March 16, 2021
4 mins read

The cheating algorithm in online chess

chess pieces on table
Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

One of the news that has shaken the world of online chess this month has been the closure of a single player account of chess.com and the story that has happened as a result. The cheating algorithm is a system that have many chess websites detecting players who use the help of a chess program. They’re not perfect, but they usually work pretty well.

Levy Rozman is an emerging figure in online chess. It has a Youtube  channel and a Twitch channel. He’s followed by thousands of people. You may like it right or wrong, but if you don’t like it, it’s very simple, don’t follow it. After a game in which he and his fans concluded that their rival had cheated, a whole series of not-so-pleasant events unfolded and that they unraged in a controversial sour and disproportionate harassment on the net.

What happened

During a GothamChess game session, aka in chess.com of Levy Rozman, an American international master, he encountered a player who suspiciously played very well for him. The game was followed by more than 12,000 people who were watching Levy’s Twitch channel at the time.

The game was between GothamChess vs. Dewa_Kipas  on the chess.com. The name user Dewa_Kipas won the game. After the departure, Dewa_kipas accused Fans GothamChess of not accepting the result. Fans deported the Indonesian player until the count was closed for traps.

Here was the game:

Social media reactions

On March 3, 2021, through Facebook, a user named Ali Akbar, who claimed to be the son of Dewa_Kipas uploaded an article of the game. The real name of Dewa_Kipas is Dadang Subur. After his father won the game, he accused GothamChess of reporting it and causing the account to be banned. This item is no longer available.

In addition, on Twitter the @jarvisbudana uploaded several screenshots of Ali Akbar’s comments. This tweet received over 4,400 likes and 1,200 retweets in less than 24 hours. This person’s account is protected. Similarly, Reddit user TheHoodieGuy02 uploaded an image to /r/chess, which received 4,100 upvotes (77% upvoted) and 160 reviews in less than 24 hours.

Levy also added add more fuel to the fire.

A mountain of people giving bias opinions

Social networks beyond social media are networks of opinions. Now everyone has an opinion and says it, which is fine, as long as we maintain a sanity and good behavior.

It gives the impression that is thought taking advantage of the anonymity of social networks. The American player is a well-known person and has a chess title, International Master, however, the other player barely has any data on him. Well yes, we know that he beat an international master and that his last games had a higher percentage of accuracy than some great qualified masters.

People who give their opinion many I’m sure they don’t understand the game. They’ve never played chess, but they have to give their opinion because they think it’s wrong to accuse someone of cheating and for a website to ban that person for cheating.

The problem of defending lost causes

You can be for or against something, but what you can’t be against the facts. Social media stories often have countless branches and what one day seems like one thing the next day is a totally different one.

There are thousands of people in Indonesia who just because someone in their country has been accused of cheating have been offended. The threshold for offending in many people is minimal. It has an almost sub-atomic level.

They have harassed Levy Rozman and left comments demonstrating his lack of education. The problem at heart is education. I can be in favor of the other player but I would never lose my ways. Shapes are lost by people who have free time to insult others and hide behind an online alias.

I want to know why a person has been banned, but if a huge website like chess.com decides that a player has cheated I’m sure they have more than well-founded evidence that it is.

The cheating algorithm in chess webs

All chess websites have systems for detecting cheaters. These systems are not public to protect the way web pages review cheaters and prevent them from using anti-cheat systems and taking advantage of that information.

During the month of February 2021  the actions taken by chess.com on fair play and sportsmanship were:

  • 261,186,236 games reviewed for fair play.
  • 11,540,956 accounts reviewed for fair play.
  • 32,337 accounts closed for fair play (including  8  qualified players).

In a month 32,000 accounts were closed because the cheating algorithm detected unusual behaviors in the game of those players.

Cookies looking for cheaters or the cheating algorithm

It is very likely that the key is cookies. To view the cookies used by the website chess.com you have to right-click on an area of the page and then go to INSPECT ELEMENT.

cookie

Now we go to APPLICATION and there we have the option to see the cookies you use chess.com. Many are owned by google but some are owned by chess.com.

cookie

We can’t know how the anti-cheating system works chess.com but it’s likely to have to do with:

  • Browser checks tabs you have open and checks cookies used by other chess websites in case you are using an online analyzer. A few years ago I remember a chess website closing your account if it detected that you were continually changing windows. That is, if in one window you had the game, and in another you were analyzing the game. There were times when you switched to another window that could be the email program, or a program you’d opened and had your account shut down without cheating.
  • Checks to see if the window is changed continuously.
  • Check cookies to see which sites you’ve visited before.
  • Check a player’s accuracy. Accuracy is the times a player has played a play that was recommended by the machine.
  • Check which openings you play and if they are very varied it can mean that you are using some opening program.

Therefore, even without knowing how the cheating algorithm works we can more or less find out if a person is playing according to their chess level or according to the level of their chess program they are using.

References

  • https://www.chess.com/live/game/8439364337
  • https://www.wired.com/story/bird-feed-seller-beat-chess-master-online-harassment/
  • https://inet.detik.com/games-news/d-5493972/anomali-permainan-dewa-kipas-di-chesscom-dan-algoritma-kecurangan
  • https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gothamchess-vs-dewa_kipas-chess-match#fn6
  • https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-month-in-review-february-2021
  • https://twitter.com/GothamChess/status/1370736508207038466
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Avelino Dominguez

👨🏻‍🔬 Biologist 👨🏻‍🎓 Teacher 👨🏻‍💻 Technologist 📊 Statistician 🕸 #SEO #SocialNetwork #Web #Data ♟Chess 🐙 Galician

2 Comments

  1. Unfortunately, cheating at chess is a losing battle. Over the board cheaters can use devices like Talisman Zero (https://talismanzero.com) which mimic human play. MAIA Chess (https://maiachess.com) has AI that is impossible to determine it is a machine moving the pieces. But, chess is like all other sports, baseball, football, etc. where cheating occurs on a constant basis. I’m not sure there is an answer to prevent cheating in any game. -Bill K.

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