For a while I have noticed a certain player continually making new accounts and entering many games, and tournaments/championships with multiple accounts. Their motive seems to be to pyramid the accounts to very high rating, and perhaps rig some tournaments to give themselves a higher chance of winning. The player is competent in many games, and could achieve a high rating without cheating like this. You might wonder how I can be sure it's the same person on all of these accounts: I can tell by their style in four in a row, and how they often repeat the same or similar moves.

I'm not sure if what they are doing is against the rules, but it should be. For me, this person's actions weren't annoying enough to speak out about, for a while. But today the next four in a row championship has started, and I see that they have FOUR accounts in league 1. So instead of playing 8 different people I get to play 5 people, one of them 4 times, and the shenanigans they do by transferring rating over mean some of those accounts are very underrated.

What they are doing has a really negative impact on the natural distribution of ratings, and has obvious consequences for tournament outcomes. I have not yet counted how many accounts they have, so let's do that now:

 www_triceps_at - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=41572

Jason_w (used to be compex) - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=41835

xianxian - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=42038

Piapia - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=42259

notice the double word in a specific language to match their profile country, which they did twice lol

WislaKrakow - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=41970

igorski - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=42897

Halashnikov - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=42094

greenwhite - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=43885

Quantico - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=43946

Kielce - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=43692

So they have at least 10 accounts, and there are probably more that I don't know about, and they'll probably make more. Most of these accounts were created relatively recently. Triceps seems to be their main account, and I have talked to them before. I told them to stop entering tournaments with multiple accounts and they said they'd stop (this was last year), and maybe they did stop for a period but they are back at it.

As for rating distribution: if they have 10 accounts, all with + 500 rating (2000 average), and there are 100 active players in a game, then those active player's will be on average 500*10 / 100 = 50 rating lower than they should be. Many players lose their deserved spot in the next highest championship league because this person has an extra account to take it. These factors might lead to a less motivated playerbase, and it's very unfair.

I have not looked much into this player's impact in games besides four in a row. But a quick look shows me they have 2 accounts in league 1 of the current chess championship.

What can we do about this?

Want me to hack'em altr mailz n pw x_x

Nothin' dun when i playd 10 accs, can't do anythin x_x

Wait, so does this person have four or ten accounts? Either way, how can you be so sure that it's the same person? Maybe some players are just copying each others' moves? Can you provide some example games?

I don't understand Four in a Row well enough to make judgements myself, and I am sure that you have been careful not to make false accusations. However, I do find myself to be a slight bit sceptical; the account creation dates aren't even that close to each other.

That's not to say that I agree with such behaviour, though. The downsides are quite apparent if it is true.

All 10 accounts are the same person. A few ways I know (and i'll provide some evidence for each):

(1) I'll show you the conversation I had earlier this year with them, after the accounts all went on vacation at the same time. This is the most clear evidence I have:

http://imgur.com/a/ZYDeV

(2) intuitively i can tell by their style, like similar kinds of openings and mistakes - if players were just copying each other, their style changes after they can no longer copy moves. I can give examples but this one is hard to understand if you don't have the same level of understanding in four in a row.

(3) you can see strings of wins or losses when they play against themself, in order to achieve whatever nebulous rating change goal they have at the time.

(4) In a few games, they messed up “setting up” for a win for one account, so they had to do some wonky moves to achieve the desired result:

https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=1737413&nmove=53

(5) The names piapia and xianxian have the same structure, made by the same person

They did not make all the accounts at the same time, but they have made accounts at various points in 2015 and 2016.

All of this was not a big deal to me until they had 4 accounts in the same championship group. At least I can point out that this is happening so people can decide to decline games against this person if they wish.

When I complained to Richard about igorski, Gomokov, and Oeil_De_Lynx being the same person, he looked into it.  Richard confirmed that they all had the same IP address, and were, indeed, the same person!  However, he didn't do anything about it.  Bummer!

(meow)

So there are three nicks that are played by the same guy here?http://188.166.30.209/jsp/tournament/tournament.jsp?trnid=polyomino.ch.12.2.1

I might be able to cope with it — so far, nothing annoying.

But I do know that it is impossible to play reversi, gomoku, and a number of similar games at a high level because of this clogging of the top leagues

An ignore feature here would be nice imo

Ignore doesn't help with tournaments.

This player is also manipulating catchup.  Check out the profile for

Kielce - https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=43692

He loses many many games to his many other handles and has a low 1300 rating, yet he plays all out against stronger players to steal rating points.  I lost to him(I am in the top ten), and so did Jos Decker, the top rated catchup player.  And since he sandbags his rating to the 1300 level, when he beats an 1800 or 1900 player, he steals a boat load of their rating points, apparently with the plan to allow his other handles to dominate the top spots.  Very underhanded.

(look specifically at his catchup games, and you will see what I mean)

So in this and this and this catchup tourney he (she) played entirely against himself. Now what to do with this information?

So in this and this and this catchup tourney he (she) played entirely against himself. Now what to do with this information?

Quite the inspective person you are Recalcitrant, never noticed all those accounts were all the same person, otherwise that means I just played against the same person so many times by now. It is a bit annoying when someone of that playing level makes a new account and is matched up with you with a rating that is far below their actual playing strength, but to have four accounts all in league 1 of the same tournament? Man, has rigged written all over it, though luckily I forgot to sign up for the championship. I think if I had signed up though, that would've pushed one of their four accounts down to the second league and would've made it slightly less rigged. Well, good luck on the championship.

I asked Richard to consider beefing up the blacklist parameters.  Hopefully this topic will spur him to action.  I have added all the offending accounts to my blacklist and encourage others to do likewise.

As long as I'm being fairly beat (i.e. no AI usage - unless declared) I don't really mind. Oh no, I lost some rating points… oh dear. For most of these games it's irrelevant. If you're comparing your rating to other sites then just be aware that the player base is skewed and small enough to make such comparisons invalid. If triceps isn't the strongest player then he's unlikely to win a championship regardless of how many handles he has.

For me, as I am coming from Austria, I personally dont know Triceps (who says he is also from Austria)

I say this, because he is playing very strong shogi, and in Austria the shogi scene is very small, so almost every strong player know each other.

I noticed that players like WislaKrakow (who also played good shogi) come, and after some time they have gone, nothing to hear from them.

Shogi is nearly the only game I play, others just with my friends for fun. But if I lose rating , I dont mind.

There is also a guy, rafi, from Slovak Rapublic, I was playing Einstein vs him. He had 1050 rating at the beginning, and I lost against him several times. Of course, Einstein is a Dice game, but when you have 1000 rating you should just know that the dice has 6 sides, and nothing more :) Now he has 1600, like me. This also seems like rating-stealing. But I dont really mind, it´s just for fun :)

I am Liza, enjoy the games :)

Concerning rafi, I think they just left the site for a while without finishing the games or deregistering from the tournaments, leading to a series of time-outs and a very low rating. It's not good, but it's pretty common on littlegolem as far as I know. Probably no malice involved.

jugular: +1

To be honest: I have no idea what this discussion is about? I mean “stealing” points? Really? What does it mean? Little Golem allows for board play and for different kind of meta-play. Are you going to remove the in game comments because some people are annoying? (Okay okay, with that the black list helps.)

What I find interesting is, how much Recalcitrant is/was into the game of having more than one identity. You maybe should try that by yourself?

It has nothing to do with points, more so how people don't want 10 of the same person in one championship. (Maybe a bit exaggerated but made my point)

^^^ exactly

Yeah, the main nick in the pack is WislaKrakow, all other nicks seem to be its ratings boosting helper

Good detective work Recalcitrant ★, however sadly it does seem difficult to detect / confirm / stop…. and although it is very poor sportsmanship (and annoying) it doesn't seem like a big deal as long as you limit your betting to amounts you can afford to lose… but in any event, thanks for sharing this info.

…interesting that Kielce has played 25+ different games, WislaKrakow 15+ different games,  but Quantico has onlyplayed “Four in a row” (256 games of it so far):Four in a row2155 256 games