inaccuracies, mistakes, blunders happen after a certain number of moves consistently (for cheaters that use a machine at the start of the game).
- Similarly, analyse if inaccuracies,mistakes, blunders happen before a certain number of moves ( (for cheaters that use a machine in the middle of the game)
Flaging of players for cheating internally would help to monitor fully the situation and when a report arrives it will help to take action immediately without further investigation.
Alternatively, you could derive a cheating probability % in the stats openly so that users are warned for suspicious players and the cheaters will start to understand that they are getting revealed.
I understand though that very good and fair players may accidentally get involved in this cheating mechanism. That can be avoided if the cheating alarm algorithm is balanced right, maybe work for some time in beta mode.
I think that if Lichess makes a very open and determined effort to battle cheaters it will become even more popular.
In any way, I will continue to use Lichess hoping that it can deal with cheating more efficiently in the future, so we, the fair players can rate up some time.
This is my first post although I use the site for quite a while and I absolutely love it. It is the best chess site I have ever used.
However, Lichess is undoubtedly infested with cheaters right now and must take action. Lichess is the chess site with the biggest awareness against these losers of life, but I think more can be done, using the tools of analysis.
I had recently a match vs a player with rating 1900+ and in the middle of the game I started to realize I was playing with a machine (he has been reported).
I lost and then analysed the game to see that he had only one inaccuracy. Searched further his previous matches and saw that he usually won with completely flawless games (1 inaccuracy the maximum error) while when he lost he had several mistakes and blunders.
I think that it is possible even for a Grandmaster to have a bad day, make mistakes and blunders sometimes. It happens to everybody and it's human. But this steady inconsistent performance throughout matches shows that the cheater periodically uses a machine to win matches and then tries on his own (becoming a loser naturally). Also it is very suspicious to be absolutely flawless in blitz games. To play so accurately and so fast, I think even Kasparov would not be able to do this.
Consequently, all these cheaters have succeeded to rate up and infest the ratings of 1900 and up. That makes virtually impossible to progress in rating unless you become one of them.
*Proposal*
Instead of waiting for a cheater report in order to take action, Lichess can automate the procedure.
- Compare average inaccuracies,mistakes,blunders per game with recent game and if there is too much difference, flag the player for possible cheating.
- Analyse time per move and if average time per move has steady period throughout a series of games, then flag for possible cheating.
- Analyse if inaccuracies, mistakes, blunders happen after a certain number of moves consistently (for cheaters that use a machine at the start of the game).
- Similarly, analyse if inaccuracies,mistakes, blunders happen before a certain number of moves ( (for cheaters that use a machine in the middle of the game)
Flaging of players for cheating internally would help to monitor fully the situation and when a report arrives it will help to take action immediately without further investigation.
Alternatively, you could derive a cheating probability % in the stats openly so that users are warned for suspicious players and the cheaters will start to understand that they are getting revealed.
I understand though that very good and fair players may accidentally get involved in this cheating mechanism. That can be avoided if the cheating alarm algorithm is balanced right, maybe work for some time in beta mode.
I think that if Lichess makes a very open and determined effort to battle cheaters it will become even more popular.
In any way, I will continue to use Lichess hoping that it can deal with cheating more efficiently in the future, so we, the fair players can rate up some time.
