The PGETC case anonymous accusations

Bill Spight · #1

Simba wrote:

I challenge you {Fenring} to find another situation in any of Metta's online games, PGETC or otherwise, played between the release of 0.11, and the date the cheating accusation was first made where the following criteria are met:

1) We are in the endgame. Let's say move > 150 as a guideline.
2) Leela 0.11's best move shows a significant victory for side A.
3) Leela 0.11 has at least one move that incorrectly shows a significant defeat for side A, and Leela 0.11 does not see that it is incorrect until manually shown the refutation.
4) Leela Zero correctly finds the refutation, and recommends the incorrect move itself as its first choice.

Surely you can see that those criteria, which are all met here, are needle-in-haystack. No one is going to sit there to find something like that. You'd also have to be very strong to find something like this because you'd need to meet criteria 3, i.e. you need to find the refutation, or explore extensively with Leela Zero trying to find blind spots in each position in Leela 0.11. The time required here is immense. In comparison, actually checking the presence of such a move that meets the criteria, if you're told where to look, is very, very easy.

As I have said, IMO, the Leela 11 vs. Leela Zero question is a distraction engineered by the anonymous accuser. But out of respect for Simba let me present a plausible scenario by which he could have found the play and discrepancy.

Suppose that anonymous accuser plays over this game using Leela 11 to look for evidence of cheating. When he gets to move 156, uh-oh!

, not only did Metta not copy Leela 11, he found a better play. Perhaps Metta cheated using Leela Zero. So the anonymous accuser sics Leela Zero on move 156 and Leela Zero recommends Metta's move. Voila!

Then, being a better propagandist than I, the anonymous accuser realizes that he can make hay out of the discrepancy between Leela 11 and Leela Zero, and publishes his post or reddit.

Anyway, no needle in a haystack scenario is required to explain what happened.

Bill Spight · #2

I hate to give the anonymous accuser any more publicity, but here is one thing he said on reddit:

"Once he is sure he wins {using Leela Zero} he tell me he load Leela 11 next to Leela Zero for end game so it looks like he not cheat. He play some moves that Leela 11 says is not best but Leela Zero says is good."

Oh, that's a sure way of not getting caught using Leela Zero. Play a move that Leela Zero says is good. :shock:

And if you want to play moves that Leela Zero does not necessarily recommend, why play moves recommended by Leela 11? Why not just play your own moves, unless Leela Zero says that your move would make you lose?

The anonymous accuser has concocted an implausible story. Why? Maybe so that he can bring up the discrepancy between Leela 11 and Leela Zero concerning move 156, and say that it shows that Metta cheated. Why, the odds against it are astronomical! :roll:

Edit: And why brag about playing a move that Leela Zero says is good in order not to get caught using Leela Zero? How stupid is Metta?

bugsti · #3

Et Voilà another false confession :lol:

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... mising_my/

Javaness2 · #4

Since this thread now starts to go around in circles, I think linguistic analysis starts to become more interesting. So on the I read it on reddit so it must be true front there are 2 threads now in which you can play guess the originating country.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... mising_my/ has by far the better command of English, but the use of "PhD thesys relator" and "My relator is a good guy" is that a deliberate mistake or can we use it to find the country of origin of the imposter?
Obviously he should have said PhD supervisor, but in which country to they have a relator? I must admit I'm stumped there.

The original https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... _admitted/ initially felt Eastern European to me, in fact to begin with I was thinking to myself is this really from Czechia whilst they are thinking about making an appeal. Wow. Then on reflection I thought no, from KGS experience I decided it was Israeli (65% chance).

What are your guesses? Please provide statistics to back them up.

John Fairbairn · #5

Quote:

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... mising_my/ has by far the better command of English, but the use of "PhD thesys relator" and "My relator is a good guy" is that a deliberate mistake or can we use it to find the country of origin of the imposter?
Obviously he should have said PhD supervisor, but in which country to they have a relator? I must admit I'm stumped there.

Too easy - Italian (relatore). Interestingly, French, Spanish and Portuguese all differ from Italian and each other.

I'm not sure linguistic analysis works here. It's too easy to write in your own language and put that through a Google translator (and mash that up a bit, if necessary). Unless you know the original text it's (?)impossible to test for yourself. And for a reverse translation, GIGO applies, of course.

pnprog · #6

Javaness2 wrote:

What are your guesses? Please provide statistics to back them up.

Am I missing something? I did not find your statistics baking that claim of your :

Quote:

from KGS experience I decided it was Israeli (65% chance)

AlesCieply · #7

John Fairbairn wrote:

Quote:

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... mising_my/ has by far the better command of English, but the use of "PhD thesys relator" and "My relator is a good guy" is that a deliberate mistake or can we use it to find the country of origin of the imposter?
Obviously he should have said PhD supervisor, but in which country to they have a relator? I must admit I'm stumped there.

Too easy - Italian (relatore). Interestingly, French, Spanish and Portuguese all differ from Italian and each other.

I have a good reason (just that, not more, I might be easily wrong) to believe the anonymous person is Italian. I am sorry I cannot share the (non-linguistic) reason with you as it is based on an information I received in private, so its all I feel safe I can say on it. Are we going to move from witch-hunt to the anonymous person hunt? :batman:

Javaness2 · #8

Ales, if you are serious about that, which anonymous person do you mean?
#anon1 is pretending to be Carlo Metta, or they could be Carlo Metta
#anon2 is pretending to be somebody in https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/eu ... ams/14/ITA , or they could be somebody in https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/eu ... ams/14/ITA
Is anon1 the same as anon2 ?

Open question to all:
Why did anon1 include "This is my rock bottom. And it is a very hard rock bottom." in their post. Psychoanalyst please.

AlesCieply · #9

Javaness2 wrote:

Ales, if you are serious about that, which anonymous person do you mean?
#anon1 is pretending to be Carlo Metta, or they could be Carlo Metta

This, the one that appeared yesterday. My good reason relates exclusively to this one. I cannot say anything about the previous ones (including CarloZero who posted here).

Bill Spight · **#10**

Javaness2 wrote:

Since this thread now starts to go around in circles, I think linguistic analysis starts to become more interesting. So on the I read it on reddit so it must be true front there are 2 threads now in which you can play guess the originating country.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... mising_my/ has by far the better command of English, but the use of "PhD thesys relator" and "My relator is a good guy" is that a deliberate mistake or can we use it to find the country of origin of the imposter?
Obviously he should have said PhD supervisor, but in which country to they have a relator? I must admit I'm stumped there.

The original https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... _admitted/ initially felt Eastern European to me, in fact to begin with I was thinking to myself is this really from Czechia whilst they are thinking about making an appeal. Wow. Then on reflection I thought no, from KGS experience I decided it was Israeli (65% chance).

What are your guesses? Please provide statistics to back them up.

My guess is that this is another diversion which will produce more confusion and suspicion.

AlesCieply · **#11**

Bill Spight wrote:

My guess is that this is another diversion which will produce more confusion and suspicion.

In general, I agree with you. On the other hand, my impression also is that the anonymous poster(s) is attempting to provide an information on what he thinks (or believes) that CM does, an information that could have been missed otherwise or lost among a pile of too many contributions. I count 3 anonymous posts:
CarloZero (on this forum) - CM does not use Leela blindly, he does not always follow its top (or one of top 3) move but uses his brain as well
the one about UK-IT qualification game - CM used LeelaZero and maybe switched to Leela
the last one - CM's friends who trust him use the congress in Pisa to put some pressure on EGF if the case is not handled the way they wish

It's just a speculation on my part, so take it as such.

Bill Spight · **#12**

AlesCieply wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:

My guess is that this is another diversion which will produce more confusion and suspicion.

In general, I agree with you. On the other hand, my impression also is that the anonymous poster(s) is attempting to provide an information on what he thinks (or believes) that CM does, an information that could have been missed otherwise or lost among a pile of too many contributions.

One thing that I have learned in the past year and a half -- by reading, not by figuring it out myself --, is that one purpose of propaganda is not to spread disinformation, but to sow confusion.

The poster who was obviously pretending to be Metta used a trick that I was familiar with from my wild west days. I even used it myself, once or twice.

Edit: I tried to avoid actually being mistaken for somebody else. See later note: viewtopic.php?p=233042#p233042

The anonymous accuser who wrote about the game with Simba just doesn't make sense. Either the guy is incredibly stupid or he is trying to spread confusion and suspicion.

Bojanic has accused me of not reading what people write. I did not think that the anonymous accuser was worth reading, but I finally did. I am sorry that I did not do so earlier, as I could have exposed the imbecility of what he wrote earlier.

Uberdude · **#13**

Re anon#2 "Carlo told me how he cheated vs Chris", here is my version of Bill's "this isn't like looking for a needle in a haystack, it's finding a piece of hay in a haystack" point.

Maybe he's telling the truth, in some ways I hope he is if he can provide solid corroborating evidence becaues then we can close this difficult and divise case without needing to analyse games and moves which is so much harder. But maybe it's someone who thinks Carlo is guilty and analysed the games to generate some evidence to fit their belief. Here's a few ways that could happen:
- Anayslse with Leela 0.11. Find vast majority of moves for whole game match top 3 choices. Create story "Carlo told me he used Leela all the game, and if anyone countered "That's a pretty dumb thing for Carlo to do given these accusations" then he'd just explain "but I studied with Leela and this is my style""
- Analyse with Leela 0.11. Find lots of matching in opening and middlegame but not endgame. Story is "Carlo said he used Leela to get a big lead, and then he'd play the endgame himself once he had a sure win".
- Analyse with Leela 0.11. Lots of matching but some gaps of mistakes, but recovers later. Story is "Carlo said he used Leela but then stop for some periods and make mistakes to throw detectors off the scent as Leela is strong enough to catch up anyway".
- Analyse with Leela 0.11. Normal matching for playes of this level. Analyse with Zen. Find vast majority of moves for whole game match top 3 choices. Story is "Carlo told me he would use Zen all the game not Leela this time to avoid detection"
- Analyse with Leela 0.11. Normal matching for playes of this level. Analyse with Zen. Find lots of matching in middlegame but not opening on endgame. Story is "Carlo told me he just used Zen in the middlegame as that was plenty to win". Don't mention you failed to find cheating evidence with Leela 0.11.
- Analyse with Leela 0.11. Normal matching for playes of this level. Analyse with Zen. Normal matching. Don't mention this. Analyse with Leela Zero (many versions to choose from). Find lots of matching to Leela Zero. Story is "Carlo cheated with LeelaZero version X. He used some old version to be hard to detect".
- Analyse with LeelaZero (maybe you tried other bots before, I'm saving typing). Find lots of matching except some sequence where he makes a human style mistake. Story is "He cheated with LeelaZero but played on his own for some period to make a good excuse if detected, plus LZ is strong enough to win anyway".
- etc

Now, any of these stories could indeed be true. If this person had contacted the referees or some other party before the game with an account of how Carlo would cheat and then the game did indeed match the story that would be far more valuable as evidence. But by only declaring the hypothesised nature of cheating after the event you can choose the one that fits the game so it's pretty useless without any evidence that the confession actually came from Carlo instead of found independently after the event.

This Feynman quote is again relevant "You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!".

Bill Spight · **#14**

Bill Spight wrote:

The poster who was obviously pretending to be Metta used a trick that I was familiar with from my wild west days. I even used it myself, once or twice.

I don't want to give the wrong impression of myself, even though it was over 30 years ago.

One thing I had learned by then was that if you can be misunderstood online, you will be. I say that this guy is obviously pretending to be Metta. You can bet that somebody will think that he actually is. The time or two that I satirized someone back then, I tried to make it clear that that is what I was doing. Since Carlo Metta is Italian, to satirize him I might use the handle, Tonto Pronto, for instance.

Bojanic · **#15**

You guys have too much free time when you are discussing these anonymous stupidities.

Bill Spight · **#16**

Bojanic wrote:

You guys have too much free time when you are discussing these anonymous stupidities.

Unfortunately, some people credit them.

pnprog · **#17**

Uberdude wrote:

Now, any of these stories could indeed be true. If this person had contacted the referees or some other party before the game with an account of how Carlo would cheat and then the game did indeed match the story that would be far more valuable as evidence. But by only declaring the hypothesised nature of cheating after the event you can choose the one that fits the game so it's pretty useless without any evidence that the confession actually came from Carlo instead of found independently after the event.

I don't know if this happens in real life (I mean for real serious cases discussed at the court) but could we imagine that we select an third party person (maybe someone from the AGA) then, this person will meet with that anonymous witness (the one who said CM admitted to him).

They could then meet over Skype or WhatApp, that would be fine. And during this interview, that anonymous witness would provide enough evidence (like show a copy of his ID) that could be used to confirm a lot of what he said, and then give more credit to the full story.

At that point, our third player could testify that the anonymous witness is Italian, member of of the Italian Go federation, a team mate of CM... whatever. But would keep that person identity secret.

One could even propose to this anonymous witness a bunch of "potential third person" and he would pick the one he feels he has more confidence with.

A kind of third party proxy testimony :mrgreen:

EdLee · **#18**

Off topic:

Hi Bill,

Bill Spight · **#19**

EdLee wrote:

Off topic:

Hi Bill,

Javaness2 · **#20**

The PGETC case anonymous accusations

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