fling wrote on 05/07/12 at 06:50:01:


It's not that I think people have to perform their absolute best at all times, I just don't think they should play in circumstances where their performance is like 300-400 points lower than normal. This is as a corollary to my belief against cheating. Firstly, people who beat them are falsely going to think they're doing a good job. Secondly, when the player's performance is better again they'll be damaging the ratings of players because they'll under-rated.  

The people extrapolating it to ad absurdum may find it interesting to note that in professional sports it's a criminal offence to intentionally under-perform. Hugely underperforming is just not a good thing to do. I used to play without a mouse sometimes, and would sometimes even actually tell my opponent that afterwards if I lost on time in an annoying way. I know that was a mistake, and I should have made sure to have played with a mouse or at least not tried to take something from the other player with my spiteful remark.  

I'm not saying that everyone else should find it unethical to underperform, especially if it's just being quite tired/lazy/drunk and still wanting to play. All I'm saying is that, like claiming that cheating is a terrible thing, drastically underperforming is bad also. What you may not realize is that for the 1800 player, beating a 2200 player three times may feel like the best day of his chess life and he does not realize anything is different. So many problems are solved if people just play properly, and can have some faith that the person at the other end of the line is a normal player, playing honestly in order to try to win.   
 

Yeah. 

I guess nobody is allowed to play blitz chess while under the influence of alcohol, or even red meat!

Sadly, I think Jay is probably right, this thread will probably never die. There are just too many people who focus too much on cheating rather than playing the best chess they can possibly play.

The original post was about a specific instance of cheating by taking too long to think in a blitz game.

It has morphed into a more general complaint about cheating and under-performing and... 

Well, I'm not going to split off the different topics because they all seem to converge at different points.

Enjoy the hand-wringing.

Uhohspaghettio wrote on 05/07/12 at 00:56:56:


George Jempty wrote in his opening post:
I know that cheating on internet sites is a controversial topic and that lots of keystrokes have been squandered discussing it.  What I haven't seen though is much discussion of opening-specific cheating.  For example ......Anyway, it just improves my game, I go look stuff up in one of my books or in chessbase after the game - doing so during the game isn't going to help me prepare for the World Open this summer . 


Looking at the opening post I feel free to discuss in this topic any related to opening specific cheating and this means sometimes asking general questions about cheating.

George Jempty wrote a good post imo. Especially there's his way to handle that problem in a useful way which I think is a good one.

Uoh.... Your line of reasoning is simply hurly-burly to me. Maybe there's a lack of philosophical education on my side. My serious question are here: How is it possible to seperate ethic from psychology? Have philosophers found a response to this question?

All men have the right to mean something is unethical. And you have the right to express yourself in the way marked red by me. But I hope for you this is not meant serious as you behaved offensive against someone who wanted to help you to see something. (And - pardon me - you need a lot of help there!) As this offensive behaviour is often happening in your posts I have the question: Do you offend intentionally or incidentally? My guess: The latter is more often the case.

I do not think humanities has common material with engineering, but if I bought a book on humanities, I would read the book, but just during online blitz.. Then I would be placed at a disadvantage and my opponent will have an unfair advantage and it would not be a "fair" game. 

And I do certainly play that system 1. b3/2. Bb2/3. c3/4. Na3/5. Qc2/6. 0-0-0/7. f3/8. g4/9. h4/10. h5, and mostly on premove unless my opponent tries to do the 1-minute fianchetto trick ...Ba3/Bxb2/Bxa1. I have not dropped below 2250 in 1-minute for a while with this system, so perhaps the disadvantage is an advantage in that I honestly do not care if I lose or win? Then there are certain GMs who play 1. h4 or 1...h5 every 1-minute game they play, and yet maintain 2400+. I do not know why those players play those openings, but maybe that would be considered as a disadvantage that leads to success for those players. But I would never consider that cheating. If I played the system 1. b3/2. Bb2/3. c3/4. Na3/5. Qc2/6. 0-0-0/7. f3/8. g4/9. h4/10. h5 in a long tournament game and somehow won, would that be placing myself at a disadvantage?

I am still wondering how my habits of playing blitz and/or reading engineering books is connected to the issue of the original topic of suspecting an opponent of using a form of assistance if the player spends too much time on a move in the opening in a blitz game?

Uhohspaghettio wrote on 05/07/12 at 00:56:56:


I have encountered at least 100 games in which my opponents would seem to be "underperforming". A few GMs (I am not saying which, but if you played or observed them you know which ones do) have played 1. h4 or 1...h5 during 1-minute games, is that also what you consider "underperforming"?

But I did not know that playing online blitz was as serious as sitting a university examination, maybe I should study a few hours of opening theory before playing a 1-minute game as well, since my 2345 rating in the ICC 1-minute pool is too inaccurate due to the rubbish system that I constructed whilst having insomnia one night, 1. b3/2. Bb2/3. c3/4. Na3/5. Qc2/6. 0-0-0/7. f3/8. g4/9. h4/10. h5. Or maybe my opponent has too much advantage because it is a rubbish system. But also, if I studied 5 hours for each 1-minute game and consider it as important as a PhD dissertation, it might place me at too much of an advantage if my opponent is the one who does not care entirely about online ratings or online blitz games and is also trying to study thermodynamics whilst playing instead of me. At least in that case, I can start reading thermodynamics whilst playing so that neither my opponent nor I will have an advantage...

But when I played in my last few tournaments, I usually was tired and only had a couple of hours of sleep the night before the game. I would think that would be a worse case than trying to study whilst playing online blitz, but maybe to ensure that I am not underperforming, I could request my opponent to not sleep more hours than I had. Maybe the only way to prevent opponents from underperforming or overperforming ("cheating") would be to create a new setting on an online chess server where the only opponents whom you would play would be those with the same settings, for example "set sleep 5 hours" or "set readingthermodynamics 0". Surely that will resolve the issue...

Gilchrist is a legend wrote on 05/06/12 at 22:05:46:


I think that this sort of activity is unethical as well. To intentionally handicap yourself when your opponent believes or expects to be playing a genuine opponent with that rating that he/she has/had. This sort of behaviour disturbs me just like cheating does: underperforming - you see this contradicts the accusations that people only get annoyed at cheaters as some sort of convoluted way to stroke their ego. All players should try their best and play what they believe to be the best moves at all times, this goes for all games. 

Your "studying" of thermodynamics while playing 3 minute blitz was a really ridiculous action. It's just nonsense, just nonsense. "difficult to even read a few sentences"... hurr durrr I wonder why, don't darken my life with your contrived nonsense again.