On Mar 17, 8:26 pm, Mike Murray wrote:

Many times I have seen people talk about how they
sometimes (or even often) allow others to play under
their handle at rated chess online, and I have also
witnessed several cases of this first hand. I have also
seen players who wanted to "teach someone a lesson"
who fired up a chess playing program, to deal a blow
to some fellow's ego -- someone who had ticked them
off. Obviously, it is much harder to do this sort of
substitution OTB, so the online ratings are far less
meaningful than an OTB rating.

Good points, although until proven otherwise, I'd think this
relatively rare.

Perhaps you should think more carefully; this is not
just some unsupported claim, but a retelling of what
has been *observed* in practice. In addition to my own
experiences, there are innumerable comments strewn
throughout rgc postings by others which confirm this.

One recent example was in response to an attack
on someone by Mr. Repa, who ridiculed another of the
many claimants to chess fame for having a slightly
lower online rating than his own. Now, even though
no one takes Mr. Repa seriously, it was patiently
explained that the "ad-hominee" has allowed his son
and friends to play under his ID, and these boys were
about 10 years of age! This was typical, as all the
online players I knew allowed others to use their
account to play with a member ID, to avoid being
shunned as an "unregistered" (presumed) weakie.
Unregistered players have trouble getting decent
opposition -- or at least they used to. In fact, not
one of the many players I knew ever said "no! You
can't use my ID because that would be unethical."
I'm not arguing that this is right, just relating the
facts of my own experience to add to all the others
which can easily be found in rgc postings along the
same vein. I can't recall anyone ever posting that
*nobody* ever played under their account, although
it may have happened just the same.


Playchess maintains three ratings: slow, blitz and bullet.

Yes, I keep hearing about this Playchess. But this
was not around back then. Back when I played it
was ICC and other sites, and the top-rated players
were rather protective of their ratings, flatly refusing to
give an unrated or new player a shot at them. On top
of that, the very idea of "testing" a recently purchased
chess program is defeated unless you can find decent
opposition, and that means the top-rated players. In
fact, the thesis works best if you conduct these tests
against players who have known USCF or FIDE ratings.


And there are many players with a w..i..d..e difference between their ratings at
these three modes.

Hint: typical computer cheats prefer to savor the glory
by taking it slow and easy, so they don't muck things
up via operator error. (Okay, I did not know enough
computer cheaters to make such an assessment.) :D

Lastly, there is the small matter of mouse,
typing, or touch-pad speed differences among the
machines themselves to factor in. I have known
players who claim that typing the (blitz or bullet)
moves is significantly faster than using a mouse,
or who even use a third party to do this for them
while they call out the moves verbally! Obviously,
this makes any closely-contested games depend
all too heavily on secondary issues, rather than
what we normally consider to be real chess skill.
It also seems to give the younger players a big
edge over their older, slower-reflexed rivals.

For this reason, players with a bullet rating over 100 points higher
than their blitz rating go on my "ignore" list. It's also why I have
pretty much settled on 3.2 (three minute game with a 2 second per move
increment).

That is precisely the time control that I used to prefer.


It's fast enough to discourage alternate computer
cheating and slow enough to make mouse skill less decisive.

And also to eliminate the strategy of winning on
time by quickly shifting wood in a random endgame.

As an experiment, I played quite a few 3.0 games and found the rate of
lag cheating unacceptably high. Doesn't seem to be as much at 3.2,
although it does take longer to get an opponent sometimes.

I noticed that certain favored players had a big time
advantage in terms of this lag -- occasionally finding
one who gained large time advantages despite my
moving instantly. Later, I read complaints by others
that a few of the admins were abusing their special
privileges in this and several other ways, and some
of these complaints came from other admins!

Maybe I will give this Playchess.com a try.

-- help bot