Is botting allowed?

[Shivaware]

The moves where played at an inhumane speed, instantly. It continued for many turns. It was clear my opponent was using some sort of bot/macro to input their moves. And since the opponent made choices based of new information instantly I am assuming it was a bot that could also make decisions, not just a macro to input pre-determined moves.

May i ask what game?

Just to clarify, you're asking for the name of the game, right? Not the specific table where this happened.

Indeed, the OP should not provide the specific table, because that would count as calling out the player in question. BGA says the following in the first thread:

Please do not use the Forums to call players out by name, this is what the Moderation Reports are for. The Forums should remain a general discussion. If you misuse the Forums in this manner, we will apply moderation penalties.

In fact, you might want to avoid language like "I just played a game again (sic) someone", since that might suggest you were referring to the Ark Nova game that completed 14 minutes before your post. In that game, I see a few moves done in 2 seconds, but some take over a minute. You probably know that you can disable the animations in Ark Nova, which allows for faster moves. There are people that can reliably solve a Rubik's Cube in under 5 seconds, so I'm willing to believe that a top player can play Ark Nova pretty quickly.

[Suoivax]

The moves where played at an inhumane speed, instantly. It continued for many turns. It was clear my opponent was using some sort of bot/macro to input their moves. And since the opponent made choices based of new information instantly I am assuming it was a bot that could also make decisions, not just a macro to input pre-determined moves.

May i ask what game?

Just to clarify, you're asking for the name of the game, right? Not the specific table where this happened.

oh, definatly. Just the game name, not the table.

was just reminded of the Cant Stop "bot" thread from a while ago.

[FrankJones]

The moves where played at an inhumane speed, instantly. It continued for many turns. It was clear my opponent was using some sort of bot/macro to input their moves. And since the opponent made choices based of new information instantly I am assuming it was a bot that could also make decisions, not just a macro to input pre-determined moves.

May i ask what game?

Just to clarify, you're asking for the name of the game, right? Not the specific table where this happened.

I would be interested in both pieces of information.

[Meeplelowda]

I would be interested in both pieces of information.

Providing the second piece of information would violate the rule against making specific accusations against a user in the forum, which is what Shivaware pointed out two posts above yours and I imagine why Suoivax made it clear they were just asking for the first part.

[FrankJones]

I would be interested in both pieces of information.

Providing the second piece of information would violate the rule against making specific accusations against a user in the forum, which is what Shivaware pointed out two posts above yours and I imagine why Suoivax made it clear they were just asking for the first part.

My apologies to all. I was thinking I could view the game replay and find that it's possible for a human to make the moves as quickly as they were made.

I have some games in which I know my next few moves, and I have the game window open as my active window. My opponent makes a move. I immediately make mine. Granted, that only happens sometimes; the OP made it sound as though it were happening every time.

If we knew just the game itself without a table reference, maybe we can provide some insight. Some games are easier to move quickly than others.

[Meeplelowda]

I would be interested in both pieces of information.

Providing the second piece of information would violate the rule against making specific accusations against a user in the forum, which is what Shivaware pointed out two posts above yours and I imagine why Suoivax made it clear they were just asking for the first part.

My apologies to all. I was thinking I could view the game replay and find that it's possible for a human to make the moves as quickly as they were made.

I have some games in which I know my next few moves, and I have the game window open as my active window. My opponent makes a move. I immediately make mine. Granted, that only happens sometimes; the OP made it sound as though it were happening every time.

If we knew just the game itself without a table reference, maybe we can provide some insight. Some games are easier to move quickly than others.

I don't think anyone attributed bad intentions to you. I think we were trying to keep the OP from getting moderated.

Certainly some of these posts about "impossibly fast" moves come from games like Ark Nova where you can turn off animation to dramatically reduce the time it takes to make a move. And sometimes it's just server lag in transmitting the updates to your browser. But, yes, it would be nice to see the game log to see if moves were being made within one second or something like that.

I tried to think of a way to anonymize the data that won't take too much work. Simply doing a search and replace of the other player's name won't work because the time stamps could still be used pretty easily to figure out which game it was because the precise sequence of timestamps is basically a fingerprint. You could convert all the timestamps to offsets so that move one is 00:00:00, move two is 00:00:37 etc., but again that sequence is probably unique, although it would take even more time to reverse engineer it to figure out which game it came from. But anything more anonymizing that than would destroy the information we want to extract from it, so I'm at a loss.

[Kayvon]

Bottom line is this: It's not a bot.

The amount of work needed to create a bot specifically for a BGA game is extremely large, whereas the legitimate number bot accusations against people who take fast turns, often simply by turning off animations and such, is close to zero.

It may be "very clear" to you that there's a bot, but it's very clear to everyone else that there isn't. That's why you're seeing all the requests for people to try to check it out themselves.

[BalGAmor]

To answer your original question, BGA does not tolerate "any cheating and/or lack of fair play, whether through the use of cheating software, analysis of communication protocols or code, use of multiple Accounts, collusion with other Users, leaving the game before its normal end, use of game blocking tactics in order to force other Users to quit, or the use of obscene or foul language, etc" as stated in the FAIR PLAY section (section VIII) of the Terms of Use.

When it comes to say if a bot was being used or not, I am not the right person for that. You can report if you want, using the proper tool, and your claim, as every other claims, will be looked into.

[FrankJones]

Perhaps the OP can rescind the suggestion/accusation of cheating, and then simply post a game table with a post, "strategy analysis, looking for input about the strategic moves made by both players." Those thread are allowed.