Tournaments wrecked

Most nights I watch a couple of bullet tournaments while I go to sleep (weird I know, but it helps me forget the madness of my work life).

Last night I watched two tourneys where a blatant cheater finished 2nd and 1st respectively. While it appears this player has now been classed as a cheater, it was obvious at the time that someone who has around 1300 points and is thrashing a 2000+ player regularly is receiving some kind of assistance. In addition, the player concerned had the same name but with the suffix "2" as a previously branded player.

My point is, how is it that such a person who is so blatant in their cheating is able to get away with it for two whole tournaments - and finish 1st and 2nd in them - before being spotted? It was both unedifying and, quite honestly, spoiled the enjoyment of seeing great players in action.

I think it is time that no one who has played fewer than x amount of games is allowed into tournaments... as it is bad for the lichess brand/name and bad for the players.

I'm sorry if this is an inconvenient truth, but it is a big problem here - while the cheating detection is good overall, there are numerous instances of cheats surviving entire tournaments before the results have to be adjusted.

Moderators probably get so many cheating reports that it would be tough to keep up with them all... That's likely why the user took so long to get banned. (My guess)

You are right though, it's a problem. Maybe we need more mods...

This is a free website and lichess.org does not pay moderators to look for cheaters constantly. You can easily avoid automatic cheat detection if you set your engine to a lower than max level and don't use stockfish so flagging a cheater that does that takes a little longer (and some still haven't been flagged in over 3 years now). Furthermore if the cheater injects 2-3 moves per game that are very sub-par, he becomes almost untouchable.

In this particular case, a 1300 ish player was beating 2300s with ease. His name was the same as a previously flagged player but with "2" on the end. It's pretty obvious. I would imagine that there is a moderator awake somewhere in the world pretty much 24/7...

Just seems odd to me. This guy was literally playing like a machine. It was compulsive viewing, because you were seeing these 2000+ guys pressing the berserk button and knowing they were swimming with crocodiles...

Let's provide moderators an opportunity to thoughtfully respond... perhaps something about bullet tournaments hadn't been fully considered?

I agree with you #5 - as I usually do.

My suggestion would be that, if the resources are slightly overstretched, it might be better to do slightly fewer things.

I think the very fact that half-hourly tourneys are called "hourly" means that there are more than originally anticipated. They're certainly popular, too.

Hm, 48 hours have passed without a response. I guess I'll attempt to respond and see if moderators tell me my answer is wrong.

It's possible for a cheater to win two bullet tournaments before being caught because automated measures do not prioritize (or do, but not high enough and/or need more computing power) for this use case.

Slight correction, it was a first and a second place... but the response, while very kind, doesn't explain how in some tournaments not very obvious cheaters are stopped while the matches are going ahead.

For me, the very fact that no mod has responded in 48 hours means they've probably slightly bitten off more than they can chew in terms of policing the empire that has been created.

i did read this before, but there's not enough info to find the tournaments mentioned and you didn't report the guy, so i just left it. of course there won't always be someone watching every single tournament.

a certain % of tournament top places are marked for automatic checking, but that lags a few days behind and the autodetection might not catch all of them.

I couldn't identify and report as I was on my mobile app and it doesn't allow you to do any of that stuff...