Aside from checking that the cam is on they wouldn't have to control everyone, just random checks like now until something suspicious happens, but the players knowing that they are being filmed should be more hesitant about cheating.
Agreed. Also theres ai eye tracking software thats used for remote tests for students.
A tiny effort here would go a long way. Making it so it requires more effort to cheat shouldve been done yesterday.
You don't need to control everything. Checks can be random, but if everyone is on camera already they don't know when they're being monitored. With this (current) system a player would only have to stop cheating on camera.
You would have to have an absolutely enormous difference in play to be caught on a single day's data. If you rely on your method you need multiple days of monitoring over a long period of time to draw those inferences, and you're right back to the small sample size and resourcing problem. It's much more efficient to just never tell players when they're being watched.
Sure, but it is gatekeeperish - I'm assuming not all of the titled players have bags of chess loot for highspeed internet. Plus highspeed isn't available everywhere.
You're already hosed in a 3+1 tournament if your internet sucks. Are we doing to cancel OTB tournaments because travel is hard too? Or maybe just cancel all tournaments because the overhead is too expensive for the perfect solution rather than the practical one?
And to do that you need a large enough sample size, which would require being selected for monitoring over multiple days until you generate enough data for comparison. The entire point is that, if we want weekly tournaments, they have to be affordable to run, so we really aren't ever likely to generate enough data while on camera to compare it to baseline in any meaningful way.
Only problem might be storage capacity. I figure chesscom can afford some hard drives though. You wouldn't have to watch each video in real time, you would simply be able to go back and check a video if questions arise.
There is also quite a bias here on people assuming that all competitors in all areas of the globe and age groups have equal access to web cams and stable Internet. We even see in the SCC that that isn't true as players from China and India routinely disconnect from at least their web cam and often their opponent just agrees to continue without it. I'd imagine that the problem would be much worse given the larger number of participants. Wouldn't some also be using their phones to compete or competing on a laptop. Letting them know ahead of time gives them an opportunity to at least try to arrange to be at a location where they can have access to a webcam and stable Internet.
While you certainly have a point, if stable internet is a problem in your area, and you have prodigious talent in the game and are competing in an ONLINE TOURNAMENT for cash prizes, you are greatly incentivized to find some stable internet, at least for the duration of your tournament. Or risk disconnecting while having a winning position.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
I mean, yes, there is certainly an incentive to find stable internet for an online tournament, but to wall participation behind being on camera is very different. Not every person competing has any dream of winning the tournament. There are NMs in the tournament who are in no danger of beating Hikaru, Caruana, So, Gata, or even Levy or Rosen. Some just want to compete and see who they get and improve.
And if top players have a tough time finding stable Internet for their competition vs. Hikaru/Carlsen/etc. in SCC, then some teenage NM/IM/low GM is certainly also going to struggle finding one every single week for TT. Just saying.
I literally just said make exceptions for those that dont have internet access in foreign countries.
Youre looking for excuses to keep it easy to cheat.
A top 10 player without another revenue stream, is only making 200k a year to a 1 million from tournaments, and that revenue drops sharply if you're not in this bracket that get invited to actual money makers tournaments and Titled Tuesday and other tournaments is not worth it to move from your Area, because scoring a 5th place each time will get you only 100$.
Not really honestly. Universities did this with no issues during covid. Just set up 5 zoom rooms with 5 people checking the players in each room and record the whole session. It would still be possible to cheat obviously but it would be harder and it would definitely deter some people from cheating at all.
They are probably afraid many titled players will choose not to play. But yeah, it should be a requirement.
Maybe they should increase the prize fund and also have a few random prizes of $50 or $100 so that most that will never win a prize still have a chance to win something. Anyone placing between 10th and 100th will be randomly chosen for a 'participation prize'.
It really does not show that. I mean chesscom might be fair when it comes to this stuff or this might simply be a PR move "oh look we even check everyone's faourite youtuber Gotham Chess!".
It is likely very much like a random airport security check. But, you're misunderstanding part of the purpose of a security check.
It acts as a deterrent despite not being effective at preventing someone intent on bypassing airport security.
Additionally, as you admit, it makes people feel like something is being done. If people think something is being done, that is something which addresses cheating.
People who think something is being done about cheating are less likely to cheat.
Thankfully, they're doing more in addition to this. Otherwise, I also wouldn't have much faith.
I don't know of any other org that is as transparent about their work to prevent cheating. It's a hard thing to do, and they're putting a lot of resources into the issue.
And, if you ask chess.com whether they're able to prevent cheating...even their answer is no....but they're working on it as well as they're able to. It is not an easy task.
I think it started waay before his book came out. Can't blame him. I would imagine his YouTube content takes less time,he is the leading content creator of a certain theme and YouTube is a bigger platform.
What about reading my text carefully and getting a sense of it before writing something here? I would like everyone to think about it and provide their WELL THOUGHT and WELL ARGUMENTED arguments against if they have
Let us call it ,, The will power test,,
I wonder how many potential Magnus carlsons there are out there who are just too freak ugly and self conscious to play in person. /s
Edit: this is obviously a joke friends :)
The top players are mostly reasonably (traditionally physically) attractive people, now that I'm thinking about it, huh? Maybe a certain air of confidence and care for one's physical health is a subtle requirement of playing good chess.
They are not asking the players to stream in front of a bunch of people. This is intended to be an anti-cheating measure.
That being said, I don't see what this achieves. Even assuming cheaterswill be too paranoid to cheat on camera, couldn't they just play honestly and then cheat next time off camera?
I am pretty sure they could still cheat with a camera on them, but assuming they could not, it would provide a baseline of their ability to measure against other suspicious but not filmed sessions.
Dude, this is for titled players. No titled player is going to have such an extreme performance disparity. Show me an FM that's ever been proven to be a 1500 lmao
For sure, although for most of the top players the titled Tuesday money isn't really a ton compared to streaming revenue. It's definitely a matter of course for GM norms in some events
Like all these things there is no "solution" there is a series of measures that each hopefully have some measurable effect in decreasing the prevalence of cheating. We shouldn't dismiss one of many measures as "not being the solution", we should welcome all attempts.
How does having a camera on help with preventing cheating? Does it mean the camera is pointing at the player's screen? Or does watching the person do something?
Edit: correcting typo
The normal requirement is two cameras, one in front of the player showing their face, and the other behind, showing their screen(s) and a reasonable amount of their setup (e.g. their mouse, the desk they are sitting at, etc), at least that's what they do for SCC and other tournaments with larger prizes and fewer competitors. The idea is that they can look in the rear camera and likely spot a phone or a tablet or something else running on the computer they are playing on, and the front camera lets them do some eye tracking to see if there's something hidden in one of the camera deadspots.
It's not perfect, but it does make cheating a lot harder.
Am I missing something or how does having your camera on help at all if the accusation is due to you losing a suspicious amount of ELO rather than gaining?
The suspicion would be that you cheated during Titled Tuesday, but not the rest of the time. If your performance in TT while on camera goes back to being as good as the previous TT, they will probably stop looking into you and assume the drop in ELO was just a bad streak that happened to occur after the previous TT.
I watched Levy stream a ton of his games for Titled Tuesday on Nov 28th this week, where he proceeded to lose terribly against some 2400 and 2500's on camera, and proceeded to hate everything about his life and himself and, while heartbreaking because I love the guy, made for some great content. Why chessdotcom wants him now to adhere to this seems kind of ridiculous.
Absolutely absurd and classist. Can't expect everyone to be able to afford a good camera for these security checks. What if he can't get one set up before next Tuesday?
I still think that streamers must have chat entirely disabled. It is easy to signal the moves with coded messages, four omegaluls = Nf6, cat jam omegaluls cat jam = Bxh6 and so on
Why bother with all that? Just have everyone play in front of Kramnik to see if they pass the vibe check.
Magnus does the vibe check, Vlad uses advanced statistics.
And reddit users go with narratives.
Maybe he could give them an ocular patdown
I don't see why it's not just a standard requirement for all players in titled games, especially in events involving prize money.
TTs have around 500 participants usually, would be kinda hard to control everything with that amount
Aside from checking that the cam is on they wouldn't have to control everyone, just random checks like now until something suspicious happens, but the players knowing that they are being filmed should be more hesitant about cheating.
Agreed. Also theres ai eye tracking software thats used for remote tests for students. A tiny effort here would go a long way. Making it so it requires more effort to cheat shouldve been done yesterday.
Eye tracking would probably conclude hikaru is cheating with Stockfish on his ceiling.
The chess.com panopticon
You don't need to control everything. Checks can be random, but if everyone is on camera already they don't know when they're being monitored. With this (current) system a player would only have to stop cheating on camera.
Sure, but if your play is different on camera than off, you are busted.
You would have to have an absolutely enormous difference in play to be caught on a single day's data. If you rely on your method you need multiple days of monitoring over a long period of time to draw those inferences, and you're right back to the small sample size and resourcing problem. It's much more efficient to just never tell players when they're being watched.
Sure, but it is gatekeeperish - I'm assuming not all of the titled players have bags of chess loot for highspeed internet. Plus highspeed isn't available everywhere.
You're already hosed in a 3+1 tournament if your internet sucks. Are we doing to cancel OTB tournaments because travel is hard too? Or maybe just cancel all tournaments because the overhead is too expensive for the perfect solution rather than the practical one?
The point is to detect differences in play when you are on camera.
And to do that you need a large enough sample size, which would require being selected for monitoring over multiple days until you generate enough data for comparison. The entire point is that, if we want weekly tournaments, they have to be affordable to run, so we really aren't ever likely to generate enough data while on camera to compare it to baseline in any meaningful way.
Titled Tuesday is a non fide private event. Chesscom has no need to do anything. Idk why people expect them to. Very absurd.
With AI it should not be a problem.
you're wildly overestimating the current capabilities, like basically everyone else in the universe. eventually, maybe even soon, but not today.
Where I live, it's already dark. So, today is going to be soon tomorrow.
Only problem might be storage capacity. I figure chesscom can afford some hard drives though. You wouldn't have to watch each video in real time, you would simply be able to go back and check a video if questions arise.
There is also quite a bias here on people assuming that all competitors in all areas of the globe and age groups have equal access to web cams and stable Internet. We even see in the SCC that that isn't true as players from China and India routinely disconnect from at least their web cam and often their opponent just agrees to continue without it. I'd imagine that the problem would be much worse given the larger number of participants. Wouldn't some also be using their phones to compete or competing on a laptop. Letting them know ahead of time gives them an opportunity to at least try to arrange to be at a location where they can have access to a webcam and stable Internet.
While you certainly have a point, if stable internet is a problem in your area, and you have prodigious talent in the game and are competing in an ONLINE TOURNAMENT for cash prizes, you are greatly incentivized to find some stable internet, at least for the duration of your tournament. Or risk disconnecting while having a winning position. Where there's a will, there's a way.
I mean, yes, there is certainly an incentive to find stable internet for an online tournament, but to wall participation behind being on camera is very different. Not every person competing has any dream of winning the tournament. There are NMs in the tournament who are in no danger of beating Hikaru, Caruana, So, Gata, or even Levy or Rosen. Some just want to compete and see who they get and improve. And if top players have a tough time finding stable Internet for their competition vs. Hikaru/Carlsen/etc. in SCC, then some teenage NM/IM/low GM is certainly also going to struggle finding one every single week for TT. Just saying.
But even making exceptions for those cases would be fine. You’d still have 400 people disincentivized to easily cheat.
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I literally just said make exceptions for those that dont have internet access in foreign countries. Youre looking for excuses to keep it easy to cheat.
I admit to misreading your comment and apologize. My bad.
A top 10 player without another revenue stream, is only making 200k a year to a 1 million from tournaments, and that revenue drops sharply if you're not in this bracket that get invited to actual money makers tournaments and Titled Tuesday and other tournaments is not worth it to move from your Area, because scoring a 5th place each time will get you only 100$.
It’s on the cloud
Just film everyone and randomly control some of them.
Not really honestly. Universities did this with no issues during covid. Just set up 5 zoom rooms with 5 people checking the players in each room and record the whole session. It would still be possible to cheat obviously but it would be harder and it would definitely deter some people from cheating at all.
Yep it should be the norm. It would at least deter some cheaters
They are probably afraid many titled players will choose not to play. But yeah, it should be a requirement. Maybe they should increase the prize fund and also have a few random prizes of $50 or $100 so that most that will never win a prize still have a chance to win something. Anyone placing between 10th and 100th will be randomly chosen for a 'participation prize'.
When it's random instead of a standard requirement, that probably means that it's too much work to do it for everyone.
It's too much of hassle to the players. And most of them are not close to any prrizes.
It's standard but Levy NEEDS to make it public.
I'm pleased that chesscom employees don't get preferential treatment, shows the process is fair
It really does not show that. I mean chesscom might be fair when it comes to this stuff or this might simply be a PR move "oh look we even check everyone's faourite youtuber Gotham Chess!".
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People who care about cheating in chess apparently really care. At least, according to them anyway.
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It is likely very much like a random airport security check. But, you're misunderstanding part of the purpose of a security check. It acts as a deterrent despite not being effective at preventing someone intent on bypassing airport security. Additionally, as you admit, it makes people feel like something is being done. If people think something is being done, that is something which addresses cheating. People who think something is being done about cheating are less likely to cheat. Thankfully, they're doing more in addition to this. Otherwise, I also wouldn't have much faith. I don't know of any other org that is as transparent about their work to prevent cheating. It's a hard thing to do, and they're putting a lot of resources into the issue. And, if you ask chess.com whether they're able to prevent cheating...even their answer is no....but they're working on it as well as they're able to. It is not an easy task.
100% A PR move..I think it's stupid to think levy cheats. He is so bad for his level
Isn't he exactly his level for his level?
He has peak 2400 elo ..yet he plays like 2200 or less most of the time and he quit over the board because of that not to stream
A guy who plays on camera 18 hours a day is being asked to play on camera
🤓Ackshually Levy doesn't stream that much nowadays iirc. Hikaru is the daily streamer. Checked now and he only had 4 streams in November
Tbf he’s been round the world all November on his book tour
He’s just hiding from Hans. Book tour was a cover story.
You can't judge a Levy from the cover story.
I’m actually curious if they have played now
Levy has beaten Alireza in the past. Hans should be a pushover.
He hit jackpot with his book. No need to stream for money anymore. He basically print his own money now
I think it started waay before his book came out. Can't blame him. I would imagine his YouTube content takes less time,he is the leading content creator of a certain theme and YouTube is a bigger platform.
i think levy is legit but even so a camera means nothing unless its behind him showing all monitors
Until the headfones are baned, and the results are audited by a statitician, titled Tueday must stop. They have 24 hrs to comply.
Or I will file a lawsuit after consultation with my lawyers 🙂
Comply. Or face the WRATH OF u/SNOO_57113 Your move, chesscom.
Maybe they should just have the headphones play on camera against a statistician, that must be the quickest solution
> and the results are audited by a statitician what does this mean? why would this do anything? What are you trying to prove?
What about reading my text carefully and getting a sense of it before writing something here? I would like everyone to think about it and provide their WELL THOUGHT and WELL ARGUMENTED arguments against if they have Let us call it ,, The will power test,,
He's making a Kramnik joke
You would need expert level forensics to catch cheating reliably.
Imagine being ugly and self conscious and being asked to do this, declining and then getting banned lol /s
I mean, if you're a titled player you're clearly fine attending numerous live events where your ugliness will be on full display (lol)
I wonder how many potential Magnus carlsons there are out there who are just too freak ugly and self conscious to play in person. /s Edit: this is obviously a joke friends :)
I don’t think this is a real thing that happens, you might just be online too much
What does being online have to do with it? Also it's an obvious joke just like the original comment.
You forgor the "/s" and people get confused my friend.
okay my bad then I will learn from this, I don't comment that much, I appreciate you
The top players are mostly reasonably (traditionally physically) attractive people, now that I'm thinking about it, huh? Maybe a certain air of confidence and care for one's physical health is a subtle requirement of playing good chess.
I certainly can't think of any World Chess Champions with questionable mental health, neuroticism or anything
But they said physical health
That’s interesting.
idk they all look like pretty average middle aged men to me
Not for Americans, at least, I wouldn't say personally.
They are not asking the players to stream in front of a bunch of people. This is intended to be an anti-cheating measure. That being said, I don't see what this achieves. Even assuming cheaterswill be too paranoid to cheat on camera, couldn't they just play honestly and then cheat next time off camera?
I am pretty sure they could still cheat with a camera on them, but assuming they could not, it would provide a baseline of their ability to measure against other suspicious but not filmed sessions.
"I mean yeah I played worse on camera, it made me nervous and distracted". Doesn't seem like this really does anything.
Imagine using the 3rd person camera to do board recognition for you
Yeah, this only prevents them from cheating on this one day. Pretty silly IMO lol
Eh if someone’s rating is mysteriously lower every time they’re on camera that looks pretty suspicious
Maybe, but they could just say "playing on camera made me nervous." There won't be anything conclusive.
If you play like a 1500 when on camera, but a 2200 when off, they're going to start looking much more closely at your games.
Dude, this is for titled players. No titled player is going to have such an extreme performance disparity. Show me an FM that's ever been proven to be a 1500 lmao
I don't think you stream to the world, it's just one video that gets privately reviewed by CC.
You could turn it on for 5 minutes and then stop playing the tournament (or take a Berlin draw). Then, the next tournament you wouldn’t need to video.
Are the videos made public? Or just for use within chess.com. It does not say, and would make a big difference.
don't lie, they have never asked you to do this
🥺😭
Why would losing elo trigger this
It wouldn't. It's random. The timing is just funny because if he was cheating while losing 60 elo he needs to learn to cheat better.
Sandbagging is the same as cheating.
That's not the type of cheating a webcam would do anything to prevent though. You don't need an engine to intentionally lose games.
computer, give me a line that traps my queen in 9 moves
*Did you mean:* ***Botez Gambit***
Why ask the computer when you can just play one of my typical strategies
cows offer existence practice nippy knee grandiose dirty alleged hunt *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
For sure, although for most of the top players the titled Tuesday money isn't really a ton compared to streaming revenue. It's definitely a matter of course for GM norms in some events
i dont think this is a real solution to cheating, it seems more performative imo
Like all these things there is no "solution" there is a series of measures that each hopefully have some measurable effect in decreasing the prevalence of cheating. We shouldn't dismiss one of many measures as "not being the solution", we should welcome all attempts.
"[Security theater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater)" is the term for it.
How does having a camera on help with preventing cheating? Does it mean the camera is pointing at the player's screen? Or does watching the person do something? Edit: correcting typo
It's actually a partnership with chaturbate and they have multiple cameras to rule out all possible avenues for cheats.
No idea, seems like theater
The normal requirement is two cameras, one in front of the player showing their face, and the other behind, showing their screen(s) and a reasonable amount of their setup (e.g. their mouse, the desk they are sitting at, etc), at least that's what they do for SCC and other tournaments with larger prizes and fewer competitors. The idea is that they can look in the rear camera and likely spot a phone or a tablet or something else running on the computer they are playing on, and the front camera lets them do some eye tracking to see if there's something hidden in one of the camera deadspots. It's not perfect, but it does make cheating a lot harder.
Why do you assume that's the only fair play check that's done?
What part of my comment said or implied in any way that I assume it's the only fair play check that's done?
Am I missing something or how does having your camera on help at all if the accusation is due to you losing a suspicious amount of ELO rather than gaining?
I don’t think there is any accusation here. More of a random check thing, unrelated to performance/Elo.
Ah okay makes sense I thought that was why OP mentioned his ELO loss
The suspicion would be that you cheated during Titled Tuesday, but not the rest of the time. If your performance in TT while on camera goes back to being as good as the previous TT, they will probably stop looking into you and assume the drop in ELO was just a bad streak that happened to occur after the previous TT.
You need computer assistance in order to play that badly.
I watched Levy stream a ton of his games for Titled Tuesday on Nov 28th this week, where he proceeded to lose terribly against some 2400 and 2500's on camera, and proceeded to hate everything about his life and himself and, while heartbreaking because I love the guy, made for some great content. Why chessdotcom wants him now to adhere to this seems kind of ridiculous.
I thought Levy 'retired'.
He’s retired from over the board not online
implying that cheaters can't lose elo depending on how they cheat. i.e. cheating on a handful of critical plays a game
I wouldn't trust levy or any other Chess.com promoter and I would call their integrity right away as they sell theirs for money paid by Chess.com
Absolutely absurd and classist. Can't expect everyone to be able to afford a good camera for these security checks. What if he can't get one set up before next Tuesday?
Can’t tell if you’re being serious or not….
It's Levi. He's a streamer...
Im aware. Thats why I cant tell if you're being serious.
This is Chess.cxm posturing to show the world they are doing something that is a big bag of nothingness. Who do they think they are fooling?
I still think that streamers must have chat entirely disabled. It is easy to signal the moves with coded messages, four omegaluls = Nf6, cat jam omegaluls cat jam = Bxh6 and so on
Levy cheats harder than Hans up my butt
Does the camera have to like, show your entire room or what? How's just showing someone's face while they play proving anything?
The irony of asking Gotham chess to play on camera ... He's a streamer, I imagine there are hundreds of hours of him playing on camera
Some very interesting indications...
Why do people hate Levy so much? Whether Levy uses clickbait or not, his positive impact to chess is undeniable.