Chess Cheaters Get Exposed

[Boidhre]

I don't think it is a cheat (ok, maybe in blitz games it's a bit much but longer games you are just saving a little effort really compared to counting regularly in your opponent's time). I think you can have a very purist outlook on this and think anything other than the board, stones and clock is too much and not be wrong but for me personally I am far more concerned with whether the game is enjoyable for me win or lose than I am if my opponent is using any aids or not. One of the key issues with Go AIs now and Chess AIs for years is that it does not feel like you're playing a human, the occasional artificially perfect moves punishing small mistakes by you is unsettling. Someone using a score estimator is not going to give you anything like this feeling.

[dfan]

Fox has a score estimator that is available to all players as a convenience. I don't see how using a feature openly provided by the site can be considered cheating. People who don't like playing against players who use it should play on a site that doesn't have that feature - there are plenty of them.

If I were playing against someone on a site without a score estimator feature and they made a copy of their game and ran a score estimator on it, I would indeed consider that cheating.

[Bill Spight]

Just noting the conversations I've been monitoring. Values I'm talking about are held by individual players, not the larger community. New go players, coming from gaming systems where running machine assistance is not seen as cheating so much as gaming the system and getting away with something, are going to bring their questionable behavior to go.

O tempora, o mores!

Fox has a score estimator that is available to all players as a convenience. I don't see how using a feature openly provided by the site can be considered cheating. People who don't like playing against players who use it should play on a site that doesn't have that feature - there are plenty of them.

If I were playing against someone on a site without a score estimator feature and they made a copy of their game and ran a score estimator on it, I would indeed consider that cheating.

Me too.

I don't think it is a cheat (ok, maybe in blitz games it's a bit much but longer games you are just saving a little effort really compared to counting regularly in your opponent's time).

If your score estimator gives the same results as human counting, it sucks the big one.

Pre-AI books on positional evaluation focused on counting secure territory. That can be useful information, because it indicates how much territory you need to make in less well defined areas of the board. But it is not really score estimation. For real score estimation you want KataGo or the like.

To me, positional evaluation is an important skill to develop, and involves rather more than counting. In a casual game it should take a couple of minutes. IMO, following Znosko-Borovsky's chess advice, it should be done, as a preliminary to making a plan, only a few times in a game. That may not be so easy with common online time controls. {shrug} Regular counting during a game is a waste of time.

On the one hand, using an accurate score estimator is a crutch, which can hamper development, if you rely upon it rather than developing your own skills. And, OC, using a sucky score estimator sucks.

But thinking about it now, if I were to host an go server, I think that I would offer an accurate score estimator to the bottom half of users, maybe to the bottom two thirds. Instead of thinking of it as a crutch, I would think of it as a learning aid. We don't expect secondary school students to figure out everything for themselves. They get to look things up.

Here is how you might use an accurate score estimator as a learning device. At certain points in the game, estimate the score yourself, and then check your estimation against that of the score estimator. Then, following Znosko-Borovsky, make a plan. Later you can check to see how well you are doing, and maybe make a new plan. This way you get to practice both score estimation and planning, and you get real time feedback on how well you are doing.

[KayBur]

I don't think it is a cheat (ok, maybe in blitz games it's a bit much but longer games you are just saving a little effort really compared to counting regularly in your opponent's time). I think you can have a very purist outlook on this and think anything other than the board, stones and clock is too much and not be wrong but for me personally I am far more concerned with whether the game is enjoyable for me win or lose than I am if my opponent is using any aids or not. One of the key issues with Go AIs now and Chess AIs for years is that it does not feel like you're playing a human, the occasional artificially perfect moves punishing small mistakes by you is unsettling. Someone using a score estimator is not going to give you anything like this feeling.

It all depends on the type of software and what kind of advantage this software gives when playing against a person. In an AI game, using cheats is one thing. But an unfair advantage over a person is another question.

[Boidhre]

I don't think it is a cheat (ok, maybe in blitz games it's a bit much but longer games you are just saving a little effort really compared to counting regularly in your opponent's time).

If your score estimator gives the same results as human counting, it sucks the big one.

Pre-AI books on positional evaluation focused on counting secure territory. That can be useful information, because it indicates how much territory you need to make in less well defined areas of the board. But it is not really score estimation. For real score estimation you want KataGo or the like.

To me, positional evaluation is an important skill to develop, and involves rather more than counting. In a casual game it should take a couple of minutes. IMO, following Znosko-Borovsky's chess advice, it should be done, as a preliminary to making a plan, only a few times in a game. That may not be so easy with common online time controls. {shrug} Regular counting during a game is a waste of time.

On the one hand, using an accurate score estimator is a crutch, which can hamper development, if you rely upon it rather than developing your own skills. And, OC, using a sucky score estimator sucks.

But thinking about it now, if I were to host an go server, I think that I would offer an accurate score estimator to the bottom half of users, maybe to the bottom two thirds. Instead of thinking of it as a crutch, I would think of it as a learning aid. We don't expect secondary school students to figure out everything for themselves. They get to look things up.

Here is how you might use an accurate score estimator as a learning device. At certain points in the game, estimate the score yourself, and then check your estimation against that of the score estimator. Then, following Znosko-Borovsky, make a plan. Later you can check to see how well you are doing, and maybe make a new plan. This way you get to practice both score estimation and planning, and you get real time feedback on how well you are doing.

From what I saw of the score estimators, they were not accurate enough until the very late game for you not to have to use your own counting skills to compensate for it. Maybe score estimators available on go servers are that accurate enough now to not require this in the middle game? I don't know.

[Bill Spight]

From what I saw of the score estimators, they were not accurate enough until the very late game for you not to have to use your own counting skills to compensate for it. Maybe score estimators available on go servers are that accurate enough now to not require this in the middle game? I don't know.

Maybe you should suggest to your opponent that they use the score estimator.

[bogiesan]

Yet more on the evolution of values, some recent threads on r/baduk:

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... lt_online/

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... _using_ai/

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... o_with_ai/

Anecdotal side commentary: I forwarded these to a friend who plays go at about 2d and is a high-ranked role gamer (I do not know what that means) as well as chess. He says he has seen growth in the number of accusations of cheating in all of his online gaming experiences.

Just my opinion, of course: There is a new gang of cheaters who use AIs, or other resources, and they've gotten very good at disguising their techniques and delaying their discovery. There are sore losers who will use any excuse to get credit for a win. And there seem to be some vandals who just want to mess with the system simply because they can.

[Boidhre]

Maybe you should suggest to your opponent that they use the score estimator.

I remember this coming up with arguments years ago about whether GoGod or similar databases were cheating in correspondence. Outside of whether they were unfair etc, the simple matter was that a kyu player using one blindly was as likely to do more damage to their own win percentage than their opponent's so it's was probably just fine...

[Boidhre]

Yet more on the evolution of values

Specifically in those: there has *long* been debate over what aids are ok in correspondence go and some things like looking up joseki during live games. There's a *very* marked difference between using a joseki dictionary and getting Katago to tell you were to play. Looking up joseki still requires the player to understand what they're doing and the board position etc. Katago doesn't. This seems to be the most common line I've seen drawn in correspondence, similar to a score estimator that is far from perfect, if you still need to do a lot of work yourself it's probably fine.

A side point I've seen re: correspondence that might interest you is whether it's ok to take a board position from a game you're playing, give the AI your opponent's colours and play out sequences against the AI (i.e. do not get the AI to tell you how to play instead it plays the best responses to you). I don't think it's ok because the AI will tenuki and show you aji or big places you didn't see and this is a problem. Even when AI isn't finding your moves for you it can create issues. But separate to this, playing out alternative games against the AI in positions from your games that are fresh in your mind is probably a good way to use one to study if you don't view the games as competitive but as a way to improve (and ideally aren't using the AI to advance your rank far above what is reasonable). That being, saying your "using one to make games study" whilst ranking up to 8d or 9d on Tygem for the first time is probably just a bit suspect.

[jlt]

The score estimator of OGS is really useless. It thinks that Black wins by 0.5, while White won by 1.5.

Capture.JPG (111.89 KiB) Viewed 5193 times

[SoDesuNe]

Yes, you need to check the points carefully on OGS. Here D13 is marked as a point for Black.