cheating paranoia

@ColossusChess said in #4:

You are a weak player and no expert. How can you even comment on a topic you have no understanding of?

Right. Kind of like say "good game" to a GM after he kicks your ass.

Don't bother me with your obvious nonsense! Accuracy can be defined in an infinite number of ways. Most of them are unfit for practical purposes and the Lichess accuracy certainly is. The question is not whether it's calculated correctly which it certainly is. The question is whether the algorithm is good or not. To quote chess.c:

"Chess.com’s Accuracy score is now powered by 'CAPS2,' an improved version of the original Chess.com 'CAPS' (Computer Accuracy Precision Score) algorithm.
Moves are still compared against the top engine recommendations, but the math on how these are calculated has changed. Why? Well, most chess players - even low-rated ones - make a lot of the best moves!
Previously, CAPS (v1) looked to create a 0-100 band within the normal human player range. So, scoring perhaps 40% 'Best' moves, which is very low, was equal to single digits on CAPS. And, scoring a very high number of 'Best' moves, but not a perfect game, was often rated 99.9 on CAPS, even though it wasn’t played perfectly.
This made some people feel bad (on the low end), and led to a lot of cheating allegations (on the high end)."

@ColossusChess

1. Don't condescend to me or any member of the forum based on rating. Its against the norms of debate. If you disagree with me, you can constructively dismantle my argumentation. Plus. we already have many players of different rating levels here, majority of the reactions agreeing with me.

2. "You are a weak player and no expert. How can you even comment on a topic you have no understanding of?" this is my exact point - most of the people accusing of cheating don't have the expertise to analyze and detect cheating. Its innocent until found guilty, not guilty until innocent.

3. "The high accuracy is the fault of Lichess staff alone! They could easily develop a sensible algorithm to calculate it so it gives more reasonable results like chess.com-...." Again, it seems like you are supporting my argumentation. Yes. the accuracy designation system is flawed and easily gives high accuracies, this is why I critique the sole use of accuracy as a metric to declare cheating.

@discoooooord said in #13:

@ColossusChess

1. Don't condescend to me or any member of the forum based on rating. Its against the norms of debate. If you disagree with me, you can constructively dismantle my argumentation. Plus. we already have many players of different rating levels here, majority of the reactions agreeing with me.

Who cares? The majority means nothing. It does not mean you are right at all.
I have seen plenty of threads where the acccusation was justified from my point of view and the accuser was ridiculed by guys like you and I also read many threads where the accusations were obviously not true or the percentage of cheaters was estimated too high.

It isn't very hard to decide whether someone is lkely a cheater or not but some expertise is required since IMO you have to look for cases when the cheater clearly reveals himself by making an odd decision.

#14 nice deflection there.

The point that OP makes - of the overflooded forums with reports of accusations - reports that, I believe, should be handled discreetly and behind the scenes - still stands. It's nice how you started using modifiers like "IMO" maybe the penny is dropping that you are not an oracle and that what you write is precisely - your opinion. And that others in the forums ought to be able to express theirs, without being ridiculed by "stronger" players.

IMO you should take a pause to reflect and I hope you grow as a person...

No, I certainly won't. Unfortunately Lichess moderation is not always fair if it comes to cheating. I have already witnessed several cases so it's understandable that some players go public.

@ColossusChess said in #4:

You are a weak player and no expert. How can you even comment on a topic you have no understanding of?
And you are not a moderator

I have no idea how much cheating happens on lichess. All I can say is that the regular threads about the subject have put me off playing online, so I have been able to arrange two OTB sessions each week now on a Tuesday evening and Saturday afternoon. That is enough for me really as I only want to play social chess and then have a chat about the game afterwards. I have met some really good people over the past 4/5 months doing this.

I did watch one broadcast on YouTube where the chap went onto the Dark Web and bought older chess.com and lichess chess accounts that he said were being used for cheating. Sounds bonkers to me but I guess it is happening.

@stockwellpete said in #18:

so I have been able to arrange two OTB sessions each week

Which is an excellent way to avoid playing against cheaters.

Online you can't really avoid it, so everyone who doesn't have the opportunity to play a friendly otb game each week is unfortunate regarding this.

While I can understand everyone who struggles with being suspicious of a an opponent and just want know whether it is correct or not, you obviously can't blame people publicly. It doesn't really accomplish anything either, since no you can not expect that a wild discussion in a forum will be the foundation of someone getting banned. A report on the other side can be.

Of course it is annoying that sometimes it takes forever, but we need to accept that lichess wants a very low false positive rate and this takes often a good amount of sample games.

@ronin3b said in #16:

reports that, I believe, should be handled discreetly and behind the scenes

Well, how that fits with "LIbre" ¿?
Behind the scenes doesn't sound like transparent at all, does it? And Kramnik, besides the meme, it's a world champion of chess, who defeated arguably the GOAT to win the crown. And Caruana and So expressed similar concerns. By the end of the day, cheating online is a hard thing to prove, to test, or to discover. Virtually impossible is selective cheating. Or picking an opening physical book beside the laptop. If that goes detected then I am ready to start believing in miracles. People might overestimate or underestimate it. But it exists. Hiding it "behind the scenes" is not the way to go. I think the fellow @ColossusChess, who has a very good rating btw, argued that it is naive to dismiss cheating as a possibility (which I think is the spirit of the post), and also that people get super aggressive when someone dares to hint that cheating could happen at all. Both statements are correct and heavy unpopular among heavy posters. Just that, not quantum physics!