“Decision: case of using computer assistance in League A”

[Bill Spight]

Now that I have a PC with gpu I let Leela analyse for 2.5m sims and q15 did rise from choice #18 to #5. So Leela did start to think about it more but was still far off local moves around the cutting stone (net and p7 peep top iirc).

2.5 m sims seems a huge amount of time to me. How many minutes it will take to calculate 2.5 m playouts? I guess that the player took much less time to play that move. didn't he?

It seems to me that q15 sequence worked only because of his opponent cooperation. Black should extend on M10 at some point in the process as suggested by Leela. The game would have been close this way.

2.5m sims of Leela 0.11 on my PC with a GeForce 1060 takes ~9 minutes. And yes Carlo generally plays pretty fast so doing that many sims live would be impossible (unless he had access to some monster computer in the cloud). A previous user (and myself) reported that Leela didn't find the q15 push, but wondered if it was due to insufficient resources. So I am answering the question that, even with millions of sims, it is only choice #5. Thus we have evidence that this move, which Lukan considered the most notable example of suspicious strength in the game (I didn't consider it so unlikely a good 4d could find it), is not a suggestion of Leela so is evidence Carlo wasn't cheating with Leela, at least at this point in the game.

It is also evidence than Leela was not cheating with Leela.

[Uberdude]

As for Carlo being an escaper/rude on KGS, are the rest of you saints? I'm certainly not, if you checked all my old public and secret accounts over that last 10+ years you could certainly find behaviour I'm not proud of. I used to be a KGS chronic escaper (due to bad connection), have rage quit, been rude, a jerk etc over the years. I also think it's possible to have different personas on the internet: as Uberdude, my main public identity, I'm generally a polite and well-behaved chap (at least now, years ago on KGS I would argue with BigDoug), but if I'm playing mindless blitz (a fertile ground for rage) on some secret account my standards of behaviour are lower. Fun times for armchair psychologists?

Anyway, unless you are also going to examine the online behaviour over the last 10+ years of a bunch of other random European players in the league, I think it's unfair to only do so against Carlo. Control groups are key when doing things fairly.

[Javaness2]

If she weighs the same as a duck?

[theoldway]

What is all this "the Go world is breaking apart" talk? That there are different opinions on one topic does not mean that the Go world would break apart.

I have a feeling that may be some other discussion going on, here we have perhaps incomplete information on the overall situation. It is not difficult to imagine a conflict between national associations and within EGF, especially from the point of view of the official regulation that seems the most confusing and unclear aspect here.

[AlesCieply]

I am getting a bit tired of reading and discussing everything here and on my email as well, so I am sorry I do not answer to everyone on every point raised. Still, I would like to acknowledge the input of several people here, in particular of Bill Spight (but not only of him). At the moment, I would like to add just few remarks:

- On point one in my report: My apologies for being really sloppy with my formulations there. Sure, if the probability of Carlo's achievement is transformed into how often this occurs at tournaments I find my wording quite misleading now. The chance we will witness this in 3000 tournaments is in fact for the one particular player. If they are 100 players like this at every event it will be at about every 30 tournament. Though, if we apply this to real tournament scene, how many of them have a good number of 4d players facing a sufficiently strong opposition to make it real. There, I think my estimate does about stand, though I now feel silly for putting it that simple in the document. I would also like to see how often such a feat (I mean for a 4d+ player) happens at regular tournaments, not in games played on internet. The EGC congresses are the most likely to look into but I admit I have not looked into it.

- On the analysis itself: I am well aware one should apply it to other players (not only Carlo Metta) to have comparisons, one should try it with other bots to see if the results are the same (or at least similar) and it is affected by how many forced moves there were in the analysed games. Still, I believe even in its current version the analysis is more reliable than the one performed originally and rightly disputed in the Italian appeal.

- On the Shakhov-Metta game: This is really what made me come out with what I have as I felt I cannot keep it for myself. I appreciate we have a witness now who explained us what happened - Carlo playing the game on KGS, the game board seen from black's point of view, then showing it to his friends while transcribing it to his laptop from white's point of view. The switch of colors also explains the other differences as it is difficult to remember the game in its completeness when making the "switch-colors" exercise in your head. I still find it a bit strange that the game was not only (by mistake) posted to the league manager but also analysed by the team that worked on the Italian appeal without realizing the mistake and tagging the game as Shakhov-Metta game from EGC 2016 (while in his email Carlo included it among games from summer and fall 2017).

[RobertJasiek]

5 forfeited games won by metta's opponent
It seems safe to conclude that metta escaped at least 5 games
Is this enough to use the words "frequent escaper"?

It can simply mean bad internet connection. To prove escaping, you need to distinguish both, e.g., by being the opponent and suffering from constant insults meant to provoke the opponent's escaping. By experience with some players, I would speak of "frequent" if it comes in dozens per day or hundreds of undo requests per game, then the same behaviour against successive oppononents.

[MircoF]

And please, don't blame us for wasting your time. Even though you are indeed right, that this scandal takes a lot of time and I believe you are very busy with the EGC, which we all are looking forward to attend. However, you should better ask yourself, why did all of you in Italy create such a barrier around Carlo and why we have not heard any single word from him yet, if he is so innocent...

Dear Lukan the reason it is clear also to you, I'm sure: we trust in Carlo, we know he is an important resource for the Italian go, and we defend him from unjust attacks. He would done the same if it would happen to me. This is respect, friendship, call it as you prefer.

[Javaness2]

Funny thing is, that the Italian captain provided a different story in his e-mail to Ales... So, Carlo is probably a genius: He plays a game on KGS (which is always from black's point of view) and then he replays it to you in Pisa Go Club from white's point of view. (I burst out laughing, when writing this.) And then we already know what happened, see the difference no.1 etc. in Ales's document.

My major reservation concerning this point is this - what is the advantage gained from submitting an altered record?

I understand Carlo's online rated games were studied by the first appeal - I would assume that these were last 3 seasons of PGETC, plus every online FIGG (Italian) tournament.
So what does Carlo gain by submitting (almost) the same game twice? If he cheated in this game, it would be doubly stupid. If he did not cheat in this game it would be just odd.

There are people who invented whole tournaments and submitted them to the EGF, so we can well imagine that there are people who will invent single games. But really, is this the place to start inventing one? If it is the place, I just don't understand the choice. I prefer to wait for #1 and #2 of Ales argument to be expanded upon.

You can also check the KGS tournament history I guess. Maybe there is something interesting there.

[Shenoute]

5 forfeited games won by metta's opponent
It seems safe to conclude that metta escaped at least 5 games
Is this enough to use the words "frequent escaper"?

It can simply mean bad internet connection. To prove escaping, you need to distinguish both, e.g., by being the opponent and suffering from constant insults meant to provoke the opponent's escaping. By experience with some players, I would speak of "frequent" if it comes in dozens per day or hundreds of undo requests per game, then the same behaviour against successive oppononents.

It could but look at the forfeited games against alma, Lancs007 and kurumi01.
If one looks at the time stamps*, it becomes clear that in all cases metta started a game just a few minutes after ending these (true, this is not a proof since he could have managed to get back to kgs only to find the game closed by his opponent).
More interesting is the fact that in two games he left atfer a sequence turned out bad for him. In the third one, against alma, he said "sorry, too much lag" before leaving but at this point he was losing on time in what was a sudden death match.

Again I'm not saying it proves anything in terms of cheating. As has been shown in this thread the evidence against him is weak (at best) and because of that I'm glad that the appeal was successful. What I'm reacting to is some kind of "saving private good-honest-guy Metta" posts I saw here and there. Based on his kgs account from a few years ago he is/was a sore loser with no respect for his opponent and I am not at all pleased with this kind of people being put in the position of referee in a tournament.

Uberdude,
Sorry for my posts on this aspect of things, I will refrain from that from now on.

*Against kurumi01 for instance, metta used 9min 19sec while his opponent used up 10 min and played 19 moves on a 30sec byoyomi. All in all that's 19min 19sec plus, let's say 10 sec/move in byoyomi, so 19*10sec=190sec, around 3min. So this game started at 01:23 and lasted approximately 22 min, ending around 01:45. Metta started an other game at 01:47.

[Bojanic]

Last year we had a problem with junior league on Pandanet.
One of our young players was accused of using assistance. Several of the older players were asked to review the game.
It was a game of double-digit kyus. After some time, some hi-kyu tesujis started to burst from both sides, followed by skillful life and death and good endgame. Both players used some kind of help. It was clear, like this case is clear, and we reacted accordingly, reporting our findings.

Father of young player, strong kyu player, admitted of playing in the game.
His defence was that everybody is using help, which was obvious in this game. Even some other games had similar simptoms. In others, since they were low kyu players, only a small input could be sufficient to tip the scales.

After some time, club of father applied him to join trainer program, as he was working with kids, but we rejected him because of this case.

-----

Until recently, League A was safe from such things.
And now, it is looking to become jungle where everyone can cheat without sanction.
It is shameful.

[Javaness2]

This is the case Bojanic describes hope to see another 5 pages of Leela analysis on this one.

[Bojanic]

This case in junior league was clear and we have very quickly finished it.
We considered it immoral to object that others too were using help.
Case closed, move on.

-----

And regarding case of this year A league, we will not stop until responsible for cheating are sanctioned.

[Bill Spight]

Last year we had a problem with junior league on Pandanet.
One of our young players was accused of using assistance. Several of the older players were asked to review the game.
It was a game of double-digit kyus.

After some time, some hi-kyu tesujis started to burst from both sides, followed by skillful life and death and good endgame. Both players used some kind of help. It was clear, like this case is clear, and we reacted accordingly, reporting our findings.

Father of young player, strong kyu player, admitted of playing in the game.
His defence was that everybody is using help, which was obvious in this game. Even some other games had similar simptoms. In others, since they were low kyu players, only a small input could be sufficient to tip the scales.

After some time, club of father applied him to join trainer program, as he was working with kids, but we rejected him because of this case.

What's wrong with the youth of today?

Their parents.

[MircoF]

“I wanna be your dog”

Buonasera, volevo per distendere un po’ gli animi, proporre un break con una canzone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hadyNXrAOLw

Spero possa essere d’aiuto, un caro saluto, Mirco.

[Gobang]

Last year we had a problem with junior league on Pandanet.


What's wrong with the youth of today?

Old and young, we are all human beings and there is something wrong with all of us.

You had a "problem" with an online league? I laughed when I read that. I guess I might be a cynical, experienced and somewhat jaded person, but it seems very naive to think that online leagues have any meaning or that it is worth trying to fix problems such as computer assisted cheating. You may as well try to stop the tide. Let people have fun playing go online and if they use computers to cheat, then the greatest suffering they inflict is on themselves. Just don't take the games too seriously.