Multi-account cheating in championship

I was wondering if you come across this problem also in other games, or it's just the case for gomoku+connect6. Basically, players are using multiple accounts and fix the results in 1st+2nd league.

One example for all, current gomoku championship - http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/tournament/tournament.jsp?trnid=gmk.ch.22.1.1
zevs1, laska, super7, ariel are all nicknames from one person. As you can see, my score against him is 3-1, but even if I win rest of my games, if he wins just 3 out of 4 his remaining games with nickname zevs1, he's guaranteed to win the tournament (while normally he would need to win 6 out of 7 games, because he wouldn't have auto-wins against other nicknames). As I said, it's not just this player however, I believe some others are using multiple accounts as well (definitely not in such magnitude though)

Hand in hand with this goes another issue, which is diversity. Playing half of the games against same player is really boring. Moreover, it keeps other players from getting to the 1st league (one complained to me about it and signed off from the championship). Cherry on top - the player who I mentioned is most likely going to win both 2nd league tournaments (alonso, drozdov) and thus have even more nicknames in the 1st league.

I wish Richard would do something about it..

how do you know all of these players are the same person?

How would you solve the sockpuppet problem?

According to number of moves played, the group seems normal to me. You are the fastest moving player, that gives you four finished games with 50-ish moves played. The four players you mentioned are faster than the others but not as fast as you. The games within them are 25-ish by now and even the slower players have move moves against you than against any other player.

Of course, that doesn't prove anything, but it indicates that the hypothetical superplayer not only arranges games, but delays his inner games just as much as his outer games as if he dedicated the same amount of thinking or is very Machiavellic.

Besides, I cannot imagine someone getting four fake players into league one in a highly competitive game like go (I have no idea how competitive gomoku is). The idea behind the fake players is that you make them lose on purpose to help one of them. How can you get four fake players into league one unless anyone else is so much weaker than you? If than is the case, why bother cheating?

You will have to provide strong evidence that the four accounts are one player.

All 3 accused Div1 players were last connected with 11 minutes of each other interestingly.
An account named Lev1 (plid=12924) also logged out within this period and including the division 2 leaders I believe would be a 12 minute period in which many of the top gomoku players apparently logged out.

Is there some reason why so many Gomoku/Connect 6/7 players would want to log out in the same short time period?

I don't find the sock puppet theory far fetched.

Only the administrator of this site has the data necessary to discern to what degree of sock puppetry is going on and who is involved beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless someone is bothering to track move time and logout time etc.

Those more familiar than me with gomoku can decide whether the play of alleged sockpuppets seems genuine.

6/7 top Gomoku playing logging out so close together is proof against any one of them on its own, but does suggest that there is at least good reason to believe that sockpuppetry is a strong possibility in this instance.

Guys, it's not a question if the four accounts belong to the same player, they do. I can say that with 100% certainty based on the playstyle (I know this can be hard to understand for someone who doesn't play gomoku), openings, frequency of moves (and when they're played by all the accounts)..

erratic: gomoku games can take ages (http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=1519367), so even if he now plays fast against himself, he still has enough time to fix the results to his benefit. Why is he doing this at all? Maybe he likes to play many games, maybe he wants to win the championship, I don't know. And about getting multiple accounts into the 1st league - with enough effort, it's not really hard. Let's say (I don't know anything about GO) that there's someone on level 6D in GO and average level in 2nd league is 2D. I guess it won't take many championships before such player can get multiple accounts to the 1st league (if he's using 6-7 of them), right?

z: I would like to know the answer as well :) it's not a good idea to limit number of nicknames based on IP adress because of obvious reasons, but at least in such blatant cases as this Richard could step in.

I doubt it's possible to fully eliminate sockpuppets, but I can think of a few ways to deter players from managing multiple accounts by increasing the cost of doing so:
1. Require players to register their mobile phone number. Verify ownership by texting them a code.
2. Ask for a credit/debit card number. Charge a nominal fee for verification.
3. Ask for a bank account number. Deposit a few cents into the account and ask for the exact amount a couple of days later.
4. Ask for a mailing address. Send them a postcard with a verification code.

I don't like the 2nd-4th points very much because I think it would discourage new players from joining LG (and make several current players leave the site). The 1st point is a good idea, I'm just not sure how much would it cost the owner of LG.

btw: good job with your site, any chance you add polyomino?

ondik: Thanks. Polyomino is a game I'd like to add to trmph as I'm an avid player myself. Its user interface is quite unique, so I'll need to revamp my code base first.

@ondik: In my opinion, using the argument "I am 100% right and you could not know this except with some expert knowledge that only I have" is both off-putting and unfair. Openings in Go-Moku are fairly advanced these days and players often look superficially like clones because of this knowledge. Is there not anything more concrete, something with which you might be able to convince a layperson?

My personal view is that cheating is unavoidable on a site like LG...but also very rare. Most players play fairly and use neither sock puppets nor computers. And for those that do, what really is the point? I know that's cold comfort if you are cheated, but its the price you pay for a easy-to-use site that encourages players from all over the globe.

Like z, I think suggestion (1) is reasonable, though not eveyone will have a mobile and the cost to text Zimbabwe, say, might be expensive for both parties. My suggestion would be to draw up a clear and concise "No cheating, play fair" policy and force players to ratify the policy on sign-up and then every year thereafter or their account is inactivated. This will reinforce the values of the site and should deter all but the most hard-core cheaters.

@alain: It's entirely possible that those that get a kick out of cheating get more of a kick out of cheating a bunch of stinking cooperative idealistic hippies.

@ondik: As several have said, I'd like to see more concrete *measurable/testable* proof that there is sock-puppetry than just "trust me on this". At the moment that little group fails to tick most of the common sock-puppetry-detection boxes. We don't even have evidence of a single thrown game yet, for example.

There's no measurable/testable proof that I or anyone else can provide (if you don't take as a proof the login times which someone mentioned here or the short time between moves of each of his nicknames) which anyone could look at and say "yes, 100% multi-accounting". Because that's impossible, unless I visit him at home and make a video how he logs in and logs off with each of the accounts :) You mention game throwing - he doesn't try too hard to hide that he's using multiple accounts, but of course noone is stupid enough to visibly throw games. Maybe if I analysed his games against himself I could point out some obviously sub-par moves which he usually doesn't make, but again it would be no "measurable/testable proof" (and frankly, I like to spend my time on better things).

Therefore this thread isn't really about convincing anyone. Even if I convinced every single person on this site, it still won't change anything. Only one person can do something about this, and that's Richard. He also has all means to find out that all the accounts belong to one person and doesn't need to rely on my word.

So, I guess that makes me a stinking co-operative idealistic hippy? :o)

Seriously, though, what practical solutions are there against cheating? Having some simple checks for cheating makes sense, but sophisticated algorithms to combat the problem just raises the cost and complexity of managing the site and runs the risk of false positives. Ultimately you don't solve the problem anyway because any algorithm won't be 100% accurate and the cheaters just get more sophisticated themselves.

This reminds me of the honour system used for train tickets on some regional German trains compared with the "you-must-buy-a-ticket-or-face-our-wrath-and-we-will-just-laugh-if-you-lose-your-ticket" system used on British and Swiss trains. The German system, in my opinion, is superior and for a few reasons. True, you will get a slightly higher level of ticket-evasion, but you reduce the cost of running the train system in the first place, partially offsetting any loss of revenue. Most importantly, you encourage a sense of community, a feeling that the trains are there for us, not we're here for the train companies.

Jeepers, I *AM* a stinking co-operative idealistic hippy!!

"of course noone is stupid enough to visibly throw games"? Some are. The Mahmouds definitely did. Probably the Jamaican posse too.

There are other concrete proofs of cheating - some have played grandmaster man-in-the-middle, for example, that's easily checked.

You've made us aware of the issue, that is useful. We can be on our guard, as often cheaters make mistakes, and with more eyes, we're more likely to spot such things. (There are slightly more invasive techniques too, but I'd rather not use them until I'm 99% sure, but still lacking the will-prove-it-to-others proof, kinda the state you're in now.)

Good thing we are not playing for money. I could not sleep at nights.

If we were playing for money, the problem could be solved by charging a tournament entry fee.

Just for reference, RoRoRo is doing some subtle sniffing around, attempting to detect sock-puppetry (don't worry, almost no server load, as always, has been my design goal, and no "hacking" techniques). There's not much information so far (it's been running only 2 days, only 12 hours since the last face-palming bugfix), and *with huge margins of error*, there appears to be both evidence for both truth and falsity in the above claim. Give him a week, and we'll see if he concludes anything.