"As far as I can tell chess.com has plenty of false positives."

I can confirm this. My previous account was shut down due to using an engine (I did not use any). They gave me the option to confess, but obviously I don't confess something I haven't done.

My blitz rating is now more than 100 points higher, but so far they haven't thrown me out.

I have been playing a number of online Zoom chess tournaments organized by the PNWCC on chess.com.  These have required a side view angled camera showing the player fully (in addition to screen sharing, microphone, on)

I guess this wasn't the case for the PRO Chess League?   

https://www.nachesshub.com/Events/Details/9e15bafe-6b0b-4039-97dd-1ba424b139bb

LeeRoth wrote on 10/03/20 at 22:25:01:

Well that lack of information is par for the course, and exactly why I tend to side with the accused in such scenarios. I look at it as a basic red/blue type division (without me specifying which one is red and which is blue). Does one applaud chess.com for "taking action" against cheaters? Or does one criticize that action for opacity and lack of any process available to the accused. Me agreeing with Manukyan's and Petrosian's statements does not preclude the possibility that Petrosian did cheat. I'm not in position to judge that, but I can judge the process, and I find it not good.

This one deserved its own thread.

I agree 99% with the arguments put forward by Manukyan and Petrosian.

Anybody can engage in suspicious behavior at any time. That's not proof of cheating. A couple of anecdotes from my own experience. (1) As white after the moves 1.e4 e6 I got up from the board and left the playing room for a long walk. After returning I quickly rattled off 10 moves. (2) As black in a critical position I thought for some minutes, then went to the men's restroom for rather a long time. After returning I immediately sacrifice a minor piece on the kingside.

(1) Was not cheating, the long walk was to the wallcharts to see if my opponent was playing in the two-day schedule, and had not seen my round one opening. But he was in the three-day schedule, so I chose a different line. Crucially, my suspicious opponent was able to verify I was not cheating by following me at a discreet distance.

(2) Was not cheating, but in this case the only way my opponent could know this is because my sacrifice was completely unsound! I am sure if it had been sound he would have complained loudly. I knew my behavior was suspicious but I simply had no choice.

I have more anecdotes, but you get the idea. Players are rightly suspicious, it's a healthy paranoia. But suspicion leads to false accusations. Not everybody accused is a cheater, that can never be the case. Some people will be slow to accuse, others will be quick to accuse, but in almost every case the accusation, although based on some evidence, precedes the actual proof. That's why mathematically there will always be some false accusations.

On the other side, in fact there are cheaters, and with less controls there are more of them. So organizers are in a tough spot, particularly in online events.

My general view is that chess.com, or other organizer, can forfeit or ban players/teams, but they have to show all evidence that went into this, because it's impossible to prove a negative. An accused player has no way to prove they were not cheating. In this case chess.com sent a letter, as far as I know they haven't done that before.

Hi.

About the match with Wesley. Apparently TLP has now gone from "both of us will invest 5000$" to "we find sponsors and organize a 1v1 so that I can prove myself further."

We will see I guess.

Have a nice day.

Artak Manukyan (manager of Armenian Eagles), TLP: Tigran Levoni Petrosian

Interviewer: This interview concerns the disqualification of the AE team. We’ll let them explain and then we’ll ask them questions.
AM: I’ll try to present the environment first. First of all, there is a sport component: we have won the 2018 (offline) PRO chess league, which demonstrates that we are a competent team. I myself have contributed to that win in San Francisco. We have proven ourselves OTB and we subsequently proved ourselves online during this tournament. We have received a letter from chess.com yesterday that offered us two choices: either admit something that didn’t happen and continue our cooperation with chess.com as one of the best teams on the site, or begin discussions around the issue [?]. As the team manager, unfounded accusations are for me unacceptable and we thus announce that we will refrain from participating in such events in the next couple years. We were presented the opportunity to keep participating, but we have chosen not to. Furthermore, chess.com had the responsibility of ensuring fair play during matches and if issues arose during a match, there were mechanisms put in place to ask a player who, for example, is continuously looking down, to show what he is looking at and such interventions not only happened in this tournament, but during the Olympiad as well. Such mechanisms are present and we did follow them.

Personally, it seems to me that because chess.com is an American site, they are interested in ensuring their profits: the American team, if I dare say the "favorite team" winning would imply investments, further popularity of chess in America, etc. etc. Unfortunately for them, chess is a sport and as in war, quality is more important than quantity. In this tournament in which superstars were competing, if one player has a bad day, fails to convert a winning position to a win and loses, blaming the winner is not logical and unacceptable. Politically, it is not a secret that chess.com's and online chess's reputation was quite tarnished after the chess Olympiad in which the Armenian team had its fair share of problems and unfair decisions taken upon them. This was quite a major issue for us as it ended up involving other parties such as our Education-Sport Ministry and our Chess Federation. It seems to me that chess.com's staff responsible for the tournament was quite concerned and given the overwhelming influence of American players, they would be more inclined to take a decision that would favor the American players than the Armenian players. Despite all this, I would like to stress that equality and justice are very important: in these online contexts, it is pretty much implicitly accepted that the organizer can take independent [without consultation] judgment. We've seen such a precedent when the Russian team was facing the American team and there was an issue of who would play with White or Black. The Russian team claimed that the organizer was at fault and was ready to continue playing if the organizer corrected the mistake, but they did not and the Russian team withdrew altogether. We have decided not to participate in such tournaments where players get accused without concrete evidence and in which organizers take arbitrary decisions. I’ll let TLP speak.

TLP: Let me begin by saying that there was no concrete explanation presented to me. I learned of such affairs when talking AM who said that we received a letter from chess.com's administration. I then sent them a very lengthy email, demanding explanations for what is happening. The idea was that if my name is involved, I should at least be questioned and I warned them that I'm not the kind of man who will take such unfounded accusations lightly: I noted that I might even start legal actions. This morning, we received an email which asked if that [withdrawing from further PRO Chess League tournaments altogether] was our final decision and saying that I cannot take legal action because I have signed such-and-such document. From a legal perspective, I still need advice and don't really know which path I am going to take, but if there is even a 0.1% chance of solving this issue through legal means, I'll go for it.

AM: Let me add, when I was talking about unfair behavior regarding the Armenian team, people had become wary of online events after a couple of incidents and chess.com, trying to improve its image, is trying to advertise itself as the best and most secure site when it comes to online chess, by claiming that people who cheat get caught very fast and very reliably. Arbitrary decisions like these might also be a marketing trick by chess.com to further reinforce the image of them being the best site on which to play.

Interviewer: Have you received any response from your colleagues?
TLP: The decision was received very early in the morning and my Armenian colleagues from abroad had already written to me, asking me what kind of misunderstanding this is. Everybody was standing behind me and needless to say, there will be quite a loud response to these accusations. Such decisions have happened quite a lot on chess.com: there have been accusations against Armenian players and others too in the past, but these accusations and decisions associated with them have always remained behind the scenes, like "there are suspicions that XYZ player has cheated, please don't participate in our tournaments again". This was quite unprecedented given the fact that it was publicly announced that I was accused of cheating. Of course, given the rules of the tournament, as I said, one of the conditions was to have a webcam. We respected that. It was also required that screenshare must always be on. We also respected that. It was also agreed that at any moment, the arbiter [or possibly organizer] can at any moment ask you to show your surroundings. They never confronted me about that during the game and before the game, my entire room was shown to them. Why am I saying this? Because all the fair play obligations were respected. In the letter, they also talk about the semi-finals. This is quite laughable because the semi-finals were two days ago. If there were issues, why not talk about them right away? In all this, it seems to me that we weren't favorites both in semi-finals and finals, and given the fact that we were facing a much higher rated team, people had hopes that the Americans would easily win, but they were disappointed. When we won, things started to surface as to how to find evidence to seize our victory. At the end of the day, this is a sport: you win some, you lose some. When I lose, I usually congratulate my opponents for their victory, but it looks like the opposing team doesn’t share my mindset. This issue will be talked about quite a lot, given the rise of online chess and given that issues like cheating and arbitrary decisions by organizers remain a heated topic. Perhaps I will try to fight the issue of arbitrary decisions myself, because most GMs in the past simply accepted their punishment without questioning it too much, despite being in the right. I hope that we will manage to change their decision and make it so that they apologize. We'll see what happens.

Interviewer: As such disqualifications seem to not be that uncommon, is it possible that every GM who has faced issues like these group and try to collectively solve the issue?
LTP: Yes, let me remind you that this was not some FIDE World Championship, this was some regular championship on a website. Most people would probably not bother wasting resources on legal matters, given that fact. Perhaps some people really were guilty, but I deny all accusations. Some of the accusations towards me are also really laughable. I believe this all started after Wesley So publicly complained about how I could play like this, etc. etc. That was really funny for me and I answered that when I was beating players of this caliber, he was still really young, etc. etc. People around the chess world know that I am quite a strong player and my results prove it. I've played Carlsen, Aronian, I was really close to being world blitz champion in 2017. The fact that I won against a much stronger opponent is not really that surprising, it's not a first and I assure you, it won't be a last. The opinion of Wesley doesn't really matter to me, but I proposed to him that we find sponsors and organize a 1v1 so that I can prove myself further. For the Americans, it was obviously unpleasant to lose. When we withdrew from the Olympiad, our players and even gov. institutions were blaming chess.com for the failure of their server and the idea of bringing up legal charges was discussed even back then. It seems to me that there was some kind of bias after that towards Armenian players and it seems it culminated in this incident.

AM: I will reiterate: as TLP said, if there was an issue in the semis, why not bring it up then? Why not say something along the lines of "we see some issues that we are investigating, we need some time. Can we delay the final so that we can look into it?". From a technical standpoint, such things were possible. Making accusations of this seriousness about the semis at this point is not serious for a serious organization. Furthermore, after the American team lost, there was a wave of massive speculation on social media, which might have put additional pressure on chess.com to make such a decision.
1: TLP is looking down continuously. Well, you could have asked him to show what he is looking at. Let me note that TLP doesn't play with a mouse. He plays with a touchpad [lmao]. Most people already know that. You need to sometimes look down in order to not slip. When making decisions regarding two parties, the accused party usually has the right to defend itself and provide perspective as to what was happening from their side. This is basic common sense.
2: American players are suggesting putting a camera from behind. Sure, I myself have suggested putting many cameras in the room. I even proposed that we could gather all the players in some place with their computers, put camera crews in their booths to show what the whole process looks like. The organizer is entirely responsible of ensuring the fair play conditions. If anomalies were seen, they could very easily ask TLP to show what's under his table yet they did not. By the way, before the matches, managers of the teams were consulted and I let them know about my complaints. Surprisingly, these segments were cut and only a small clip was aired.
3: One of our best players, Haik Martirosyan, was on a winning streak. People started writing "Oh, Haik is winning against strong players, he must be cheating!". It started getting really bad, and even very strong GMs started spreading groundless rumors about him not playing fair.

(Continued in next post...)

Confused_by_Theory wrote on 10/02/20 at 15:33:43:


It looks as if one player was accused of cheating. As far as I can tell chess.com has plenty of false positives.