Three different people have pointed me to this post by Ken Regan on statistical evaluation of claims of cheating in chess. So I figured I have to satisfy demand and post something on this. But I have nothing to say. All these topics interest me, but I somehow had difficulty reading through the entire post. I scanned through but what I really wanted to see was some data. Show me a scatterplot, then I’ll get interested.
P.S. This is meant as no disparagement of Regan or his blog. I just couldn’t quite get into this particular example.
I had the same problem when I read it. His work sounds interesting, but it’s not as fascinating to read about as I’d expected.
Closer to home, I see chess.com closing off accounts quite regularly for cheating — which is interesting since these are paying customers and there’s no prize winnings on the site. It’s particularly interesting to play vote chess with guys who seem to know everything — and then one day aren’t there any more. I think their algorithm is based on the fact that nobody’s likely to have x number of identical moves as a chess engine — Regan is obviously looking at the same thing, but with professionals to outwit.
Why don’t they add a broadcast delay or install a few wireless jammers and get done with it?