Author: J. Kazinski
Date: 03:34:24 04/03/04
from http://s6.invisionfree.com/Free_FICS_Forum/index.php?showtopic=7 written by B3nd4k Almost every cheater starts as an amateur, and during the time either becomes a professional or get caught. I have made adivision of cheaters to 3 groups according to their skills, knowledge and the techniques they use: naïve cheaters, amateur cheaters and professional cheaters. Group I (naive cheaters) are easy to recognize. There are some banal examples of "cheating", that is, connecting to the chess server directly with a chess engine(usually via zippy) and eventually changing the interface variable (which is not possible on ICC). Even if there is no kibitz like "Hello from crafty" or similar, the computer is still easy to spot because it plays very fast moves in the opening and also when it has found the checkmate. If you are doubtful about this, try requesting an abort - the engine interface will most likely answer with "Sorry, this engine does not accept aborts" or similar (or eventually immediately accept the offer!). Persons that immediately accept your match requests are also suspicious, although this is not a rule. You might also try checking a person's interface variable immediately after they connect to the server (perhaps with the help of the pin variable) - a naive cheater is most likely to change his interface variable then. After all, I have to mention that I have seen not more than 15 such cases in my life, and all of them have been caught during the first 3 days of "cheating". Group II (amateur cheaters) use the transfer technique: they wait for your move, input it to the chess engine, wait for the engine's response, and then play out the engine's move. This obviously takes lots of time between moves, but it is pretty equal time between all moves, including standard opening moves, deeply calculated combinations and positions where only one move is legal (e.g. Queen-recapture under check). Amateur cheaters do not posses much, if any, chess knowledge, so they are not confident in their own moves - they will wait for the machine move even if there is only one legal or only one logical move. Some engines may stop responding or dramatically slow their play in specific endgame situations (e.g. Queen with some pawns vs. bare king), which is the reason why some cheaters resign won games or lose them on time, and which is the reason why you should play to the end (i.e. the checkmate), if you are suspicious about a specific person. Amateur cheaters do not understand the seriousness of computer cheating, so they often cheat in say 5 games, then play 5 games of their own - cases when a player transparently and dramatically changes his playing strength from a game to a game are very suspicious (don't be over-suspicious, however, because a slight change can happen to anyone depending on many factors - what I am talking about is a DRAMATIC change - an exact and quite good play in one game, almost at GM level, and a very poor, patzer-play in another game of the same person). Amateur cheaters want to be the best - they use best chess programs and therefore they very quickly get to very high ratings, usually over 2300, especially in standard, and therefore they very quickly get caught too. Amateur cheaters have no respect for anyone, they do not even respect their fellow cheaters, they tend to accuse anyone who beats them that he is using a computer. They do not know what a codex is, and therefore, 90% of amateur cheaters are caught while they are still amateurs, sometimes even with the help of other cheaters who report them to ComputerAbuse/SpeedTrap or whatever the appropriate account is. The usage of the described transfer technique will very rarely allow these cheaters to play anything faster than a 5 0 game, and even this will be played very hard and slow. Group III (professional cheaters) use many techniques to cover their computer usage - even if they are using the described transfer technique, they will know when a move must be made immediately, they will know to make some kind of "humiliating mate", e.g. with 6 rooks if their engine stops responding in a critical won endgame position. They will pretend to think. Their moves won't have equal times between each other. More advanced cheaters will make some kind of an interface with a built-in chess-engine, that will allow them to play even very fast games, including lightning/bullet. Many do this by modifying WinBoard's source code. They will try to really understand what an engine wanted to achieve with its move/plan. They might play an opening on their own, if they have a good opening repertoire. They will not always use the best chess program, but somewhat average, less suspicious, e.g. GNUChess. They won't tend to have the highest rating, but will always be near the top. They respect their fellow cheaters, and won't constantly beat a fellow that has a weaker engine. They might say to their fellow cheater "I am better with Black", which would mean "I have a better progie and will beat you now with Black, but when I have White, I'll let you win". They will tend to lose games to persons that accuse them of cheating. They know what a codex is: they will never accuse a fellow cheater of cheating except in cases when they are attacked first, and they will never accuse a non-cheater of cheating. Behaving according to this guidelines, they often spend a very long time playing uncaught on the servers. They are often never caught. Still, they will extremely rarely (almost never) discover their true (real-life) identity.
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