How To Catch a Cheater

I got this great idea. Put a few bots in the rated games, and no one knows who they are, and they are stockfish bots playing at 95% strength. Strong enough that only a cheater can beat them. If someone beats them, instaban.

Think about this. How many times have we heard that "so and so played with 99% accuracy. Or he had 0,0,0 and still not banned" Then everyone spamming the report button, and the mods no longer checking the reports, and relying on a person who cheats all the time showing a hot winning trend to catch. But what about the ones who cheat every now and then, not to show they have any crazy winning streaks, the guy who throws in the random blunder, and then goes full stockfish mode for the rest of the game? How do we catch them? Throw in 1000 stockfish bots and name them with a random name generator. If you lose to one of those bots, you lose no rating points. If you beat it, you're banned immediately, and your account is closed. Problems solved.

I don't know how complex it is to code something like this, but I think that will be the answer. It might take some time to implement, but it's worth it in the end, and Lichess would not have to change the current system they have in place, just augment it with the random stockfish bots, and give them random ELOs that do not go up or down either for their wins or losses. Obviously, we don't want these bots to have 3000 + ratings, then it would be pointless to have them. You want them running at all levels. Also, it is a deterrent to cheaters after they have been banned a few times. They will get tired of making new accounts, just to get sniped by the bot later. They never know if they will face the bot right away, or if they get caught by the bot later.

Also, make sure the bots have book randomization at 100% so they are not identified by them playing the top computer opening line.

I think this is a cool idea, no?

...Your solution to bot cheating is to make people play more bots?

this just shows you know little about cheating ...

This is worse than doing nothing

@midnightmusicnetwork
Top Idea. Something creative has to be done very soon cause the pond is too murky theese days.

Here’s a picture:

You have a large fish pond (lichess). It was at first filled with clear clean water from pure nature, and with time dirt fell down from the surroundings. The dirt first settled at the bottom. Then it separated and repels the surrounding water. And it's starting to rise. The dirt, which is clear, colorful and visible, is quickly eaten by the fish, crayfish and other aquatic animals in the middle of the pond. The dirt, which is more slimy, not so visible and which is not seen until it has risen to the surface, just stays up there against the surface as a thick layer that poisons and darkens. Eventually the fish and animals down below does not get enough light, darkens, die and turns to dirt that eventually rise to the surface where they merges with the ever-growing layer of slime and shit. Eventually over half of the upper part of the pond is just slime and dirt.

So within 30 miinutes the moderators have deleted this post.

@dnowmects said in #2:

...Your solution to bot cheating is to make people play more bots? Yes, but you don't lose points to the sanctioned secret bots, you do to a cheater though.

@Cedur216 said in #3:

this just shows you know little about cheating ...

How would they know if they were playing the bot or not? Sure, they could resign when they realize the bot is matching them top move for move, but you can catch their pattern. They slam dunk everyone else with top engine moves and resign against the bots. It would be an obvious pattern to detect.

@Autofill said in #4:

This is worse than doing nothing

Why? Explain your position.

This idea has several problems. In no particular order:

• It is unethical to force innocent players to play against engines.
• It would require a huge number of bots to give players a reasonable chance to play against them. The idea is not feasible computationally.
• Practically speaking, it would be difficult to tune an engine in a way that a good player cannot win even a single game against it, but a cheater still can. You would have to run a large number of experiments against the strongest players in the world, who are very unlikely to agree to that.
• It would only catch cheaters that are using an engine at full strength or close to it. These are very easy to find already.

There are of course probably more problems. These were just off the top of my head.

All of the, 'New cheat-detection!' ideas I've read're way too gimmicky to work well.