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Study: some numbers what cheating and doping concerns

#2

Interesting, 6.2 % for online cheating. This seems to refer to if a person cheated at all during the last year, not 6.2% of the games, so estimating the frequency of cheating overall is not possible from this.
But the 6.2% would be the upper limit if we assume that the people who cheat play as many or few games as non cheating players. Which I think would be fair.

Participants were required to be at least 16 years old and possess a chess rating from classical chess [...] Ratings from online chess platforms (e.g., Chess.com) were not sufficient to participate in the study.

This on the other hand excludes most of the players online I think so it's not very useful for getting an upper estimate for cheating overall online, just among rated club players.

Not sure what to conclude from this. But interesting nonetheless.

Interesting, 6.2 % for online cheating. This seems to refer to if a person cheated at all during the last year, not 6.2% of the games, so estimating the frequency of cheating overall is not possible from this. But the 6.2% would be the upper limit if we assume that the people who cheat play as many or few games as non cheating players. Which I think would be fair. >Participants were required to be at least 16 years old and possess a chess rating from classical chess [...] Ratings from online chess platforms (e.g., Chess.com) were not sufficient to participate in the study. This on the other hand excludes most of the players online I think so it's not very useful for getting an upper estimate for cheating overall online, just among rated club players. Not sure what to conclude from this. But interesting nonetheless.
#3

Truly interesting is "An estimated 7.1 % of players have cheated at least once in an OTB chess game within the last 12 months."
that is pretty high number. Cheating while sitting in playing hall is not easy without being caught. You are not allowed to have a mobile phone, smart watch or about anything remotely electrica with you while playing. Hiding phones to toilets... not always possible and doing without being detected.

Truly interesting is "An estimated 7.1 % of players have cheated at least once in an OTB chess game within the last 12 months." that is pretty high number. Cheating while sitting in playing hall is not easy without being caught. You are not allowed to have a mobile phone, smart watch or about anything remotely electrica with you while playing. Hiding phones to toilets... not always possible and doing without being detected.
#4

While it promotes big numbers, it seems that actual cheating is not that high - and most of it OTB is agreeing to a result (mostly a draw) beforehand, or account sharing online.

I also don't understand some parts, like "Participated in a fictitious competition"... 37 % of online players agreed to this. Like - how? What even are those events, and why would anyone participate in those at all?

While it promotes big numbers, it seems that actual cheating is not that high - and most of it OTB is agreeing to a result (mostly a draw) beforehand, or account sharing online. I also don't understand some parts, like "Participated in a fictitious competition"... 37 % of online players agreed to this. Like - how? What even are those events, and why would anyone participate in those at all?
#5

@petri999 said in #3:

Truly interesting is "An estimated 7.1 % of players have cheated at least once in an OTB chess game within the last 12 months."
that is pretty high number. Cheating while sitting in playing hall is not easy without being caught. You are not allowed to have a mobile phone, smart watch or about anything remotely electrica with you while playing. Hiding phones to toilets... not always possible and doing without being detected.

It includes prearranged results, which seems the biggest part of it - something that's pretty irrelevant for your game.

Someone walking by and giving is a thing, and especially with younger players where some overly ambitious parents or trainers (or simply friends) want to help.

No phones allowed, but I play a lot of classical OTB tournaments within the region of the survey, and have been checked exactly zero times, as the vast majority. It truly wouldn't hurt to do some more random checks around the toilet etc. But this is also typically not easy, as playing players, finished players, and spectators all mix up.

@petri999 said in #3: > Truly interesting is "An estimated 7.1 % of players have cheated at least once in an OTB chess game within the last 12 months." > that is pretty high number. Cheating while sitting in playing hall is not easy without being caught. You are not allowed to have a mobile phone, smart watch or about anything remotely electrica with you while playing. Hiding phones to toilets... not always possible and doing without being detected. It includes prearranged results, which seems the biggest part of it - something that's pretty irrelevant for your game. Someone walking by and giving is a thing, and especially with younger players where some overly ambitious parents or trainers (or simply friends) want to help. No phones allowed, but I play *a lot* of classical OTB tournaments within the region of the survey, and have been checked exactly zero times, as the vast majority. It truly wouldn't hurt to do some more random checks around the toilet etc. But this is also typically not easy, as playing players, finished players, and spectators all mix up.
#6

I'm not buying the idea that they can keep responses anonymous and still restrict to only otb players. And I also believe that otb players are an order of magnitude less likely to cheat, so by default, willing respondents are the wrong people to ask. Then, answers are taken on "the honor system", I'm not buying that.

It's as if they went through all that work to specifically avoid reaching unwanted conclusions. Are they really trying to convince me that OTB cheating is less prevalent than online? YHGTBKM.

At the beginning they claim that Magnus accused Hans of cheating in their game. False. Magnus knew he had cheated in many OTB games before that game, and raised that point to the tournament officials long before the beginning of the tournament. Immediately after that debacle, the cover-up began by publicly discrediting anybody who looked at his 40 move zero CPL games OTB and tried to use them as evidence that he had cheated.

You may note that Hans has not taken the polygraph test he agreed to when he lost the match to Dubov. He's also mysteriously withdrawn from tournaments since. Read into it what you will.

The article looks to me like they did everything in their power to arrive at a prearranged conclusion. Now I don't think they tried as hard as they did to make it unreadable. It's common practice to use a superscript number to reference a bibliography entry so as to not make a document unreadable. This was painful to go through with all of the links scattered all through the text.

Don't even get me started on the fact that they included drinking a cup of coffee before or during an OTB game in their substance abuse positive category.

I'm not buying the idea that they can keep responses anonymous and still restrict to only otb players. And I also believe that otb players are an order of magnitude less likely to cheat, so by default, willing respondents are the wrong people to ask. Then, answers are taken on "the honor system", I'm not buying that. It's as if they went through all that work to specifically avoid reaching unwanted conclusions. Are they really trying to convince me that OTB cheating is less prevalent than online? YHGTBKM. At the beginning they claim that Magnus accused Hans of cheating in their game. False. Magnus knew he had cheated in many OTB games before that game, and raised that point to the tournament officials long before the beginning of the tournament. Immediately after that debacle, the cover-up began by publicly discrediting anybody who looked at his 40 move zero CPL games OTB and tried to use them as evidence that he had cheated. You may note that Hans has not taken the polygraph test he agreed to when he lost the match to Dubov. He's also mysteriously withdrawn from tournaments since. Read into it what you will. The article looks to me like they did everything in their power to arrive at a prearranged conclusion. Now I don't think they tried as hard as they did to make it unreadable. It's common practice to use a superscript number to reference a bibliography entry so as to not make a document unreadable. This was painful to go through with all of the links scattered all through the text. Don't even get me started on the fact that they included drinking a cup of coffee before or during an OTB game in their substance abuse positive category.
#7

@V1g1yy said in #6:

Don't even get me started on the fact that they included drinking a cup of coffee before or during an OTB game in their substance abuse positive category.

And you should certainly compare that to non-chessplayers. If 70 % of the population have caffeine during the day, and they now find 70 % of chess players do, I would be very hesitant to read anything into that...

@V1g1yy said in #6: > Don't even get me started on the fact that they included drinking a cup of coffee before or during an OTB game in their substance abuse positive category. And you should certainly compare that to non-chessplayers. If 70 % of the population have caffeine during the day, and they now find 70 % of chess players do, I would be very hesitant to read anything into that...
#8

@nadjarostowa said in #4:

I also don't understand some parts, like "Participated in a fictitious competition"... 37 % of online players agreed to this. Like - how? What even are those events, and why would anyone participate in those at all?

I don't have any current information, but I read a report from the times when USSR, Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia existed.

FIDE has a long history of organizing tournaments where all or majority of the games are completely prearranged. Players are essentially getting paid for hand-filling a score sheet with predetermined moves. I've personally seen the copies old style postal money transfer forms where the "correspondence to the receiver" was filled with the references to the chess magazine that was supposed to be source of the moves in the game.

They used some very obscure chess journals. I've seen references to a super-obscure Tajikistani magazine that was typeset in Cyrillic but used non-slavic language. One of the moderators of the other site knows of completely fake tournament where the game scores were copied from an early computer chess magazine.

Some of those tournaments were just partially fake. For example short one day chess meeting was expanded to a multi-day multi-year international cycle of tournaments. All participants were men with a military-style haircuts and all were wearing formal suit & tie attire. By carefully framing indoor photos there was even reasonably realistic looking photographical evidence.

This was done in the days of "gelatin on a plastic film" photography. It was possible to piece together the normally invisible film production markings made between the holes of the perforation. But this was done by the independent investigators.

It was done to "harvest" the governmental subsidies for those tournaments.

I have no idea how all this happens nowadays, but I've heard from a multiple sources that the former "Eastern Bloc" countries continue this tradition.

@nadjarostowa said in #4: > I also don't understand some parts, like "Participated in a fictitious competition"... 37 % of online players agreed to this. Like - how? What even are those events, and why would anyone participate in those at all? I don't have any current information, but I read a report from the times when USSR, Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia existed. FIDE has a long history of organizing tournaments where all or majority of the games are completely prearranged. Players are essentially getting paid for hand-filling a score sheet with predetermined moves. I've personally seen the copies old style postal money transfer forms where the "correspondence to the receiver" was filled with the references to the chess magazine that was supposed to be source of the moves in the game. They used some very obscure chess journals. I've seen references to a super-obscure Tajikistani magazine that was typeset in Cyrillic but used non-slavic language. One of the moderators of the other site knows of completely fake tournament where the game scores were copied from an early computer chess magazine. Some of those tournaments were just partially fake. For example short one day chess meeting was expanded to a multi-day multi-year international cycle of tournaments. All participants were men with a military-style haircuts and all were wearing formal suit & tie attire. By carefully framing indoor photos there was even reasonably realistic looking photographical evidence. This was done in the days of "gelatin on a plastic film" photography. It was possible to piece together the normally invisible film production markings made between the holes of the perforation. But this was done by the independent investigators. It was done to "harvest" the governmental subsidies for those tournaments. I have no idea how all this happens nowadays, but I've heard from a multiple sources that the former "Eastern Bloc" countries continue this tradition.
#9

@kalafiorczyk

Yes, I can totally see this OTB, especially for obtaining rating and titles. But they claim it for online chess (37%), which I don't understand at all.

@kalafiorczyk Yes, I can totally see this OTB, especially for obtaining rating and titles. But they claim it for online chess (37%), which I don't understand at all.
#10

@nadjarostowa said in #9:

But they claim it for online chess (37%), which I don't understand at all.
For example the "green pawn" site has (or had) something called "chess leagues" starting at "wood league" and ending at "diamond league" that had really weird scoring system that rewarded quantity of play instead of quality of play.

The league points were redeemable for premium membership at their site and/or the partner's site (Duolingo).

They also did or are doing similar cross-promotions with Twitch.com and Kick.com.

All the promotions have weird scoring systems ostensibly to avoid encouraging cheating with the engines. I presume that this is the origin of the "fictious competition".

Possibly, the "chess marathons" that were/are organized here would also qualify as "fictious tournaments".

@nadjarostowa said in #9: > But they claim it for online chess (37%), which I don't understand at all. For example the "green pawn" site has (or had) something called "chess leagues" starting at "wood league" and ending at "diamond league" that had really weird scoring system that rewarded quantity of play instead of quality of play. The league points were redeemable for premium membership at their site and/or the partner's site (Duolingo). They also did or are doing similar cross-promotions with Twitch.com and Kick.com. All the promotions have weird scoring systems ostensibly to avoid encouraging cheating with the engines. I presume that this is the origin of the "fictious competition". Possibly, the "chess marathons" that were/are organized here would also qualify as "fictious tournaments".

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