[HN Gopher] Irwin - the protector of Lichess from all chess play... ___________________________________________________________________ Irwin - the protector of Lichess from all chess players villainous Author : myle Score : 194 points Date : 2022-07-10 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | I don't understand what someone gets out of winning chess games | by cheating. It would actually make me feel worse about myself. | willcipriano wrote: | I did maybe 10-15 years ago. There was a chess game on Xbox | live and I found a chess program (I forget what it was now) and | wanted to try it out. I think I played 2 or 3 games like that, | got bored and never did it again. It was more of a "let's see | if I can do it" sort of thing, sort of funny and probably more | novel of an idea at the time. | | I have no idea why you would do it on a ongoing basis. It would | be so boring, all you do is transcribe moves back and forth. | zwkrt wrote: | There are people who's sense of self-confidence is so fragile | that they cannot allow themselves the possibility of losing or | feeling "lesser than" in any context. Cheating and being banned | is much better than showing the world your actual skill level | and confronting the possibility of failure and judgment. The | thought process goes something like "well if I beat them by | cheating they're a sucker for actually trying. And if I get | banned then that's the system out to get me" | | Such a person often ends up making an absolute fool of | themselves from the perspective of someone with a little bit | more self integrity. But maybe it is worth extending a little | compassion, after all a lack of compassion is probably how they | ended up like that anyhow. | dvtrn wrote: | _There are people who's sense of self-confidence is so | fragile that they cannot allow themselves the possibility of | losing or feeling "lesser than" in any context._ | | Happened to a good friend of mine up in Seattle. Good fella, | incredibly smart, graduated top marks, a bit ostentatious | sometimes but you can tell he really wants to do right by | others in spite of his sometimes high falutin tendencies. | | Anyway. | | Lost a game of chess to his blue collar dad, guy couldn't | handle it. Fell into a hole of depression that lasted for at | least an entire episode of Cheers | layer8 wrote: | Just for chess specifically? | synu wrote: | I think it's an "I am miserable so let's make other people | miserable" thing. | ok_dad wrote: | Same, and I don't get why cheaters don't just play in a | "cheating league" where there are no anti-cheating rules or | anything. | | What does winning do for someone when they didn't actually | achieve mastery of the game? | ConstantVigil wrote: | I personally wouldn't have any issue with this. At that point | it's all down to who's more clever in their ruses and cheats. | mpol wrote: | In a sibling comment there is already a very adequate answer. | | To give the opposite answer, why you should not cheat. Chess is | fun if you play against players of similar strengt. Mostly a | score of around 50% will be what you get. If you have a 1400 | rating, you can have fun games against 1400 players. If you | cheat and go towards 2300 rating, you will still have a score | of 50% against other 2300 players. But all the fun of the game | won't be there, since it is just cheating. You will lose | something (fun), but not really win anything within the game | itself. | | Or simpler said, in a long gone past I got bored with playing | Doom. I hunted down cheat codes and got bored even faster. | momento wrote: | >Or simpler said, in a long gone past I got bored with | playing Doom. I hunted down cheat codes and got bored even | faster. | | This is a life hack if ever you find yourself too distracted | with a game (for me, Rimworld). Mod / cheat to the point of | ruining the game, and you'll likely never play it again. That | being said, I do not advocate doing this in multiplayer | games. | ConstantVigil wrote: | The only game this doesn't seem to work on for me is | Civilization; since I am often fixing the game now to work | better or how it should have to begin with. | 2c2c2c wrote: | in competitive games it's all about the social credit | | the game might a big part of their life, and being perceived as | a good player puts you higher in the pecking order within your | friend group | ddoolin wrote: | Having cheated at a few competitive multiplayer video games | over the years, this is one of a few good answers, | particularly when it comes to FPS. That, and many such video | games induce boredom so quickly, and almost always the reward | at the end is not worth the time spent getting there. | Sometimes I'm glad I didn't waste my time getting to end-game | content just to find out it was more of the same (or garbage) | anyway. I don't play multiplayer games anymore, at all | really, unless it's cooperative/integrated like Elden Ring. | | I think something like chess is different; cheating in video | games feels more similar to hacking around some software just | because you can and it's interesting. | hooloovoo_zoo wrote: | If the system suspects a cheater, maybe it can just match them up | against a GM (or beyond GM) bot to confirm? | wolverine876 wrote: | Now we have a computer effectively accusing people of fraud (if I | understand correctly). How does Irwin address the obvious risks | and dangers? | Lornedon wrote: | What obvious risks and dangers? | mwt wrote: | I see a lot of comments about the general topic, but none on the | actual tool, which appears to have no (public-facing) updates in | about three years. Presumably it could be a tool that | incrementally improves over time with the explosion of data | lichess has, but surely there would be a single commit since | 2019. Do we know that this is what's actually running on | lichess's backend today? | benediktwerner wrote: | https://github.com/lakinwecker/irwin has more recent commits | and I think is what actually runs on Lichess, or at least close | to it. Not sure much fundamentally changed though. This isn't | "the whole of Lichess' anticheat". It's a tool doing one | specific thing which it mostly has been doing that way since it | was created. There are a bunch of other parts to cheat | detection, some of which are much more recent developments. For | example kaladin, which has also been linked in the other thread | about Lichess. But there's a fair bit more. Understandably | though, Lichess doesn't really talk much about all of them, | even though pretty much all of it is open source if you know | where to look and how to use it. | mwt wrote: | Thanks for the context - I haven't spent a ton of time | looking around but it does seem like there are several moving | parts (and evidently some important stuff isn't in the same | github org) | myle wrote: | Yes, it is used according to this: https://lichess.org/source | mwt wrote: | Thanks! I didn't know about this page. | CrankyBear wrote: | I love chess. At my absolute best, I had a over-the-board USCF | rating of 2156. I never made it to master no matter how hard I | tried. So, ticked off, I gave up serious play. Years go by and | while I'm no where near as good these days, I started enjoying | playing again. And, then I start running into people online who | were clearly using engines instead of their own skills and wits. | Now, I only pay with friends and over-the-board. If this can help | wipe out the cheats, I may finally go back to playing online | again. | [deleted] | Dr_Birdbrain wrote: | I don't understand this sentiment. | | The rating of a player will reflect their strength, regardless | of whether they are an unaided human, a full computer, or a | human with some heuristic to consult an engine. Whatever the | player is doing, their rating will reflect their average | strength, and the website matches us to players of similar | rating. Whether or not a player is pure human, pure engine, or | centaur, we get matched to a player that we have a roughly even | chance of beating. | | Pure cheaters will quickly skyrocket to the top of the ratings | and I will never see them. Hybrid cheaters, who do not have a | perfect rating, have a probability of losing because their | heuristic to switch to an engine is imperfect, and their rating | reflects this imperfection. | | Whatever the player is doing, their numeric rating reflects | their average strength, and if you have a similar rating you | have roughly even chances of beating them. | mwt wrote: | What time controls do you play? Cheating is much more prevalent | in rapid than blitz, with correspondence probably being the | worst of all. It's unlucky for people who don't like speed | chess. | | The only solution to this problem I'm aware of is | developing/becoming a part of a community of people you trust. | Of course, that's hard and comes with plenty of limitations. | | Lastly, please don't get your expectations up. This is a hugely | unsolved problem on lichess and the history of its and | chesscom's efforts do not inspire confidence. I noticed this | repo has no updates in the past three years, during which | lichess has maintained its reputation of having tons of | cheaters. Chesscom has a team and probably more tools | (proprietary, larger company, etc.) but the best case scenario | still involves cheaters getting several games in, wasting your | time along the way. | IThoughtYouGNU wrote: | You should be happy with that! That's like candidate master | level. Real impressive | momento wrote: | I have been playing daily for about two years now on Lichess | and over-the-board whenever the opportunity presents itself. I | find people who burn the clock when their game takes a turn for | the worse far more frustrating than those who cheat their way | to victory. At least with the cheaters, the game is over pretty | quickly, so I can move onto a game which is actually enjoyable. | Normille wrote: | I got into Lichess myself about a year ago, after not really | having played much chess in the past 20 or 20 years. Oddly | enough, it was people on HN who persuaded me to give online | chess a chance. I'd never bothered previously, as I couldn't | see how you would ever know the other player wasn't getting | their moves from a chess app. HNers persuaded me to give it a | go because Lichess had algorithms in place which detected | cheating. | | Having now played nearly 2000 games on Lichess, I'm pretty | happy with their ability to weed out cheaters. I've very | rarely had cause to suspect my opponent wasn't playing fair. | Maybe once or twice someone with a lower ranking than me | seemed to be a bit too good --but then we all have our | flashes of inspiration, as well as our off days. | | However, on a couple of occasions, I've logged onto the site | to see a notification that I've had some ranking points | restored, as a previous opponent had cheated. But, | unfortunately, Lichess doesn't tell you which opponent or | which game, so I'm still none the wiser. | | PS: Agree with you about the people who run the clock down, | when they're losing. Really annoying. When this happens, I | usually switch to another browser tab and read intarwebs | instead, switching back to the Lichess tab every 5 mins or | so, to see if they've made a move yet. | jka wrote: | Related to this, there's a really good talk by the founder of | lichess that includes an overview of the cheating problem, and | the techniques they use to detect and manage it. | | The relevant section of the video on YouTube is: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgyVadkgmI&t=1080s | ricardobayes wrote: | This is really cool. Rampant cheating is the reason I completely | abandoned playing chess, so nice to see something happening. | greggsy wrote: | Same reason why I stopped playing Scrabble apps. | cmeacham98 wrote: | Where did you experience rampant cheating? I don't remember any | particular problems back when I played on ICC in my middle/high | school days, and modern equivalents like chess.com and lichess | seem to do a relatively good job at catching cheaters. I might | have just gotten lucky though. | mpol wrote: | I never notice cheaters too, but I only play around 1500 FIDE | rating. The cheaters are around 2300 FIDE or even higher. | throwamon wrote: | > nice to see something happening | | the latest ("real") commit is from 3 years ago | benediktwerner wrote: | This isn't the repository which runs on Lichess. The actual | one does have much newer commits. Though not sure much | fundamentally changed. Ultimately, I guess it does what it's | supposed to do (catch obvious cheaters to save human time). | But this is only one part of a lot of anti-cheating measures, | including a lot more automated ones (some, like kaladin, | which actually is a recent development, were also linked in | the other thread about Lichess) but also a huge amount of | human work. Most of the people here or in the other thread | don't really know anything about cheating, how to properly | detect it, and the difficulty of it. | | Though ofc you're certainly right that this isn't a recent | development at all and at the same time it's certainly also | not perfect yet. And I doubt it ever will be. I don't think | cheating in online chess is something that can ever really be | solved completely. | dcow wrote: | How do you cheat at chess? Serious question... there are fixed | rules that govern the game, certainly a piece of software or in | the human case 3rd party observer should be able to enforce | them? In other words, given a list of moves, you can write a | program that returns `valid` if the set of moves is allowed or | `invalid` if it is not, no? | dcow wrote: | Oh, wait, this must be cheating in the sense of "I used a | computer to assist my brain in determining my move". I guess | that is a new type of problem in online chess... | kzrdude wrote: | New since 1994 or so | dcow wrote: | I never got into online chess. I've always played against | physical humans or a bot. | synu wrote: | There are people who have snuck chess computers into over | the board tournaments as well, or used signaling from | someone who had one. | tacitusarc wrote: | Simple: don't play moves you discover independently, and | instead use an advanced chess AI to tell you what to play. | You play your opponent's moves against an alternative AI | program, and then play its moves back in your game against | the human. | | I don't know why people do this. It's not like it makes them | better at chess. | brundolf wrote: | The same reasons cheating is rampant in all online | videogames, I imagine | CrankyBear wrote: | Simple. You use an engine to decide what moves you make | instead of your own knowledge and skill. It's depressingly | common. | [deleted] | mkmk wrote: | There are multiple permissible moves. Cheaters use a computer | to identify the best one. | AlexAndScripts wrote: | Open up high level bot in another tab. Play their moves and | copy what the bot does in response. | | I have no idea why people do it, it's not even like video | game cheats where it gives people a advantage but you're | still in control - you're literally just copying. | as-j wrote: | I'd have to guess, but fake internet points? The ability to | say "I'm ranked 5th at blah blah chess website". Maybe it's | not even to others but just to themselves. | DJBunnies wrote: | Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by cheating? | willhinsa wrote: | People using an engine to tell them what moves to make | against their opponent. | alar44 wrote: | Probably isn't very good and chalks it up to cheating. Chess | takes years to get good at. It's a slow slow grind. | mlyle wrote: | Playing people who take 10 seconds every move-- whether an | obvious "only move" or the most complicated situations... | and that pick the move that stockfish makes almost all of | the time... are cheating. | [deleted] | xyyzy wrote: | how can you cheat on chess? | dlp211 wrote: | Using a chess engine to pick your moves. | omegalulw wrote: | Run a chess solver, feed it enemy moves, use it's moves to | play. | dang wrote: | Recent and related: | | _Lichess: The free and open source chess server_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045763 - July 2022 (65 | comments) | kuboble wrote: | It takes $420k per year to run Lichess - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29955204 - February 2022 | (266 comments) | CSSer wrote: | I've seen a video of Magnus Carlsen playing on Lichess before. | Does Irwin ever accidentally flag him or people like him? Do | these sorts of folks have to be verified in some fashion? | timetraveller26 wrote: | Not lichess, but Alireza Firouzja (World Rank #3) was banned | from chess.com when he was younger. | | It was some time ago so probably their cheat engine detection, | and also lichess's should give less false positives. | pgwhalen wrote: | My understanding is that that was not about his actual play, | but instead about his rapid rise in rating. | CSMastermind wrote: | > Not lichess, but Alireza Firouzja (World Rank #3) was | banned from chess.com when he was younger. | | This has turned into a bit of an urban legend. The automated | system flagged him based on both his rapid rise in rating and | reports from several verified titled players. | | On inspection by a human, he was cleared. | | Danny exaggerates when he tells the story cause it's a funny | anecdote. | | This was also a very old version of the anti-cheat like you | mentioned. Personally, part of the reason I prefer chess.com | is their much better cheat detection than Lichess. | colechristensen wrote: | High level humans and chess engines play differently. You can | see commentary on chess YouTube videos when they run across | cheaters. | | Also the chess engines people use are accessible, you can | compare what a suspected cheater does with what the cheater | does and if they're exactly the same consistently, you have a | pretty strong signal. | | One of the bigger tells are strange moves that set up a many | move series resulting in a victory, things that humans just | can't find quickly. | wolverine876 wrote: | > High level humans and chess engines play differently. You | can see commentary on chess YouTube videos when they run | across cheaters. | | That's similar to people describing how to catch other | frauds, such as fake Amazon comments or bots. It's medieval | 'science': They usually have no evidence of their accuracy, | either false negatives (frauds who they overlook) and false | positives (people falsely accused of fraud). So it's easy to | say, 'this is how to identify them' - nobody will ever test | your claim. | | Regarding false negatives, for example, there is reason to | believe that people detect only the obvious frauds, and that | our detection becomes tuned for the obvious. Regarding false | positives, people will cite the 'obvious' positives - e.g., | some humanly impossible property - but even if they are | correct, the problem is the cases in the grey area. False | accusations are no joke. | | Ironically, now we want a bot to solve our problems. What | data do we have to say that it's accurate, or any more | accurate than we are? | robbintt wrote: | If it makes you feel better (or worse), signal | "fingerprinting" is used in laboratory science to verify | things like purity and identity. Detecting a lack of | divergence from a known chess bot seems like a good | fingerprint to me. | toolslive wrote: | It's not that simple. I'm an amateur player (2200 at lichess) | but there are plenty of situations where I simply _know_ the | best variation. Plenty of chess players analyze their own | games using an engine and then use their memory when they are | confronted with the same position. The same with opening | theory: when I'm using my opening preparation, I'm playing at | GM level as these are just the moves played by GMs in that | position, and I did not need to find/calculate them, I just | know them. | Kranar wrote: | This is a very strong claim that is almost certainly false. | | Would you be willing to reveal your account so that it can | be independently verified? For example I'm 2116 on lichess | and looking over the last 10 opponents who are in the | neighborhood of 2200, it is never the case that their moves | are optimal compared to a chess engine. For the first 10 or | so moves yeah sure, just play a book opening, but beyond | that people at 2200 make plenty of mistakes every single | game including blunders. | | The idea that you can consistently make optimal moves over | the course of a 30-40 move game beyond the book opening | requires some kind of evidence because in examining the | last 10 games of 10 accounts arbitrarily picked, there | isn't a single one that isn't absolutely full of | inaccuracies and mistakes. | mwt wrote: | Your explanation doesn't really distinguish high-level | human play (not obvious cheating) from engine play (obvious | cheating). There are probably plenty of games in which your | first 20 moves (or 5-10 for me) are in GM databases and | evaluated favorably by the engine, ass a 2200 you're | probably booked up pretty well. But you know computer moves | aren't so common in openings; they're much more common in | complex middlegames and late games when the computer can | calculate more combinations that we can and is able to | produce lines that break intuition and principles but are | strictly best. | toolslive wrote: | My point is that high level human play online can be | caused by computer analysis offline. One cannot observe a | difference, as the moves are exactly the same. | mwt wrote: | But for the vast majority of players there will be a | difference in computer lines and human evaluation; even | if you're playing a strong game there is still a world of | difference between 2500 lichess and ~3300 FIDE stockfish. | This is more true for the median ~1500 lichess player. | Even if you put two GMs up against each other and give | one a computer, some portion of games would include an | obvious computer line that a ~2800 FIDE human wouldn't | evaluate the same way as an engine. | have_faith wrote: | What it looks like to cheat is more than just playing | relatively accurate moves. Average move time, centipawn loss | over multiple games, blunder/mistake frequency across multiple | games, strengh of moves while in time trouble, etc. Cheaters | tend to stand out when you look at a short history of games. | personjerry wrote: | Snowflame wrote: | Are you trolling? No it isn't? | | If nothing else, the time issue is a huge one. Cheaters | have very consistent seconds-per-move while actual masters | make obvious moves instantly and pause on tougher moves. | hgazx wrote: | I suppose that only completely newbie cheaters would | think of taking the same amount of time to make each | move. It's like the first rule of pretending to be a | human: add a random delay to all of your actions. | synu wrote: | In general you're right, but there are some tells because | humans don't have a random delay. It's connected with the | complexity (from the perspective of how humans think, | which is different from engine calculation) of the | position. One of the things that makes cheaters stand out | is they will have a random weird delay on various obvious | moves. | IntrepidWorm wrote: | And yet time and time again, chess streamers and content | producers run across people with newly formed accounts | and perfect win records playing the best engine move at | regular measured intervals. | | If you are cunning enough to hold off on the best move | for a few extra seconds to appear unaided by an engine, | or if you blunder X% moves in your game (or simply play | the 3rd or 4th rated move which still probably wins | against most humans), chances are you'd do fine learning | some chess strategy and playing the game unaided. | | People keep asking why one would cheat at chess. I'm sure | there are some bad actors who aim to disrupt the game, in | a manner consistent with cheater motivations in other | games. I'd imagine many cheaters are simply looking for | some quick dopamine after being frustrated by a plateau | in their skill. | kelnos wrote: | A random delay is _also_ a tell, though. An obvious move | shouldn 't take 15 seconds, but if that's what the random | delay for that move is, that looks suspicious. A more | difficult move shouldn't take only 3 seconds, but if | that's what the random delay for that move is, that also | looks suspicious. | xh-dude wrote: | Definitely, random time is adding no correlation where it | would count. Move time is an easily captured psychometric | observation, the clever bit is that it's intermingled | with automated chess analysis. | | Feels like there could be a lot of surprising inferences | to think about here ... just a few quick thoughts - how | long does someone pause after a blunder, how does one | react to unpredictable moves. Can definitely imagine AI | being of significant utility here. | CharlesW wrote: | I thought it was a reasonably good answer considering that | the question doesn't explicitly spell out why it might flag | someone like Magnus Carlsen (who I learned is a grandmaster | and World Chess Champion). To rephrase it, Irwin doesn't | flag people for playing well -- it alerts moderators when | it finds suspicious signals across several dimensions. | mlyle wrote: | It is a comprehensive answer. | | Top human players tend to not make the moves engines make. | They also stay relatively strong when under time pressure, | where lots of humans reentering moves from a computer fail. | | Playing someone taking 10 seconds for each move-- whether | there is only one valid move to capture back or the | situation is complicated-- you get suspicious. And then | when they forget how to play when they have 3 seconds per | move stands out. | tzs wrote: | That would clearly work for someone who is cheating by | letting an engine do all the work, but how about someone who | mostly plays the game themselves just using the engine | rarely? | | Give Nakamura a minute with Stockfish any two times of his | choosing in each game, and he would have probably won the | Candidates. | | Heck, just give a good player a blunder alert that tells them | _after_ they have made a blunder that they have done so and | it could make a big difference. | | There were games in the Candidates where a player would make | a blunder that would completely turn the game around _if_ the | opponent found the one move that exploited it, but the | opponent didn 't see it. The first player could have then | saved themselves but had not yet realized they blundered so | didn't. Then the other player realized what was going on and | exploited the blunder. | Rodeoclash wrote: | I don't think it's that helpful if you're letting Stockfish | make a move or two for you per game, or at least at the | level I'm at. | | The engine is so good that it often makes moves that are | incomprehensible, setting itself up for an attack in n | moves where n is often 10+. | | If you did want to cheat (but what's the point?) a chrome | extension that prevented you from making moves where you | lost more then some certain amount of centipawns would be | the way to do it. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-10 23:00 UTC)