Is using help in online games always cheating?

[Uberdude]

I also once made an account in which I just built solid walls or ponnuki shapes as an experiment. I seem to recall I beat and lost to idiotbot and also beat a human before I was deranked for losing on purpose, which is inaccurate as I didn't lose on purpose, I played badly on purpose and this usually made me lose but not always.

You are welcome to explore different styles of play with the weak bots, but making them Free games would save you and us a lot of hassle. It's not possible for us to read your mind to tell the difference between losing on purpose and playing badly on purpose, especially when the end result of both affects the ranking scheme.

The whole point is that he created a special account for that.
If this account plays *consistently* in a certain way, it does *not* affect ratings.
So unless there is more to the story, from either side, it just doesn't make sense what you say.

My experiment was to find what rank such play would have (would it be stronger than some real humans who were trying their best?), so playing free games would not be successful. This was many years ago when you did actually have 30 kyu human players on KGS, and a decent spread through the 2x kyus too. My play on that account was at a more consistent level than many of my "real" accounts, so any argument that that account 'breaks' the ranking system doesn't hold water. Obviously were I to start playing to my full strength and crushing 28 kyus I should be deranked, but I didn't. In fact players improving 'breaks' the ranking system in that non-active accounts drift upwards in rank over time as the past opponents' ranks goes up. It would be most perverse for KGS to ban players from improving to prevent such effects on the ranking scheme.

I have a blitz account on KGS, ranked 3d. I play bad moves on it on purpose all the time because my purpose with that account is to overplay and have fun fights and win by huge kills. Should I be deranked?

Shortly before I retired as an admin, I was engaged in a chat with other gold star admins about deranking policy. One of them mentioned an incident in which he/she deranked a "fake-dan" account. Normally, a fake-dan account is created by cheating the rank system: Someone creates more than one account, which are then used to play each other, with the fake-dan-to-be account getting the wins. Or, the fake-dan-to-be gets some friends to lose on purpose. When KGS admins find these, they are deranked.

However, this case was different: A group of three or four, if I recall correctly, created an account. When playing games, they discussed moves. The result was an account that had a rank a few stones stronger than any of the individuals in that group.

At the time this occurred, had I both been an admin and aware of it, I would have argued against deranking. It seems to me, in addition to being a situation which I regard as not cheating, this is a useful way to study go. And, having the group earn a ranking likely provides interesting, and possibly helpful, information to them.

Perhaps this was the incident Uberdude referred to above?

My case was way back in 2007. I don't think we actually got deranked, we only played maybe a dozen games. I can't even remember if we hid the fact we were a team or put a note about that in the info. I know of another Go couple who have a ranked KGS account to play pair go, and they note this in the account's info. They use it for fun and also to practice before they play in pair go tournaments. I think such behaviour should not be banned.

[Nyanjilla]

I also once made an account in which I just built solid walls or ponnuki shapes as an experiment. I seem to recall I beat and lost to idiotbot and also beat a human before I was deranked for losing on purpose, which is inaccurate as I didn't lose on purpose, I played badly on purpose and this usually made me lose but not always.

You are welcome to explore different styles of play with the weak bots, but making them Free games would save you and us a lot of hassle. It's not possible for us to read your mind to tell the difference between losing on purpose and playing badly on purpose, especially when the end result of both affects the ranking scheme.

The whole point is that he created a special account for that.
If this account plays *consistently* in a certain way, it does *not* affect ratings.
So unless there is more to the story, from either side, it just doesn't make sense what you say.

Maybe his mistake was to use IdiotBot, which is something of a special case. Its rank hovers at 30k, so a couple of deliberate losses to it (or deliberate attempts to play badly that lead to losses, or whatever) will raise its rank to 29k. That clearly does affect the rating system.

OK, so the difference between 30k and 29k might not seem like much from way above, but to a beginner trying to get a rank by playing IdiotBot, it will affect hir initial rating. So that's why we monitor IdiotBot's losses and derank whenever we see someone losing to it when clearly stronger.

[Bantari]

Maybe his mistake was to use IdiotBot, which is something of a special case. Its rank hovers at 30k, so a couple of deliberate losses to it (or deliberate attempts to play badly that lead to losses, or whatever) will raise its rank to 29k. That clearly does affect the rating system.

How so?
If a complete beginner starts playing against this IdiotBot a few times, thiw will raise the bot's rating as well, no?

I'd say that if the assumption is that IdiotBot cannot / should not lose, then just make it resign every game, or make the system count its wins as lose, or whatever. And if the assumption is that IdiotBot has to be 30k or else, then just make its rank constant, liek the pro ranks, or achors, or whatever. If the IdiotBot is part of the regular rating system, like every other playr, I don't see why small fluctuation like that would matter. Eventually it will settle back at its 30k, like every other player with same strength.

As I said, as long as an account plays at a consistent level, it should never affect the overall ratings. If it does, then the system is broken. Or there is lack of understanding by the people who monitor it.

Or again - there is something more which I do not know or understand yet.

For example, if Uberdude played such games against with an account that plays inconsistently at different levels, you have a good case for deranking. But I do not see anybody saying that.

[DrStraw]

How so?
If a complete beginner starts playing against this IdiotBot a few times, thiw will raise the bot's rating as well, no?

This is giving me a strong urge to make a new account and close my eyes before I randomly click the mouse.

[Uberdude]

First of all idiotbot is not the weakest possible player, although it mostly places stones randomly it understands atari and extends from it. So if I don't extend from atari I can be weaker and should lose to it and have a lower rank.

Also now I remember more to the story which could be why I got deranked, and that is I used this 30k account to kibitz at full strength. This was to see if people would take my comments for what they said or dismiss them and make ad hominem attacks based on my rank. Now there is some legitimate appeal to authority/rank with "my judgement is this result is good for black" type comments, but for something like "that peep was bad because you could have cut" the rank doesn't matter. Too often dan players poo-poo comments of kyu players because they are kyu players and not because they are wrong.

So perhaps what got me deranked was inconsistency between my playing and kibitz levels (though the admins gave the reason as "losing on purpose"). Maybe KGS would be a better place if this was applied more widely to stronger players who make dumb kibitz.

[Nyanjilla]

Let me see if I understand you correctly:

1. You deliberately played badly and ended up losing to IdiotBot[1]
2. You then kibitzed with that 30k account[2]
3. You are surprised that admins took notice?

Stronger players making dumb kibitz..... now that is a different problem.

[1] Remember that deliberately losing rated games is against the Terms of Service. It doesn't matter how or why you did it, it's the loss we see. We can't read minds, but we do see such losses often (IdiotBot is useful as a sandbagger-detector). And yes, humans do play inconsistently and yes, it is not unknown for a human to accidentally lose to a weaker player (which can make it difficult to detect sandbagging when the loss is to a slightly weaker player)... but I hope you are not saying that could happpen to a dan-player against a 30k?
[2] OK, you get some points for originality there---it's usually a fake dan account.

[Uberdude]

No, you continue to misunderstand. I expect admins to notice a 30k making dan-level kibitz, but I don't see why being noticed should mean I get deranked. Is there an unwritten KGS rule I fell foul of that one must kibitz at a level close to your displayed rank? I do not wish to be a surreptitious 30k, I just wish to be treated fairly and on the quality of my moves, rather than the fact that the human brain behind those moves has the capacity to play better moves if he so chooses (but consistently does not).

For the record, I did not have "a couple of deliberate losses" to IdiotBot, I had one win and one loss. The 'damage' that my behaviour has on IdiotBot's 30k rank (in fact it was 29k when I played it) is miniscule compared to dan-ranked players who play it and resign or escape and then forfeit from boredom. Do you really track down and derank all of those? And as I explained before if my play is weaker than IdiotBot's because I don't extend from atari but it does then it is not damage but correct for me to lose to it and nudge its rank up a tiny bit. (I think there is/was an even weaker bot called somthing like WeakBot50k that doesn't even know what atari is).

Also what is your view of my 3d blitz account (used to be 2d but I improved at blitz) where I play bad moves (overplays and silly fights) on purpose? Should that be deranked too?

[Pio2001]

Hi,
I agree that players can get help as long as they play consistently, but in my opinion, this is only because AI has not yet beaten the best human players.

When go AI beat any human, using the help of a software will be considered as cheating as well as in other games, like chess or Othello.

[Uberdude]

When go AI beat any human, using the help of a software will be considered as cheating as well as in other games, like chess or Othello.

But a 15kyu today can use AI to play like a 5 kyu or a 3 dan, so I don't see why the inability of a 5d to use an AI to play like a 9d means that isn't cheating now but would be in the future once Go AIs get stronger.

P.S. As one example, on OGS a few years back there was a cyborg player (totally open about it) with the human about 5 kyu using the Fuego engine, combined rank was low dan. He/it was interesting to play against (I won all the games, but harder than the vanilla Fuego), and the Alan Turing tournament was created partly to allow such cyborgs and bots to play tournaments there.

[Uberdude]

This is giving me a strong urge to make a new account and close my eyes before I randomly click the mouse.

Please let us know what rank you reach before you get de-ranked .

[UnclMartin]

The arguments that Uberdude's weak account should not have been deranked make sense to me.

But, as Nyanjilla said, admins cannot read minds. In my experience, when admins encounter deliberate poor play in ranked games, it has always been connected with sandbagging. The association with sandbagging is so common, that when we find deliberate poor play, deranking is pretty much automatic. There is a good chance that the admin or admins who deranked that account connected it to Uberdude before deciding to derank.

I am not offering this to justify the deranking of that account, but to explain that deranking was likely. Had I been involved, not knowing the intent, I would have deranked.

May I suggest, that if someone wants to try a similar experiment, they discuss it with the admins in advance?

However, I can predict some admins will be absolutely against this, perceiving a clear TOS violation:

In addition to this general guideline, there are certain behaviors that are absolutely not tolerated at KGS:

• Dishonest play during rated games. Rated games are meant to be serious games where player's strengths are tracked; if you want to just fool around and play, this is fine, but please make sure the game is "free" so that it won't affect the rating system. To be more specific, these are not allowed:
  • Intentionally losing rated games
  • Setting up rated games against yourself to boost an account's rank
  • Having other people play rated games for you

[often]

people who use assistance or have fake ranks never get far anyways, so let them do whatever they want

if you play "perfect joseki" it doesn't mean you'll play perfect middle game, or you'll know what to do if someone goes off book

if you have a fake dan rank, it is probably one loss away from becoming super weak and you'll probably be unable to boost it back up to the dan rank you want

[snorri]

The chess world has sailed past this, to the extent that cyborg matches involving GM human+machine exist: http://www.chess.com/groups/view/cyborg-matches

Whether assistance is cheating or not depends on whether everyone involved agrees on a specific set of rules. A venue (such as a server) may try to stipulate such rules, but they are hard to enforce.

KGS tends to treat their rating system as if it's this precious snowflake that's a tragedy to disturb, but really it's disturbed enough by regular games. Still, they have a right to set terms of service.