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

[Javaness2]

Javaness (#638):
Yes, this discussion is running in circles a lot, I have already expressed that like 400 posts ago. Especially many useless stats and numbers are being presented here again and again. Shouldn't we keep this mainly as a Go-case and listen more to strong players' Go-feelings? I feel like that is being mostly ignored here.

I don't see much new in this thread for the last few days. I guess everyone made their mind up already. So now either:

• stage 3 of the appeals process is invoked by Israel - via EGF Appeals(?) Committee, we already had stages 1 and 2.
• UK team, or Chris Bryant directly, launches a new appeal based on suspicions of cheating with LeelaZero.
• talk endlessly here until a revolutionary system to detect cheating appears. I don't think it will appear quickly.

[Uberdude]

Especially many useless stats and numbers are being presented here again and again. Shouldn't we keep this mainly as a Go-case and listen more to strong players' Go-feelings? I feel like that is being mostly ignored here.

I don't think stats are necessarily useless, they have some advantages (objective, can be automated and fast for many games), but they are difficult to develop and use well. I agree that analysis by strong players is a useful tool, particularly given our go stats analysis is just beginning and a baby compared to chess, but I think it's very important to make the test fair and blind: i.e. don't just show a strong player like yourself 3 of Carlo's online games and 3 of his offline and asks "Is there a big difference in the play? Do you think he cheated", but show you 3 games online and 3 offline each of players A, B, C and D (where one is Carlo and the others are random other people of similar strength with games from similar conditions) and then ask if you think any of them have the suspicious big difference. If you and say 2 other strong players all picked out the same blinded player as Carlo being the suspicious one then that is much stronger evidence. A problem is a lot of top European players probably followed the case so can recognise these games of Carlo, maybe we could ask some pros in Asia to be the judges.

[Bojanic]

I have read (again, this time in details) Italian appeal.
Google found it here:
http://frmor.net/downloads/statistical_ ... _David.pdf

My comments:
- as other statistical analysis, it is focused mainly on, ehrr, statistics, and less on go game.
- question of spent time and time for analysis in Leela:
I already wrote here on about it. Spent time in the game cannot be same as used in program. First it is necessary to manually input moves into Leela, and later to client. Player could be out of place for some reason, or distracted, and some time could be wasted. Also, sometimes spent time on analysis can be even longer than recorded, because analysis could be done in opponent's time.
- high percentage similarities of other player's games is not relevant. Those player's games should be compared to their live games.
- it is completely omitted that some moves could be forced, some expected, others could be important, and to analyze longer sequences of related moves - basically player's side of story
- Only positive thing is that it showed some of the lacking of original analysis, but it suffers from same lacking.
- two more recent live games were not analyzed, but hey were not played at the time.

Edit, most important: in this paper are listed two Metta's games from EGC 2017. I would be very interested to take a look at them.

[AlesCieply]

I have read (again, this time in details) Italian appeal.
Google found it here:
http://frmor.net/downloads/statistical_ ... _David.pdf

This is only a part of the Italian appeal. The document submitted to the PGETC appeals committee contained more of it. Specifically, a section about the outstanding ethical profile of Carlo Metta is missing here and there are some other parts missing as well. I do not think it would be proper if I shared the complete document on this forum but would welcome if the Italians did, so anyone can make a judgement for himself.

[AlesCieply]

On the "It's easy to tell a 4 dan from a 6 dan" issue, I made a little test here, can you figure out the players' ranks? viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15832.

The problem with this kind of test is that it is not the same as playing a game and than judging the strength of your opponent. For me, it is also hard to tell whether the game was played by a 4d or 6d. I am a 1d player and I think I could more realistically estimate whether the player is 2k or 3d. Going away from my rank I guess my estimates become much less reliable.

[AlesCieply]

Out of 4505 even games in the same time period, a weaker 4-dan player defeated their stronger 6-dan opponent 14.4% of the time.

Is the statistics based on grades declared by players or on ratings? Is a player with GoR=2449 counted as 4d? How is the statistics affected by games when strong 4d beats weak 6d (this relates to the point raised by Uberdude)? It would be more proper to see statistics on how often the players with ratings between 2350 and 2450 beat opponents about 200 rating points higher.

[Bill Spight]

Shouldn't we keep this mainly as a Go-case and listen more to strong players' Go-feelings? I feel like that is being mostly ignored here.

I, for one, would be glad to do so if we had any evidence that strong go players were good at detecting cheating by their feelings. We have no such evidence. Unfortunately.

[Uberdude]

<moderator>
As several have noted this is a rather long/popular/confusing/messy/repetitive thread. To try to make it easier to follow I will split off the anonymous accuser discussion to another thread, and possibly other sub-threads too if they can be nicely extracted. And if you want to start a new thread on a sub-topic instead of cluttering this one please feel free!
</moderator>

[Bill Spight]

Bill,
I think that in Metta-Kim game is a B forced move. Player can answer on two similar places.

As I said, there should almost always be a match with A.

But your point about forced moves vs. unforced moves gets us back to the point about which we agree, and which Regan also gets at. We need to distinguish the difficulty level of plays.

[bugsti]

Shouldn't we keep this mainly as a Go-case and listen more to strong players' Go-feelings? I feel like that is being mostly ignored here.

Of course you were referring to Ke Jie's and Park Junghwan's Go feelings and not to those of laughably weak European "strong" players, right?

[Uberdude]

Shouldn't we keep this mainly as a Go-case and listen more to strong players' Go-feelings? I feel like that is being mostly ignored here.

Of course you were referring to Ke Jie's and Park Junghwan's Go feelings and not to those of laughably weak European "strong" players, right?

It seems entirely plausible to me that people are best at judging the strength of people similar to them, in which case being "just" a 6-7d amateur might actually be better than a pro. Also it would seem entirely plausible that a pro who teaches a lot of amateurs would do better at this task than a top competitive pro like Ke Jie who I suppose is not so familiar with the typical mistakes of a European 4d. It's hard for me to tell the difference between a 15k and a 20k these days, but I was probably better at it in the past when I was often teaching such people.

[Bojanic]

Bill,
I think that in Metta-Kim game is a B forced move. Player can answer on two similar places.

As I said, there should almost always be a match with A.

Screen Shot 2018-06-19 at 2.53.06 PM.png (284.33 KiB) Viewed 10426 times

So, O16 or P16?
Both points are basically same.

[Kirby]

I'm going to step out of things at this point; the main reason I came onto here was to highlight the censorship and make sure that the Reddit thread was in everyone's awareness. I'm satisfied that this has been done at this point. I hope that appropriate lessons have been learnt by the administration, and I appreciate as a community owner myself that sometimes some administrative decisions can be difficult. Mistakes are fine, so long as we learn from them.

I'd like to reiterate that censorship didn't happen on L19. Moderation did. We expressed both privately and publicly that we would work with the user who made the Reddit claim, but our offers were met with no response.

I indicated this to Simba earlier in the thread, but instead of working with us, he ignored the comment and continues to claim censorship.

The fact that this thread is active with comments from both sides of the controversy is evidence that censorship isn't happening. We just ask that users abide by the TOS and work with us to express their thoughts in a reasonable way upon request.

Thanks.

Please continue with the discussion

[MircoF]

However, indeed your tournament looked like a nice event to enjoy.

Thank you very much.

Good for him, that he is happy again, but then, doesn't he want to answer the bunch of arised question by himself and not through your 'appeals team'?

This is up to him. I understand he has lot of work to do for the congress. Only for reading everything here, it takes plenty of time.

I hope this discussion will help in finding the necessary cheating prevention method and measures, to make safe, as reasonable possible, the stronger players from cheating behaviors, and the weaker players from being unjustly accused.
I hope Pisa would be the place were to discuss about it and find the first important measures for the next on line tournament. I’m sorry that I will not be part of this group, because I have to work as volunteer during the free time from the games, but I hope there will be people that will give a good help to develop this method and measures.

[Gobang]

Sorry if I am raining on anyone's parade, but to be perfectly honest I think there is no way to prevent cheating in online tournaments. You may spend days/weeks/months/years discussing and developing an anti cheating system but all such a system will do is eradicate the most blatant cheating and make cheaters a bit more careful. People who play as normal but have leela or some other program open during games as an insurance against blunders will not be detected. People who play their own game but get advice from a bot at one or two difficult points in the game will not be detected. Such people will always be able to say that they played a little better than usual and there is no conclusive evidence that they cheated and no one will be able to prove anything or do anything. Most annoyingly, if an anti cheat system has been implemented, then cheaters will be able to say that their cheating was not detected and that somehow proves they are honest people!

The only thing that can and should be done is to be realistic and honest and take the consequences. Continuing with online tournaments with no changes and pretending that nothing has happened is an insult to honest players. Given the situation, I can't really see why an honest player would want to participate in such a tournament.

(I stand by my earlier comment that a 6d player should be able to notice if his opponent is playing at a 4d level or 6d+ level during a serious game. It is not about whether he won or lost the game. He may lose the game, but it will still feel like he lost to a 4d. Not a 6d+. So, if a 6d player says that a 4d player was cheating I believe it.)