In the nearer future people might use machines to cheat and boost their ranks. Any long term solution to prevent it?

No, you can't prevent it. Any reason why would anybody do that and why should anybody try to prevent it? Don't really see the point.

Why would you want to prevent it? You're not playing against a person, you're playing against an account.

Why do you care what is on the other end, as long as it is consistent? It could be a person, it could be a person with computer. It could be a dog. But as long as the dog plays a consistent 10kyu strength, how does it really affect you?

I don't care if my opponent 'cheats', just as long as he cheats consistently.

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Because people like feeling like they're better than they actually are. Same as cheating in any game. Why do it? What does it really get you? You don't improve, you're just cheating to make yourself look better. It really comes down to image - people want to be seen a certain way, and sadly some feel they have to cheat to accomplish that image.

Either way, though, I agree completely with Joaz. In the end, does it really matter for you? If they're consistent (and really, even if they aren't!) it's one game out of many. You can run into people sandbagging without a computer program already.

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KGS: schultz [?].

The consistency is the issue though, someone could very easily use a bot some of the time, get a rank they like then play until the rank drops and then use the bot again.

In answer to the original question though, this is a problem that chess has been dealing with for a while, and they have been developing tools which determine the likelihood that an opponent is using a computer to select moves.

EDIT: To be clear, it's not that I'm bothered by the idea of some person cheating. The purpose of rank is allow good matchups, if people start using bots in the above fashion, rank is not a good indicator for the quality of a matchup

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Sure bots are getting a lot stronger recently so the number of people who could benefit from using a bot is increasing, but there's no reason this couldn't already happen. A 20k could use GnuGo to make himself 10k ages ago.

Those bots are running on serious hardware though. Crazy Stone is 5d KGS on a 24 core machine. Zen's hardware makes this look like a calculator. Versus Chess where a modern engine running on a regular home machine is extremely powerful. Go bots have a very long way to go.

^On a perfectly ordinary machine you can run a bot that's stronger than the vast majority of players. On my old crappy machine MFoG can play 6 stones stronger than me (KGS 7k), so it would certainly be useful for cheating. It has been this way for a while.

As bots get stronger the proportion of players who would 'benefit' from using them increases - but that proportion is already a majority.

Personally, I don't see it as a problem.

I see nothing "irrational" about wanting to play other humans and being annoyed that some humans are secretly consulting other aids while playing. If you sign on to KGS with the intent to play other people, and that's not what you're getting, that's as much of a reason to get annoyed as many things we get annoyed about. If you're purging your life of negative emotions, then I guess you shouldn't be annoyed. But otherwise, go ahead.

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Occupy Babel!

I guess I should expand on what I said earlier. The use of a bot is just another way of cheating. Sandbagging, reverse sandbagging - in the end, you are creating an unfavorable situation for someone else.

I'm all for coming up with means of detecting them and immediately banning them, if possible; but, this will always be an ongoing problem. It's the reason why games are constantly patched, and why you have to have admins in the first place. Using my jerk rule - you can always count on jerks being there ready to ruin your experience.

And I'm constantly working on purging my life of negative emotions; but I'm very competitive and rather than being calm, I usually end up more like --> (plus a little more rage ).

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KGS: schultz [?].

If the bot+human plays consistently, how does it harm anyone?

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Well, for one thing, you're sure not getting a review from a bot.

- Aren't we all just accounts? I'm a carbon-based chat program, who goes online to play a game every so seldom. I'm afraid of non-consistency, yet consistency makes me bored.

may people also say that playing against bots hurts your game.
Also if I wanted to play against a bot I would go to the computer go room

See my original agreement with you. My second post was me amending my statement about when they are not consistent (ie. creating the unfavorable conditions).

Also +1 for jts response.

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KGS: schultz [?].

How does an ordinary person cheating on KGS harm anyone?

If I log on L19, and start violating the terms of service left and right, calling people the nastiest and most obscene names I can think of, how does it harm them? Well, mostly by bothering them in virtue of breaking one of the norms that the community's cooperation centers around (we come here because we expect a reasonably friendly place where we can talk with each other, without horrible trolls). Now, why do we go to KGS? To play people or bots, on the understanding that when we think we're playing people, they're not going to just start getting their 5 dan neighbor or 5 dan bot to play for them.

There are some theoretical questions that doesn't answer, but practically speaking, what more explanation do you need?

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Occupy Babel!

I agree with most others here. I generally play against a computer when it is too inconvenient to start a game with a human (for example, if I might have to leave). I prefer to play humans for a host of reasons. So if there was a simple way to guarantee I'd be playing a real human online, sure why not? But it doesn't really bother me much. At least, not enough to go through any inconvenience involved in verifying my opponent is human. For example, we could require people to use webcams/screencasts/etc. (which, of course, wouldn't "guarantee" anything, but would make using bots harder), but I wouldn't even bother playing at that point. Tournaments with prizes are different.

Now, if it turned out I was playing the same 1-3 computer programs all day because all of my opponents used bots, I would just not play online nearly as much.

You all are making too much of this. After all, Pippin, the OP, is just a bot. Really. We see him here; we see him on KGS. But has anybody met him in RL? Of course not - he's a bot.

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Play turn based go and use whatever tools or books you have on hand to counter the bot

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Go is such a beautiful game.

What will be really annoying is that all the players who currently whine about how anyone who beats them is a sandbagger, will instead whine about how anyone who beats them is using a bot.