P&B Chess League - Season 8 coming soon….

[johnnydun]

23 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

It may be my last if they don't reinstall my account - they can do one if they think I am getting a second account.

EBT's?

 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

EBT's?
 

I'll call myself Sevco2021

[Trogdor]

@DeeTillEhDeh

You must have a right to appeal. Were you analysing a previous game while playing another that had a similar position? It doesn't sound like it, to be fair.

I have my own beef with chess.com. How is c2 a mistake here. It still wins. I can play c×b2 and win but c2 is hardly a mistake. 

My opponent fricking resigned afterwards. 

Edited May 8, 2021 by Trogdor

[Aim Here]

2 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

I just find it bizarre that, after what is probably my poorest run of form, this has happened.
 

You've been on a unbeaten streak of 32 games on the trot, and in that period you got a frankly implausible 98.49 average CAPS score - a measure of how well your moves match that of the chess.com computer engine - with a minimum of 94.9. For a two-player zero-sum game, that 'poor run of form' is surely going to ring alarm bells - especially one where the site's rating system actively tries to match folks up with people of their own skill level.  For comparison, I took the chess.com account of the first titled FIDE master whose chess.com account I could think of - International Master Levy Rozman/Gothamchess - and his chess.com front page's average CAPS is about 75, and it varies from 16 to 96.

(Edit: I was curious about Magnus Carlsen's CAPS scores; his last 50 game range from 58.5 to 99.3 with an average of 93.24)

 

The chance of a 32-game unbeaten run happening through chance  if we conservatively assume that people around your apparent skill level draw 1/3 of the time would be something like 0.00023%. There's mathematical reasons why that's an underestimate, but you can still bump it up by a couple of orders of magnitude and it's still unfeasible.

Now it is true that daily games do tend to have people playing better and the CAPS score isn't a cheat-detector (chess.com uses an actual cheat detection algorithm, which has also come up against you) and that everyone gets a very high score now and again, but that kind of consistent performance over that length of time is massively unlikely. Either you were consulting an engine, or you're a humungous statistical outlier.

 

Edited May 8, 2021 by Aim Here

[DeeTillEhDeh]

You've been on a unbeaten streak of 32 games on the trot, and in that period you got a frankly implausible 98.49 average CAPS score - a measure of how well your moves match that of the chess.com computer engine - with a minimum of 94.9. For a two-player zero-sum game, that 'poor run of form' is surely going to ring alarm bells - especially one where the site's rating system actively tries to match folks up with people of their own skill level.  For comparison, I took the chess.com account of the first titled FIDE master whose chess.com account I could think of - International Master Levy Rozman/Gothamchess - and his chess.com front page's average CAPS is about 75, and it varies from 16 to 96.
The chance of a 32-game unbeaten run happening through chance  if we conservatively assume that people around your apparent skill level draw 1/3 of the time would be something like 0.00023%. There's mathematical reasons why that's an underestimate, but you can still bump it up by a couple of orders of magnitude and it's still unfeasible.
Now it is true that daily games do tend to have people playing better and the CAPS score isn't a cheat-detector (chess.com uses an actual cheat detection algorithm, which has also come up against you) and that everyone gets a very high score now and again, but that kind of consistent performance over that length of time is massively unlikely. Either you were consulting an engine, or you're a humungous statistical outlier.
 

Do remember that the first season was an odd one - a lot of players mismatched - since being promoted Ive won a grand total of 3 games - one of those against PnBMathematics - the standard has been a lot tougher. I was not matched up by chess.com - all games were in this league or the Cup.

32 games analysed is not a lot either statistically - if I played regularly I'd be losing or having a lower game as I would not be able to spend the time looking at lines in games.

There is also a definite link to the last game - as the banhammer came down right after. I know they look at speed of moves - previous games I've been a lot slower but that one just whizzed by as the moves were pretty obvious.

[Aim Here]

9 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Do remember that the first season was an odd one - a lot of players mismatched - since being promoted Ive won a grand total of 3 games - one of those against PnBMathematics - the standard has been a lot tougher. 32 games analysed is not a lot either statistically - if I played regularly I'd be losing or having a lower game as I would not be able to spend the time looking at lines in games.

There is also a definite link to the last game - as the banhammer came down right after. I know they look at speed of moves - previous games I've been a lot slower but that one just whizzed by as the moves were pretty obvious.

They'll surely only be looking at move speed in live games. It makes no sense for daily, where players go away and go to sleep and eat and work and do actual real stuff in between moves.

As for 'the last game', it might just be that an unbeaten run of a certain length, or some hazier metric based on that fires the cheat detector into action and looking more closely at your account. It's noteworthy that every game in the 32-game streak is analyzed, but then the analysis is patchier for the games before that, suggesting that the cheat detector was fired up and looking at all the games in that window, not just the one against PnBMathematics; you're certainly not going to be banned for a single game against a weak player. Everybody gets the odd score in the high nineties now and again.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Aim Here

[DeeTillEhDeh]

They'll surely only be looking at move speed in live games. It makes no sense for daily, where players go away and go to sleep and eat and work and do actual real stuff in between moves.
As for 'the last game', it might just be that an unbeaten run of a certain length, or some hazier metric based on that fires the cheat detector into action and looking more closely at your account. It's noteworthy that every game in the 32-win streak is analyzed, but then the analysis is patchier for the games before that, suggesting that the cheat detector was fired up and looking at all the games in that window, not just the one against PnBMathematics; you're certainly not going to be banned for a single game against a weak player. Everybody gets the odd score in the high nineties now and again.

Quite possibly the length of run triggered it then?

The analysis prior to that was entirely for blitz games - I didn't play daily that much at all before that point.

Does the algorithm take account of the level of players played against or the type of game?

I would have expected to lose at some point - there are players better than me here - I think DearyMe would beat me as white as I struggled against him as white.

I also suspect you'd beat me given the way you've strolled your games so far.

[Scorge]

*peeks back in*

You have got the right of appeal if the chess polis nick you, though exactly how you evidence that I don't really know.

I'm guessing their algorithm must be pretty watertight in case anyone was to go legal on them, but as I said much earlier if you've played straight and been swiped it's quite unlucky. Hope you can sort it.

 

[Aim Here]

27 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Does the algorithm take account of the level of players played against or the type of game?
 

Chess.com's cheat detector is secret, IIRC. The lichess.org has an open source cheat detector called 'Irwin' which you can find on Github and it probably uses similar techniques, though I don't see anything obviously saying 'That guy's ranked 2300 so isn't cheating'. From a brief scan, Irwin is feeding data about every move in the applicable games, and it's engine evaluations into a neural network that's trained on a database of games with some known cheats rather than being too hung-up on the identity of the players.

 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

*peeks back in*
You have got the right of appeal if the chess polis nick you, though exactly how you evidence that I don't really know.
I'm guessing their algorithm must be pretty watertight in case anyone was to go legal on them, but as I said much earlier if you've played straight and been swiped it's quite unlucky. Hope you can sort it.
 

Apparently appeal successes are rare - I did see a thread saying that those appealing were asked to produce evidence of their ELO rating - proof from official clubs etc.

Given I haven't had an ELO rating since I was a bairn (almost 40 years ago) then I doubt I'll get very far. I don't even know how to appeal since my account is locked out.

[Curmudgeon]

Replying to the email seems to be the way to appeal.

Is it possible that it's been because your granddaughter played a move in your game with Dearyme? They might have picked it up in the chat, although it would be ludicrous if that's what it was.

Shite state of affairs regardless and I hope you get it resolved.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Replying to the email seems to be the way to appeal.
Is it possible that it's been because your granddaughter played a move in your game with Dearyme? They might have picked it up in the chat, although it would be ludicrous if that's what it was.
Shite state of affairs regardless and I hope you get it resolved.

I have another account - played one game on it yonks ago.

If folks don't mind I can use that - if there are any objections I'll just withdraw.

Being in the top league now it's unlikely I'll get a streak like that again - there's at least 2 there who I think are better than me - took all my time just drawing them. A third - GirdonEF - we've had 3 great matches - one win for me and 2 draws - all 3 very tight tussles where we both made mistakes or went against the analysis in terms of our play.

[Ludo*1]

Their cheat detection system is fairly thorough tbf:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection

It's not just one game they base it on.

ETA: Not saying that you've been cheatin Deetill, just saying that they rarely get it wrong.

They apparently only ban people if they consistently beat the game engine, consistently compare your moves to previous grandmasters in similar situations and then have a group of statisticians look at it hence the lack of appeals process:

'Chess.com's fair-play system is thorough, complex and rigorously verified by more than eight years of data from millions of games played by our own members online. Our system gathers and reviews different types of data and other information pulled automatically (and manually) from all member games.

We load these games into a tool that provides the probability that a given player is playing cleanly or with the assistance of a computer engine. Before any accounts are closed, all reports are thoroughly reviewed by a team of specialists who have reviewed and closed thousands of accounts in their roles as Chess.com statisticians.  

Though legal and practical considerations prevent Chess.com from revealing the full set of data, metrics, and tracking used to evaluate games in our fair-play tool, we can say that at the core of Chess.com's system is a statistical model that evaluates the probability of a human player matching an engine's top choices, and surpassing the confirmed clean play of some of the greatest chess players in history.'

Edited May 8, 2021 by Ludo*1

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

Oh dearie me.

eta If they were calling me a cheat, and I wasn't, I'd tell them to ram it.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Bigmouth Strikes Again

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Their cheat detection system is fairly thorough tbf:
https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection
It's not just one game they base it on.
ETA: Not saying that you've been cheatin Deetill, just saying that they rarely get it wrong.
They apparently only ban people if they consistently beat the game engine, consistently compare your moves to previous grandmasters in similar situations and then have a group of statisticians look at it hence the lack of appeals process:
'Chess.com's fair-play system is thorough, complex and rigorously verified by more than eight years of data from millions of games played by our own members online. Our system gathers and reviews different types of data and other information pulled automatically (and manually) from all member games.
We load these games into a tool that provides the probability that a given player is playing cleanly or with the assistance of a computer engine. Before any accounts are closed, all reports are thoroughly reviewed by a team of specialists who have reviewed and closed thousands of accounts in their roles as Chess.com statisticians.  
Though legal and practical considerations prevent Chess.com from revealing the full set of data, metrics, and tracking used to evaluate games in our fair-play tool, we can say that at the core of Chess.com's system is a statistical model that evaluates the probability of a human player matching an engine's top choices, and surpassing the confirmed clean play of some of the greatest chess players in history.'

My understanding is that at low level the ban is done automatically by the software, higher up they double check manually - I doubt very much there was a thorough review between the end of my last game and the 7 minutes for the account to be locked.

As I said, if people don't want me to play with another account I'll accept that- those of you who have played me several times - like GordonEF - know I can make mistakes and have brainfarts.

[Gordon EF]

1 hour ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

My understanding is that at low level the ban is done automatically by the software, higher up they double check manually - I doubt very much there was a thorough review between the end of my last game and the 7 minutes for the account to be locked.

As I said, if people don't want me to play with another account I'll accept that- those of you who have played me several times - like GordonEF - know I can make mistakes and have brainfarts.
 

I'd be surprised if a 'team' is looking through your games given you're fairly mid-ranked, in the grand scheme of things, and aren't taking part in official competitions or anything.

I've probably played you as much as anyone here (3 league games and one 960) and I'm confident you're not cheating and I'd be happy for you to continue on another account. Your style is obviously very solid and and accurate and you don't take many risks or make many mistakes which is obviously going to result in high accuracies. But as you mentioned, you made a fairly whopping error against me that led to our draw. And it wasn't really a brainfart, it was making a move that looked very intuitive but you just missed out on a less intuitive line that would have led quite easily to the win. No engine would make a move like that.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

I'd be surprised if a 'team' is looking through your games given you're fairly mid-ranked, in the grand scheme of things, and aren't taking part in official competitions or anything.
I've probably played you as much as anyone here (3 league games and one 960) and I'm confident you're not cheating and I'd be happy for you to continue on another account. Your style is obviously very solid and and accurate and you don't take many risks or make many mistakes which is obviously going to result in high accuracies. But as you mentioned, you made a fairly whopping error against me that led to our draw. And it wasn't really a brainfart, it was making a move that looked very intuitive but you just missed out on a less intuitive line that would have led quite easily to the win. No engine would make a move like that.

My style is very conservative and patient - that probably works well with lower ranked players who can be a bit gung-ho - as I've met better players this season it's got a lot tougher because my conservative play is more likely to end in the draw than all-out win or defeat.

[Trogdor]

3 hours ago, Curmudgeon said:

Replying to the email seems to be the way to appeal.

Is it possible that it's been because your granddaughter played a move in your game with Dearyme? They might have picked it up in the chat, although it would be ludicrous if that's what it was.

Shite state of affairs regardless and I hope you get it resolved.

Don't say that or I might get banhammered next.

@DeeTillEhDeh

If it helps, I have an international rating and a Scottish rating. Both over the board. I have played you so my strength can be used as a bit of a benchmark. Admittedly, it is just one game but if it would help I am happy to provide my details. I can usually gauge the strength of who I am playing and whether they are cheating. I got no sense of that. 

I hope you get it sorted.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Don't say that or I might get banhammered next.
[mention=22650]DeeTillEhDeh[/mention]
If it helps, I have an international rating and a Scottish rating. Both over the board. I have played you so my strength can be used as a bit of a benchmark. Admittedly, it is just one game but if it would help I am happy to provide my details. I can usually gauge the strength of who I am playing and whether they are cheating. I got no sense of that. 
I hope you get it sorted.

As I said, It was a battle against you - definitely the best player I've faced here, and I think you'll have the advantage next time with the white pieces.

I'd be delighted to eke out a draw again but I know it will be tough.

[Cheese]

Free the Dundee one.