[HN Gopher] Irwin - the protector of Lichess from all chess play...
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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.
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