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By the way, that 1 win? It's on time, Mario flags with 0. I have nothing to prove it, other than my speculation, but that would explain the strong mod reaction. What strengthens it is that his rating average before his "tilt" would put his team a couple of points above the mark, so he had to lose hard and lose big to get below that mark. Atrophied is not actually banned, he lost his lichess master title, coach page, and is flagged as a ratings manipulator. He has not been banned for cheating, and is still allowed to play unrated games. He is disallowed from rated games.
On a lighter note, this is still one of my favorite chess videos: Eric Hansen and Atrophied play bughouse. At this point I have lost near all respect for him. I appreciate that once cornered he did the honorable thing. Were I trying to improve I'd seriously consider paying for his coaching services. What are you talking about? When you're cornered its the easiest time to do the right thing, he waited until he was completely cornered on purpose so he could possibly get away.
The man cheated in multiple ways and isn't even titled. I would say paying for his coaching services is a big blunder. I'm qualifying the fact that he did the right thing - which I still think is important - with the circumstance under which he did it. The right thing would have been to not do it in the first place.
The Barely okay thing would have been to confess once he was flagged for cheating. He on the other hand made an hour long video of complete BS, antagonised the mods and led his audience completely astray. Now even that that whole video was refuted and he uploaded a video finally confessing, he is still denying the obvious fact that he sandbagged or at the very least not taking it in full.
How is this near the right thing? And how do you arrive at the conclusion that someone seeking professional chess instructing should consider him? He wasn't flagged for cheating to my surprise. Yes, he made an hour-long video talking about why he thought he was marked as a ratings manipulator and I agree that's misleading. I choose not to hold that childish behavior against him.
As far as "antagonised the mods", I assume you're referring to the video; AFAIK he acted civilly, especially for a person under duress. How is confessing and apologizing not the right thing to do? I stand corrected, having read conflicting explanations elsewhere. I arrive at the conclusion that someone seeking professional chess instruction should consider him given the dozens of games we've played together.
He's a highly skilled, polite, and thoughtful player and it's a shame he made terrible decisions. You can find thousands of chess coaches that are skilled and polite who haven't cheated long term and then lied about it and accused the mods once they were caught. Jesus man I really hope you don't evaluate your real life relations in such a manner. I can't tell if your being extremely stubborn and feel like losing a reddit argument would be an intellectual blow or just are missing the point completely. And please, he's like fide TOPS. I'm not sure if I would call that "highly skilled", and i have no idea how you could call him a thoughtful player after cheating, then denying it, then being proven wrong, then only excepting most of the blame when he was completely cornered.
Again, if you think he would be a good coach I genuinely feel sorry for you give your ability to seek professional help. I'm just saying, if some future cheater actually confesses, there's still some hope they can become a decent human being. Privately I have offered him what I perceive to be constructive feedback although in a far less complementary tone than these comments.
I rarely publicly attack a person's character. I call him thoughtful due to his positive contributions covering crazyhouse games, and dual commentary matches he's done. Why would you pay for his coaching if you're uscf? He's probably not that much better than you. Probably some sort of slippery slope: A study was done on gamers can't find the link to the study about online play and cheating. The endorphin rush from winning. I'm a titled player and i bust out engines occasionally when an opponent really pisses me off. You have quite the post history. You are a 90 pound woman with a beard and an ex-wife.
At age 33 you have played ICCF chess for 20 years and are both the chief of police and also a bouncer who killed someone in a bar fight which wasn't included in the story about the two people in your life you totally killed. So why not also be a titled player? Honest question, are you 13?
Who else has the patience to sit around making up idiot stories on the internet? I feel like I should crosspost your comment to some sub. There should be a sub about people like you mentioned. Wonder if this gameknot profile is the same user. He's one of those alt-righters as well who loves the word cuck. He recently told a story in an askReddit thread about how he's a millionaire because his business partner screwed his wife so he screwed him over by taking everything, leaving him penniless etc.
I can say with at least extensive anecdotal evidence that the players that cheat in advanced ways are generally more intelligent humans than those that get super angry and pitchfork-mob-mentality-ish in response to cheating allegations. This sounds so complicated, but is it really?
I didn't it was so involved. Only if it's something I'd bust out in the middle of a game. If I'd been doing it from the start it's much simpler Was it ever confirmed that Max was cheating? It's unfortunate, these are people I liked very much. These guys are so gifted; yet they choose to cheat. Kind of assumed that without the public denial that it was implicitly accepted that he was cheating. Whether or not it was confirmed is kind of irrelevant. I wonder if he did it to maintain his prestige and make some money for living from coaching: That's the weird thing though- he didn't need to cheat.
He was already a solid player without the cheating. What also gets me is how people think they are going to get away with this stuff. I mean, I am much less invested in chess than Atrophied and also Tal Baron are, yet I've read so much stuff on cheat detection on both chess. I mean, obviously don't cheat because it's wrong, but how can these people delude themselves that they're not going to get caught by the obviously fairly sophisticated detection systems? That's true in cases like these where the players cheat through several entire games.
Unfortunately, I fear that there are many cases of more cautious cheaters who use the engine only once or twice per game at crucial positions. I don't see how an algorithm would be able to reliably pick up on that if the cheating is done on a different device. That said, cases like Atrophied's seem to show that cheaters can get hooked on cheating, i. Unless the player is stupid and uses a web interface thus leaving a "fingerprint" of the current FEN being analyzed the system is bullet proof. Un fortunately humans have a tough time limiting their greed. I myself have never cheated online, but I remember a lot of campaigns in PC games where I swore to myself I wouldn't use cheats and I ended up using them: I am fairly sure that chess.
If you click out of the window, events like that can be recorded, and along with some other heuristics, be used to detect even occasional engine use. Just pointing out that even cheating on the same computer you're playing on is not foolproof. You're only cheating yourself really. By cheating online it becomes a crutch and then when you go to play a real game you are out of your depth. Saying this after turning off webcam so he can take his time cheating. While it has been proven that he has used engines and opening books, you have no way to prove that in that stream he's being dishonest.
I think it's extremely likely. He feels the need to explain verbally why he's looking away to the second screen pretty much every time he does it. And it's almost always AFTER his opponent makes a move rather than when he's waiting for his opponent to move, which is what you'd otherwise expect. It's quite evident and rather cringeworthy, particularly the parts he "looks away" pretending to calculate in his head, commentary about "now I know what Nakamura feels like It's all circumstantial, thus making the remarks "phoney", "upsetting and disturbing", "cringeworthy" unnecessary.
He might very well be cheating, but you have no proof of it and the rest is just an exercise of ridicule. He admitted he cheated using engine assistance during this specific tournament.
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This isn't rocket science. You sound like me, defending Lance Armstrong all the way up to before the Oprah confession. I agree with you on principle. But I also think examining video record of the deception is interesting, and after what this guy did to the other players, a certain amount of modest bashing is not entirely out of order. The math is as proof as it gets. It's essentially impossible for this guy to be playing the way he is in the analyzed games.
It's well beyond the scope of playing out of your mind for even a few games. Its fine that you think that, some people are not able to read other people faces or the way the do something, even when its obvious like its the case here. He accepts the ban now. He was upset about the original ban because of the lack of explanation, and maybe he didn't feel he sandbagged that part is kinda unclear. But after the cheating came out, Atro admitted the ban is justified. He always knew he was cheating. He knew why he was marked. He literally only admitted it after it was impossible to do otherwise.
Just saying "Guy cheated at chess and now he's salty he's being banned from lichess" is a pretty misleading summary. The sandbagging stuff was completely clear actually. He knew he had both cheated and sandbagged and he was betting that the evidence wouldn't come up and he could pretend it was all some conspiracy when he made his video accusing the mods.
If he was being honest at that point he would have explained exactly what cheating and sandbagging he had engaged in and why he didn't think it was fair that the mods weren't clear with him on the ban, but he didn't because clearly he thought he could still get away with it. I'm not arguing about what he did or didn't do. I am describing the positions he took in his last video.
From what I have seen, he hasn't fully admitted to sandbagging, though he said something like "I see why they thought that. Season 7 and 8 the engine usage stepped up and he was playing at GM level. Season 7 started 5 months ago. If it takes 5 months to ban a USCF player with higher best engine move matchup rates than Carlsen, how many blatant cheats can their system really see? Can any lichess mods reading this tell us how many cheats are being banned each day?
In the end he wasn't even banned for engine cheating, so how long would it have gone on for if the sandbagging wasn't detected or hicetnunc didn't provide his data? Even the sandbagging appears to have been partly identified by the mods reading Atrophied's private messages. Maybe that was just a secondary proof after their system detected likely sandbagging.
Just my opinion, but even if the lichess detection system isn't perfect no system is , it's still better than what they have on chess. In my experience, obvious cheaters are banned fairly quickly couple days max. In this specific case I suppose the high profile of the suspect and his ties with lichess may have played a role in the lenghty decision. Nice get on discovering him, were you suspicious before your game against him in the league? Have you played the ICC slow leagues, and do you know if they have this problem with blatant cheaters running for many seasons before being caught?
I already knew Atrophied was cheating when I played him the S7 scores combined with 2 draws against engines were already pretty blatant. I used to play in ICC slow league long time ago, but their detection system was just inefficient. So I think lichess league is the last online league where you can hope to play long Internet games without playing cheaters too often. I reported him after he had played 6 games out of 8 in season 7, including his two draws against engine users. Must have been disappointing to wait several more months for a ban.
Looking at your spreadsheet, it seems S4,5,6,7 had enough bad games for some action to be taken given his USCF rating. S7 by itself looked like it might be enough to convince some even with only a handful of games because of what he was doing against other engine users in that season.
My initial report had a bit less data, but IMO was enough for a ban. I think an "anonymous" account would have been banned quicker, although I understand lichess' caution given Atrophied was a public figure and was playing under his real name. Keep in mind that his two cheater opponents hadn't been banned yet at this moment they were a couple weeks later. The fact that he was eventually banned and his cheating exposed is more important though. But yes, I agree with you: Atrophied played a shitload of games. An algorithm is based on statistics and it's meant to detect systematic cheaters, i. The atrophied case seems to be an example of a very "localized" cheating, which requires to be manually checked rather than be detected by the algorithms.
Cheating in one rating type, but not another is probably common. Apparently the advanced search doesn't work ATM on Lichess on his profile so I can't tell you how many classical games he was playing in that period of time, but 11 games the last two seasons can be statistically insignificant if meanwhile he plays hundreds of "fair" games. Atrophied's mistake was to cheat in a league, thus allowing people to see a statistically unlikely PR.
For him to cheat in what is probably 5 seasons in a row before getting caught for unrelated cheating is embarrassing. Unless he is caught cheating i. Thus, once again, it depends on the amount of games Atrophied was playing at the time and it is possible that the performances were still not statistically significant. It's the same reason for which an "internal detection" for a single tournament as you suggest makes no sense.
Manual detection still works best as this case confirms. There are other ways to detect cheaters though. That's manual and still doesn't mean anything. You can report, but proving that a user cheats is something much more complicated if you want to avoid false positives.
In S7 I had 4 wins with no blunders,six mistakes and 13,13,22,30 acl in each game. Am I a cheater? How can you prove it? As for proving it, you can use statistical analysis. I don't see why a 6-games sample couldn't be enough. It depends what you find in these games. You're right about false positives being a problem, but it depends on the quality of your analysis and of your benchmarks. If you say it's about what you find, all you need to do is to throw in a subpar move every now and then to deceive the human analysis. I'll tell you more. Yesterday I won another Lichess game with a acl of That's the 5th game in less than 9 that I finish under 32 acl.
Should I be banned if I play another game like this? Internal detection on any of his last 5 league seasons should have led to further investigation and banning. It's not been 5 seasons statistically speaking. Only 4 maximum for a total of less than 40 games, with only the last 11 being clearly off the charts. You can't ban someone for allegations. You need to prove it. Either directly or statistically. You need to understand that if i decide to play 1 game every with an engine say i'm FIDE there is virtually no way that I can be reasonably banned unless the mods find out that I'm checking SF on their servers.
Looks like he should have been flagged for manual checking after S4 given his USCF rating versus engine top engine move matchups in that season. I don't see why the lichess cheat detection system didn't trigger the kind of analysis hicetnunc applied when Atrophied's first suspicious games were played 11 months ago.
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There is nothing in hicetnunc's analysis that absolutely requires manual intervention. Possibly an area to improve in the future. If you played the most of your 1 in engine games in the same time control, avoiding cheating in others, your cheating should have been obvious. This looks like what happened here. Just responding to this part So, ostensibly, it wouldn't have gone on any longer than this. If he hadn't sandbagged, he would have been banned for cheating instead.
I don't get this post. You are saying he has a peak rating of USCF but that he plays like So are you saying he is using computer chess assistance?
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That someone else is playing for him? What exactly is it that you are saying? No one is going to be strength and only have a peak rating of even if they are sand bagging. The title is confusing because cheating increases a rating while sandbagging decreases a rating. Sandbagging isn't really cheating either. It is more like stealing. Atrophied is not caught by "reddit detectives", but lichess mods.
There's a reason lichess didn't stand out to explain. Since his online personality and percieved strength is part of his marketing strategy as a chess coach, I highly suggest that all his students - current and former - seek reimbursements for all payments to Atrophied. By cheating, he has led potential students to believe that he was a more accomplished player than he actually was, and has left himself open for refund claims. In his own comment here , when asked about whether he will offer refunds, he says:. But such refunds are not a matter of his immediate ability to pay his clients back out-of-pocket.
Contact your local authority on the matter. Meh, pro sports players don't have to return their entire salary if they get caught cheating, thats not how it works. This and that are two different things. Professional sportsmen can't pretend to be better at their sport than they are. Their entire performance is immediately visible and testable. Cheating during your performance, and cheating to improve hirability aren't the same. The latter is false advertising, which is what any litigator would slam Atrophied with.
While I understand what your comparison was meant to accomplish I don't think this is quite the same. I understand they test all other competitions, so chess as well as bridge has got to fall in line as well. It wouldn't be fair to make exceptions. And let us not forget the one inevitable thing that will happen with Drug testing. Players, some, will test positive. No other sport that has included drug testing in their regimine has failed to find a dirty competitor. These chessplayers will be disqualified.
And some of those players will be "Popular players. Chess will be hurt as a result.
And the players who lost their careers lost them due to "cheating. Their careers were simply terminated, to make some politician somewhere look good. So we must ask ourselves, as any good chesspayer must ask himself when choosing his mext move , in vieing for a spot in the Olympics, is chess gaining more than it will ultimatly be sacrificing? Is that recognition worth the players we will be throwing away? Players who were gaining no unfair advantage over their opponent?
If one player would indeed be tested positive and being disqualified from the sport in process, then so be it. If the Olympic recognition will flush mo' money into the funds of chess organizations and leagues worldwide, then it's a good thing. Besides, I simply can't imagine Chess players in the likes of Carlsen, Kramnik or Anand to bypass such a rule once it's set up. As long as everyday-stimulants like nicotine or caffeine aren't touched, I can't see any long-term problems arising from a stipulation against doping. Of the two, I think Chess Boxing has much greater potential as an Olympic event, it is more fun to watch and you are allowed to shout out stuff to the competitors, "Hit him!
Chess Boxing is the modern Biathlon. Thank you for this reply, TheBigDecline.
This arguement has been used countless times throughout the milenia to justify most every rule or law that has been made. The good ones, as well as the bad ones. And while this his arguement justifies the enforcement of a rule, it does not justify the implementation of a rule. If a rule is counterproductive before the competitors informed of it, it will be counterproductive afterward as well.
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Just because the person who broke the rule is in the wrong, does not mean the person who wrote that rule is not. But, like you said, there is much to be gained from Chess in the Olympics. I just wonder, will we gain enough? Chess will be able to get sponsorship far beyond the niche world of IT companies like Intel. In fact, it will be a severe detriment to the more mainstream sports in the Olympics like, say, PS Lance et al aren't after bigger leg muscles.
Big muscles are good for cycle sprinters, but they only cost you when you have to carry the extra weight up hills. Touring cycle racers want high red blood cell concentrations for endurance, hence EPO use. Why would they test for doping? To me, the only way to cheat is to have a mini microphone with someone telling you the moves from a chess engine.
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And I don't think chess In the Olympics would be good paulgottlieb. Besides, I don't think "doping" is a good way to say that. They want to put chess in the Summer Olympics? Will chess replace wrestling in the Summer Olympics? Hm, really, I personally couldn't care less about licences and media coverage IMO it only promotes rivalry and a baseless notion of the superiority of one people over another.
Those proposed doping checks, even imagining two dudes sitting at a chessboard amongst all the athletes, who perform 'real sports", is really laughable. Drug testing in chess is a stupid waste of time, it's only purpose is to get chess into the olympics. Of course getting chess into the olympics would probably spell and end to the actual chess olympiad, one of the greatest spectacles in chess. Just the top teams will attend. It's just a horrible idea. We have a great olypics already. Why do we need more corrupt, imcompetent officials messing everything up.
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