What counts as 'significant evidence' for cheating?

[euklid314]

And how would you address the following situations?

- sandbagging: creating a new account and playing against other rivals to decrease their rating;
- climbing the rankings with multiple accounts and whenever one reaches a high rank, switch to another one.

I dislike such behavior and according to forum posts of BGA staff it is forbidden to create 2nd accounts (unless they are used ONLY for unranked games). But since the actual BGA policy on 2nd accounts seems to be much more lenient than they claim, I would not bother to report such cases at all. Just my personal approach.

[Lady_Jane]

This is a silly question.

why do you start so many responses this way? it seems a little unnecessary.

[Barberserk]

Just one example of my reports that led to moderation - thus was judged as sufficient evidence.

Two players that played 3-player Catan games and played almost exclusively as a team. I gave at least 10 games where this was very obvious and I listed all the dubious moves that I found.
These players traded in a way that one player would have the ressources for a settlement then in a later turn the other could build a city. In the approx. 30 games I looked at
they never (!) ever traded with the 3rd player. They put the robber only onto themselves when the games were already decided. Since one of the two accounts was the main account, the second account sometimes artificially avoided to get the 10th victory point.

Also the initial settlements where highly questionable. They tried to block in the 3rd player completely. And they did not care if the one player had only wood and ore, and the other the other ressources - because they knew they could share their ressources at any time.

Of 30 games the team finished approx. 27 in 1st and 2nd position. My report was 2 A4 pages of questionable moves (with game number and move number).

I found a couple of players doing the same over multiple games of Survive the island, always helping each other, never hurting each other, and always hurting the 3rd player. They always set up a 3-player game with strangers, to scam unsuspected victims, once was enough for me to know what's up and I went to investigate their profiles, sure enough, they do this in all the games of Survive the island. How should I go about reporting this?

[euklid314]

Just one example of my reports that led to moderation - thus was judged as sufficient evidence.

Two players that played 3-player Catan games and played almost exclusively as a team. I gave at least 10 games where this was very obvious and I listed all the dubious moves that I found.
These players traded in a way that one player would have the ressources for a settlement then in a later turn the other could build a city. In the approx. 30 games I looked at
they never (!) ever traded with the 3rd player. They put the robber only onto themselves when the games were already decided. Since one of the two accounts was the main account, the second account sometimes artificially avoided to get the 10th victory point.

Also the initial settlements where highly questionable. They tried to block in the 3rd player completely. And they did not care if the one player had only wood and ore, and the other the other ressources - because they knew they could share their ressources at any time.

Of 30 games the team finished approx. 27 in 1st and 2nd position. My report was 2 A4 pages of questionable moves (with game number and move number).

I found a couple of players doing the same over multiple games of Survive the island, always helping each other, never hurting each other, and always hurting the 3rd player. They always set up a 3-player game with strangers, to scam unsuspected victims, once was enough for me to know what's up and I went to investigate their profiles, sure enough, they do this in all the games of Survive the island. How should I go about reporting this?

Go to their profile, choose "Report this player" and later choose "XXX uses multiple accounts to gain elo". This is a reportable offense and you should make the details very clear to the moderators who might or might not know the game Survive the Island.

Note that you do not have to prove if it is one player with multiple accounts or several players who "share" their accounts and play as if they were one person.

[Barberserk]

Just one example of my reports that led to moderation - thus was judged as sufficient evidence.

Two players that played 3-player Catan games and played almost exclusively as a team. I gave at least 10 games where this was very obvious and I listed all the dubious moves that I found.
These players traded in a way that one player would have the ressources for a settlement then in a later turn the other could build a city. In the approx. 30 games I looked at
they never (!) ever traded with the 3rd player. They put the robber only onto themselves when the games were already decided. Since one of the two accounts was the main account, the second account sometimes artificially avoided to get the 10th victory point.

Also the initial settlements where highly questionable. They tried to block in the 3rd player completely. And they did not care if the one player had only wood and ore, and the other the other ressources - because they knew they could share their ressources at any time.

Of 30 games the team finished approx. 27 in 1st and 2nd position. My report was 2 A4 pages of questionable moves (with game number and move number).

I found a couple of players doing the same over multiple games of Survive the island, always helping each other, never hurting each other, and always hurting the 3rd player. They always set up a 3-player game with strangers, to scam unsuspected victims, once was enough for me to know what's up and I went to investigate their profiles, sure enough, they do this in all the games of Survive the island. How should I go about reporting this?

Go to their profile, choose "Report this player" and later choose "XXX uses multiple accounts to gain elo". This is a reportable offense and you should make the details very clear to the moderators who might or might not know the game Survive the Island.

Note that you do not have to prove if it is one player with multiple accounts or several players who "share" their accounts and play as if they were one person.

I reported it here on the forum: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 80&t=42014
Yes I obviously reported both their profiles and chose as an option "kingmaking and team playing" but I don't recall any extra option to write some text providing further info. Do you think I should search further? From what I saw on their profiles they have done it again and again, I should examine those past games but yeah it was obvious. As you said, it is probably the same person with two profiles after all.

[Barberserk]

I went again to these two guys' profiles (or one guy's profiles? hmmm...) And I chose the generic report player option from the top right, when I tried to report kingmaking behavior the form stopped me, saying: "The best way to combat Kingmaking is to give the Kingmaker player a red thumb (public red thumbs). There is no use filling in a report here: please give a red thumb to the one who made the kingmaking moves."
Sooo, I can solve the problem for myself, sure, but what about their next unsuspecting victim? I don't think it is enough to just thumbs down them.
Oh and they seem to play every game together, not just Survive the island... Bleh.

[euklid314]

I went again to these two guys' profiles (or one guy's profiles? hmmm...) And I chose the generic report player option from the top right, when I tried to report kingmaking behavior the form stopped me, saying: "The best way to combat Kingmaking is to give the Kingmaker player a red thumb (public red thumbs). There is no use filling in a report here: please give a red thumb to the one who made the kingmaking moves."
Sooo, I can solve the problem for myself, sure, but what about their next unsuspecting victim? I don't think it is enough to just thumbs down them.
Oh and they seem to play every game together, not just Survive the island... Bleh.

Kingmaking is not reportable because there is no concise way to prove kingmaking. In certain situations you cannot win yourself but your move decides who wins.

I have told you how you can report collaborative play. Choose "XXX uses multiple accounts to gain ELO".

[euklid314]

I found a couple of players doing the same over multiple games of Survive the island, always helping each other, never hurting each other, and always hurting the 3rd player. They always set up a 3-player game with strangers, to scam unsuspected victims, once was enough for me to know what's up and I went to investigate their profiles, sure enough, they do this in all the games of Survive the island. How should I go about reporting this?

Go to their profile, choose "Report this player" and later choose "XXX uses multiple accounts to gain elo". This is a reportable offense and you should make the details very clear to the moderators who might or might not know the game Survive the Island.

Note that you do not have to prove if it is one player with multiple accounts or several players who "share" their accounts and play as if they were one person.

I reported it here on the forum: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 80&t=42014
Yes I obviously reported both their profiles and chose as an option "kingmaking and team playing" but I don't recall any extra option to write some text providing further info. Do you think I should search further? From what I saw on their profiles they have done it again and again, I should examine those past games but yeah it was obvious. As you said, it is probably the same person with two profiles after all.

Delete your other forum post and report the players as I told you. Of course you have to look at their other games and give details to these games too. One game will never be sufficient evidence of collaborative cheating.

[Barberserk]

I tried the ELO approach, it results in the same exact message. A deadend, a wall. I was punished for reporting these 2 players by name and 10 karma was removed from my account. At this point I don't have any other options to fight the system here and clearly I can't report these 2 any further so, yeah. I am sorry about their future victims but I can't warn anyone about them. Oh well.

[Silene]

I tried the ELO approach, it results in the same exact message. A deadend, a wall. I was punished for reporting these 2 players by name and 10 karma was removed from my account. At this point I don't have any other options to fight the system here and clearly I can't report these 2 any further so, yeah. I am sorry about their future victims but I can't warn anyone about them. Oh well.

Maybe because you didn't follow euklid's instructions correctly

euklid wrote:
Go to their profile, choose "Report this player" and later choose "XXX uses multiple accounts to gain elo". This is a reportable offense and you should make the details very clear to the moderators who might or might not know the game Survive the Island.

If I follow those instructions I get to a series to questions with textbox where I can enter and explain my collected evidence.
The questions to answer are:
>> Please list here the BGA accounts owned by the same person
>> Which games involve cheating?
>> Please explain what makes you think the same person owns all these accounts?
>> If you would like to include additional information to your report, please type it below.