This is going to be a long post. I will not mention the names of any other online Chess Sites; I do not know if Lichess wants them mentioned. If I find out later that Lichess does allow that then I will be happy to name them. In particular the subject of my essay below.
I have not played any chess for four years; four years ago I was so fed up with chess that I never wanted to see a chessboard again. Why? I was accused of engine use despite there being no evidence whatsoever. Some facts:
[1.] I was only playing correspondence chess.
[2.] I was losing games.
[3.] I checked all my games afterwards with Fritz; EVERY game that I played had NO resemblance to engine moves. Even the wins.
[4.] I was a premium member of this chess site. Yes, I was paying THEM real money! That went well. Not.
[5.] I had no problems up to that point. I was getting on well with admins and other players. I had not got any warning from the site for doing anything wrong.
[6.] I had been a team classical chess player in other sites' leagues, and a low level league admin on one. Both playing and being an admin involved ALL of my games being scanned for engine use. If I had been into cheating I would have been found out long ago. I left that site because I was too busy to play 45 45 chess; I went to another site to play correspondence chess. It was there that these baseless accusations occurred.
Timeline of events. I still have the emails from August 2015 and am looking at them.
- August 2015, suddenly I cannot log into my account. So I contact the site and ask why.
- About two weeks pass before they email me saying that I am accused of cheating on the site. No examples are given. No games where they accuse me. No base whatsoever to support their claim. I ask them for evidence.
- they reply with a boilerplate stonewall email saying that they don't discuss cheating because it would help people to cheat.
- I ask again.
- same boilerplate letter.
- By this time I am entitled to be mad. I send them the most abusive email that I can. This is beyond ridiculous. I am happy to explain any of my games and moves if I am shown the games.
- This is where things get even wackier. You ain't seen nothin yet. Because I had a paid membership that was auto renewed
the renewal date arrives. I am charged for another year of membership!! Even though I have been excluded for cheating! I cannot get back into the chess site to cancel my membership payment!!! I just want out!
- I send another email. Every word from me is a swearword combined with what they were doing: fraud!
- I have to contact Paypal to cancel my renewal. They cancel it. Because the chess site is useless.
Holy moly Holy Toledo armpit of an Egyptian camel driver. I have seen some incompetence in chess since I taught myself from a Reinfeld book in 1983. But that is the most fraudulent, incompetent bunch of bungling amateurs that I have come across; I would recommend NOBODY play at that chess site or give them ANY money. I repeat, this is a high profile mainstream online chess site with heaps of grandmasters and videos. I am NOT talking about some backwater site like MSN chess. I thought to hell with Chess; I took up music composing. I've composed music for four years. I still feel that way; I don't know how much more chess, if any, I will play here. To do that the chess site that accused me had no system; it put a blindfold on a guy and threw a dart at a board. Somehow I was bullseye.
This didn't just harm me. I was in a few lengthy correspondence chess semi-final leagues with a lot of players. I would have liked to have logged back in to explain to them. So I cannot see even in the site's OWN interests why the hell they did this; it made other customers unhappy when giving me a chance to explain any games would have harmed nobody else. Those players probably still think that I was a cheat when of course I was not.
My perspective is obviously that false accusations can cause a LOT of damage. Of course cheats exist; I remember the British Chess Magazine article in the 90's where a guy put cans on his head hidden by long hair. He called himself John Von Neumann and in the Open section drew with GM Helgi Olaffson. Despite knowing no chess moves and receiving moves from a helper through his cans. Yeah I know. I am not an Easter bunny. As people said at the time: what was the engine? Draws with a GM. It's worth having lol.
I don't want Lichess to use methods that allow jealousy and subjective factors to accuse somebody. You need empirical evidence. Ideally the accused player should be given a chance to explain the games and moves. That said, silence from the accused player should not be held against them. They could speak a different language and not know any English. That's the issue of possible discrimination against such people.
Glad that I got this off my mind. I was in two minds if I wanted to post it. Thank you.
I have not played any chess for four years; four years ago I was so fed up with chess that I never wanted to see a chessboard again. Why? I was accused of engine use despite there being no evidence whatsoever. Some facts:
[1.] I was only playing correspondence chess.
[2.] I was losing games.
[3.] I checked all my games afterwards with Fritz; EVERY game that I played had NO resemblance to engine moves. Even the wins.
[4.] I was a premium member of this chess site. Yes, I was paying THEM real money! That went well. Not.
[5.] I had no problems up to that point. I was getting on well with admins and other players. I had not got any warning from the site for doing anything wrong.
[6.] I had been a team classical chess player in other sites' leagues, and a low level league admin on one. Both playing and being an admin involved ALL of my games being scanned for engine use. If I had been into cheating I would have been found out long ago. I left that site because I was too busy to play 45 45 chess; I went to another site to play correspondence chess. It was there that these baseless accusations occurred.
Timeline of events. I still have the emails from August 2015 and am looking at them.
- August 2015, suddenly I cannot log into my account. So I contact the site and ask why.
- About two weeks pass before they email me saying that I am accused of cheating on the site. No examples are given. No games where they accuse me. No base whatsoever to support their claim. I ask them for evidence.
- they reply with a boilerplate stonewall email saying that they don't discuss cheating because it would help people to cheat.
- I ask again.
- same boilerplate letter.
- By this time I am entitled to be mad. I send them the most abusive email that I can. This is beyond ridiculous. I am happy to explain any of my games and moves if I am shown the games.
- This is where things get even wackier. You ain't seen nothin yet. Because I had a paid membership that was auto renewed
the renewal date arrives. I am charged for another year of membership!! Even though I have been excluded for cheating! I cannot get back into the chess site to cancel my membership payment!!! I just want out!
- I send another email. Every word from me is a swearword combined with what they were doing: fraud!
- I have to contact Paypal to cancel my renewal. They cancel it. Because the chess site is useless.
Holy moly Holy Toledo armpit of an Egyptian camel driver. I have seen some incompetence in chess since I taught myself from a Reinfeld book in 1983. But that is the most fraudulent, incompetent bunch of bungling amateurs that I have come across; I would recommend NOBODY play at that chess site or give them ANY money. I repeat, this is a high profile mainstream online chess site with heaps of grandmasters and videos. I am NOT talking about some backwater site like MSN chess. I thought to hell with Chess; I took up music composing. I've composed music for four years. I still feel that way; I don't know how much more chess, if any, I will play here. To do that the chess site that accused me had no system; it put a blindfold on a guy and threw a dart at a board. Somehow I was bullseye.
This didn't just harm me. I was in a few lengthy correspondence chess semi-final leagues with a lot of players. I would have liked to have logged back in to explain to them. So I cannot see even in the site's OWN interests why the hell they did this; it made other customers unhappy when giving me a chance to explain any games would have harmed nobody else. Those players probably still think that I was a cheat when of course I was not.
My perspective is obviously that false accusations can cause a LOT of damage. Of course cheats exist; I remember the British Chess Magazine article in the 90's where a guy put cans on his head hidden by long hair. He called himself John Von Neumann and in the Open section drew with GM Helgi Olaffson. Despite knowing no chess moves and receiving moves from a helper through his cans. Yeah I know. I am not an Easter bunny. As people said at the time: what was the engine? Draws with a GM. It's worth having lol.
I don't want Lichess to use methods that allow jealousy and subjective factors to accuse somebody. You need empirical evidence. Ideally the accused player should be given a chance to explain the games and moves. That said, silence from the accused player should not be held against them. They could speak a different language and not know any English. That's the issue of possible discrimination against such people.
Glad that I got this off my mind. I was in two minds if I wanted to post it. Thank you.
