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Subject: Re: Operating a computer account on ICC?

Author: Jon Dart

Date: 19:44:46 07/13/00

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The chess server is generally a friendly place. You find a few people who
are unpleasant but that's true of most communities.

You will sometimes get verbal abuse if an opponent is denied a draw,
feels the computer should have resigned sooner, is denied a rematch
and thinks s(he) should have one, or a lot of other reasons. I think
it's silly to complain to a machine-operated account but some people
do it anyway. If it really annoys you there is always +censor and
+noplay, but I personally try pretty hard not to use these. And if
it's a titled player we're talking about, I cut him or her a lot of
slack.

Probably the most common abuse of computer accounts is humans who use
computers without registering as computer accounts. It's always hard to
be sure someone is doing this, but if a normally low-rated player has
a big winning streak against a normally strong program, you get
suspicious (at least I do :-)). There are other signs of computer use
as well but obvious outperformance is probably the most blatant.
Most computer account operators will noplay others they suspect of
cheating in this way and may complain to the server admins as well.

Another common tactic is other computer accounts coming on to the server
at a low rating level and driving their own rating up by playing long
sequences of games against temporarily higher-rated but in fact lower-
strength programs. This is annoying because your account's rating is
sinking unnecessarily and because the other account is monopolizing
the use of yours. Some of the rating restrictions and # of games
guidelines you see are a response to this.

You don't have to worry about any of this. You can decide personally
what behavior you want to prevent and whether it's important enough
to you to put in restrictions.

--Jon


On July 13, 2000 at 19:49:08, Pete R. wrote:

>I had toyed with the idea of doing this for various reasons, and I recall
>reading bits here and there that make me reluctant to be totally "green" about
>doing it.  In other words I don't want to do it and then encounter all sorts of
>B.S. that is common knowledge to experienced computer operators. To those that
>operate computer accounts, what sort of B.S. do people try to pull on you that
>you have to take countermeasures for, +noplay people, etc.?  E.g. I see things
>in Crafty's finger notes about playing even numbers of games and so forth, and I
>have no idea why such a thing would matter.  Looking for the benefit of
>veterans' experience, plus maybe some amusing stories. ;)



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