WIRED on Intl Master of Chess beat online by an Unknown Player

[jedishrfu]

https://www.wired.com/story/bird-feed-seller-beat-chess-master-online-harassment/

An interesting article where a player came out of nowhere to beat a popular chess International Master online. The IM felt it was cheating, did some analysis, and reported his opponent to Chess.com.

After some further detailed analysis, Chess.com concluded the player had somehow cheated. His moves looked like chess engine moves...so they banned his account which caused an internet storm of protest for the grandmaster.

In the end, it turned out to be a retired bird-feed seller / passionate chess player from Indonesia who loved chess and played but never got a FIDE rating. Now in retirement, learned from chess engines, beat the engines, and then started playing real people using chess engine moves.

The perils of AI, deep fakes, and amazing humans...

 

[Office_Shredder]

I mean, we don't actually know he wasn't cheating. I do think it would be cool if he wasn't.

The main takeaway I got from this article is if I'm going to cheat, to cheat on a bunch of puzzles also.

 

[Infrared]

Do you have any reason to believe that he wasn't cheating? The case against him looks very strong and chess.com agrees.

An interesting article where a player came out of nowhere to beat a popular grandmaster online. The grandmaster felt it was cheating, did some analysis, and reported his opponent to Chess.com.

Levy Rozman is "only" an IM (international master), which is a step below GM.

 

[jedishrfu]

I think the takeaway from the article that there is real room for doubt and that based on the information provided by the son, his father trained on chess engines and so it's natural to model your play on them.

I think their evidence was convincing enough to Rozman as the son answered many of his complaints with plausible answers enough to show some doubt.

They cited the 14-year-old chess prodigy from Iran where people accused him of cheating too until they saw that he was a true prodigy.

It's not always the case that the duck rule applies ( looks like a duck, walks like a duck...)

As my friend succinctly put it:

You mean he flunked the Turing test!

It will take some time for this story to really play out as so often happens with remarkable stories that become less remarkable over time with new revelations.

However, I'm cheering for the unknown player right now as retirees have to stick together.

 

[jedishrfu]

Levy Rozman is "only" an IM (international master), which is a step below GM

Noted: article and title corrected.

 

[jbunniii]

Worth noting that chess.com hasn't unbanned the guy. They're pretty confident in their cheating-detection algorithms.

There were apparently other suspicious indicators besides engine-accurate play: rating trend over time for all games played by the user, statistics of the amount of time spent on each move (always suspicious when this is around ten seconds per move regardless of the move), and who knows what else their algorithms look for.

Agree that it would be cool if it all turned out to be a false alarm and the guy's story is true. Even cooler if that led to him being able to play in person against Levy or other masters!

 

[nuuskur]

Sheesh, the social media is vicious. Casual death threats being handed out like it's not a big deal ..WHAT?!

 

[Office_Shredder]

Sheesh, the social media is vicious. Casual death threats being handed out like it's not a big deal ..WHAT?!

This is sadly true of basically everything online.

 

[strangerep]

Sheesh, the social media is vicious. Casual death threats being handed out like it's not a big deal ..WHAT?!

Social media platforms are the nearest real-life approximation of the Krell Machine which enables anyone to give form to their Id Monster. And I'm not the only person who's noticed that analogy.

 

[jedishrfu]

I always wondered about the terror behind that story. Imagine accidentally leaving the machine on overnight and waking up to no one around if you even woke up.

 

[berkeman]

Social media platforms are the nearest real-life approximation of the Krell Machine which enables anyone to give form to their Id Monster. And I'm not the only person who's noticed that analogy.

Wow, the Krell reference rang a strong bell with me, but I had to look it up to recall why. I think I've watched that movie close to 30 times (it was on an early version of a cable TV channel and got repeated often).

I always wondered about the terror behind that story. Imagine accidentally leaving the machine on overnight and waking up to no one around if you even woke up.

I'm getting the willies seeing the juxtaposition of your avatar and your reply...

 

[berkeman]

Daughter: "My father seems to be sleeping a lot lately during the day, do you think it might be a problem?"

Captain: "Well, I'm not sure..."

Robbie: "No mam, every thing is fine."

https://brandontalksmovies.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/forbidden-planet.jpg?w=739

 

[jedishrfu]

Nice pic but that's not the Captain that's the doc Lt Ostrow.

 

[berkeman]

Oops, they all looked alike. Except for the cook -- he looked different.

 

[strangerep]

I always wondered about the terror behind that story.

I first saw Forbidden Planet as a young child, where the scene of the monster about to break through the spacecraft 's defences was (afaict) toned down to be a bit less terrifying (i.e., more compatible with a PG rating). I don't recall the original version showing the monster as clearly as it appears in the youtube clip, nor explicitly murdering spacecraft crew members.

As a child, I also failed to understand the scene near the end where Morbius confronts the monster, shouting "I deny you! I give you up!", but is then fatally injured by the monster regardless. IIUC, the point was really that Morbius had been forced to confront his own part in all the murders and was filled with guilt and self-hatred as a result. I.e., that intense self-hatred was what focused the monster on attacking Morbius himself.

Now, if only there was a way of redirecting the social media Id Monster back onto the trolls when they (perhaps, temporarily) regret the damage they've unleased.

 

[jedishrfu]

Great idea somehow bending the vitriol back on the trolls kind of like an AI saying

I know you are but what am I.

as an immediate or delayed response to the troll Without actually sending out the vitriol to the victim. That would be one complex AI.

 

[PeroK]

Great idea somehow bending the vitriol back on the trolls ...

The problem is that it's not just a few trolls. There's a general savagery. What ordinary people believe or say they believe about others is staggering. It's the monster from the id, right enough.

I've been sitting here going quietly mad waiting for lockdown to end and pondering whether social media will ultimately destroy democratic societies, and it's obvious now: the Internet is the Krell machine!

 

[atyy]

The problem is that it's not just a few trolls. There's a general savagery. What ordinary people believe or say they believe about others is staggering. It's the monster from the id, right enough.

I've been sitting here going quietly mad waiting for lockdown to end and pondering whether social media will ultimately destroy democratic societies, and it's obvious now: the Internet is the Krell machine!

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/discourse-2

 

[strangerep]

[...] it's obvious now: the Internet is the Krell machine!

Not the Internet as a whole, but social media platforms where the owners make more money if more venom and bile gets fire-hosed everywhere.

(PF is on the Internet too, but it's unequivocally an influence for good in the world, imho.)

 

[Infrared]

Update on the story: Dadang Subur (Dewa Kipas) played three games (in person) against IM Irene Sukuandar and lost badly in all three. His level of play was nowhere near what his rating on chess.com would indicate.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/most-watched-chess-stream-in-history-dewa-kipas

 

[jedishrfu]

so maybe he was using a chess engine or two or he was extremely nervous.

 

[strangerep]

Update on the story: Dadang Subur (Dewa Kipas) played three games (in person) against IM Irene Sukuandar and lost badly in all three. His level of play was nowhere near what his rating on chess.com would indicate.

... but he received $7,000 anyway.

I studied those chess games on Levy Rozman's YT channel (Gotham Chess). Dewa Kipas made some truly pathetic blunders once he was out of his (presumably prepared) opening theory.

So,... one version of the Underpants Gnomes' strategy ("1: Collect underpants, 2: ??, 3: Profit"") has now been validated: "1: Be a cheater and a dick, 2: Attract attention and outrage, 3: Profit $7,000 while being thrashed."

 

[jedishrfu]

Here's a report and link to the games

https://www.chess.com/news/view/most-watched-chess-stream-in-history-dewa-kipas

 

[Infrared]

so maybe he was using a chess engine or two or he was extremely nervous.

Being nervous can definitely induce mistakes, but Dewa Kipas just played very passively and didn't seem to understand the positions he got. It didn't seem at all like a strong player making nervous errors.

Here's a report and link to the games

https://www.chess.com/news/view/most-watched-chess-stream-in-history-dewa-kipas

I think this is the same link as in my post #20. Did you mean to link something else?

 

[jedishrfu]

There could still be more to the story like he decided that celebrity would not go well with retirement freedom and so he lost the games.

Or he could be like Beth Harmon when she played speed chess with Benny Watts where she allows him to win to see his strategies play out.

The joy of an active imagination in near retirement.

 

[PeroK]

I think the takeaway from the article that there is real room for doubt and that based on the information provided by the son, his father trained on chess engines and so it's natural to model your play on them.

You can't "model your play on an engine", because a human is fundamentally unable to run the engine's algorithms, even if he/she knew what they were.

The whole concept of "learn from an engine, play like and engine" is false. There is no way to reproduce what engine's do.

During lockdown I've watched a few YouTube chess channels and the engine cheaters are obvious from the sheer relentlessness of the engine's play. Even in complex winning positions, they find the killer moves every time. Whereas, even a strong GM will start to play more conservatively once the win's is the bag.

Moreover, engines never show nerves. A strong player winning against an IM would get really nervous and probably throw it away. Whereas, an engine shows no nerves beating an IM.

 

[Office_Shredder]

The whole concept of "learn from an engine, play like and engine" is false. There is no way to reproduce what engine's do.

Indeed, for the most part play like a chess engine *is* the goal of top level chess players.

 

[jedishrfu]

By model I meant you pickup patterns of play from the chess engines and use them in your own games. To an external viewer your moves may look like a chess engine because of those patterns of play.

I agree it’s highly unlikely someone would master the chess engine algorithms themselves.

 

[PeroK]

By model I meant you pickup patterns of play from the chess engines and use them in your own games. To an external viewer your moves may look like a chess engine because of those patterns of play.

That's not the way it works! Computer moves don't follow a pattern: they look like any other move, except everything has been perfectly calculated. A computer never gets caught out. Whereas, even a strong GM overlooks things. That's part of the "relentlessness" of a computer. In a 10-minute game, for example, a strong GM will miss opportunities; a computer will miss none. A computer is 100% on tactical shots, no matter how obscure.

If you watch a GM defeat an IM, it's significantly different from a computer cheat beating an IM.

 

[Office_Shredder]

Again, literally the goal of high level play is to play like a computer. Computers just make perfect moves for the most part. Sometimes they make moves that look weird, because there are many moves whose values are equal but some of them are more obvious to the human eye, but those are going to be hard to learn in general (definitionally they are less obvious, and in other similar looking board situations the obvious move will be much better).

 

[Vanadium 50]

You can't "model your play on an engine", because a human is fundamentally unable to run the engine's algorithms, even if he/she knew what they were.

Whereas, even a strong GM will start to play more conservatively once the win's is the bag.

Can you explain how both of these are true? Why couldn't someone be taught to play more aggressively even when the outcome is not in dispute?

 

[PeroK]

Can you explain how both of these are true? Why couldn't someone be taught to play more aggressively even when the outcome is not in dispute?

It's possible, of course, that a player may actively seek complications in a winning position, but players who reach any reasonable standard (let alone IM and GM) will have the mental scars of won positions thrown away for that very reason. This is another difference between humans and computers: for most humans it hurts to lose a chess game.

This is an area where even GM's lose points in the computer evaluation: the simple winning move that a GM might play without thinking can be seen as a blunder by an engine, which evaluates a much more complicated route to victory as vastly superior. Bobby Fischer, for example, was very principled about this: he always chose the simplest and most efficient way to win. The brilliancies were saved for when he needed them.

The other side of the coin is when the cheats start to run out of time, they fail to see the forced draw. They lose on time in a winning position (because of the time lag using an engine), where a strong player would trade in their winning advantage for a dead draw.

In my view, the chess.com algorithms have to be quite clever to spot cheating, but it's obvious to human eyes.

 

[Infrared]

In my view, the chess.com algorithms have to be quite clever to spot cheating, but it's obvious to human eyes.

I don't think it's always obvious. I agree that weaker players who always blindly copy the computer's recommendations are usually pretty easy to catch, but unfortunately there are more savvy cheaters. If a stronger player plays most of the game on his or her own and only consults the computer for a few critical moments, it can be very difficult to detect. There have been some pretty high profile cheating accusations that have turned out to be false (though this particular case looks open-and-shut).

 

[PeroK]

I don't think it's always obvious. I agree that weaker players who always blindly copy the computer's recommendations are usually pretty easy to catch, but unfortunately there are more savvy cheaters. If a stronger player plays most of the game on his or her own and only consults the computer for a few critical moments, it can be very difficult to detect. There have been some pretty high profile cheating accusations that have turned out to be false (though this particular case looks open-and-shut).

Yes, occasional use of the engine is much more difficult to detect.

 

[onatirec]

I've been following this story since the beginning, and it has never looked good for Dewas (aside from his recent tournament windfall). You can look up his older games on chess.com - they are of very low quality. Even a mediocre player could easily recognize his cheating.

Chess.com has a very advanced (proprietary) detection algorithm. Those GMs which have gotten a chance to peek under the hood practically fawn over it.