About multiple accounts and ELO boosting

[sourisdudesert]

Recently, we had again several serious cases of players using multiple accounts to boost their ELO ranking on Board Game Arena. Their ELO has been resetted to a much lower value (most often, 1500), and multiple accounts has been removed.

Playing against oneself using multiple account is a giant waste of time, both for these players and for our moderators.

In order to prevent other cases, I'd like to say the following : no one can cheat the system. We cannot of course detect a player who plays 1 or 2 times against himself, but if some player really wants to use this technique to boost his ELO ranking, it becomes very easy to detect.

We care about having clean rankings here on BGA, and we will continue to care about it. Please enjoy the competition by not trying to cheat the system (and honestly, this is really NOT fun to spend hours playing against oneself for nothing).

Thanks everyone for your help making this service clean, pleasant and fair play.

[Victoria_La]

Is this actually against the rules to play against yourself or its against the rules if you use rated games? Because I don't see why you deny multiple
accounts if people are not playing rated games. There are some legitimate reasons to play against yourself
a) To learn a new game. Even with real board games I have to play against myself to learn the game
b) To test a game (For developers)

[latexrhombus]

Without knowing the answer, I would assume it has to be rating-dependent. Even in rated games, someone boosting their rating to a 1400 or 1500 doesn't really affect anyone else (though it is even more silly as there is seemingly even less reason to do this).

That being said, is there any system in place to periodically monitor the top 10-ish players in each game to police this type of behavior or is it just based on users reporting? I realize that would probably be a lot of work for you guys to do, but in either case it is nice to hear you are punishing some of the cheaters.

I <3 BGA!

[momo80]

Thank you BGA. This is, personally, the best gaming site that I've played because of its transparency and dedication to HONEST gamers. For the love of the game, folks.

Cheers,
Momo

[sourisdudesert]

Is this actually against the rules to play against yourself or its against the rules if you use rated games?

Good point. This is not against the rules if it's not to cheat BGA system.

Even better answer : as long as it has no impact on the others, we don't care.

[Pelotas]

no one can't cheat the system.

This seems incorrect from a grammar point of view... probably a bad translation from French. Just saying...

[sourisdudesert]

That being said, is there any system in place to periodically monitor the top 10-ish players in each game to police this type of behavior or is it just based on users reporting?

Considering this is very easy (with "see X game history") to check the history of a given player, and considering how hard this is to be in the top 10 players in each games, you won't be surprised to learn that 100% of cheaters we found are already reported by other players

[latexrhombus]

That being said, is there any system in place to periodically monitor the top 10-ish players in each game to police this type of behavior or is it just based on users reporting?

Considering this is very easy (with "see X game history") to check the history of a given player, and considering how hard this is to be in the top 10 players in each games, you won't be surprised to learn that 100% of cheaters we found are already reported by other players

That's great to hear and thanks for responding . Sounds like you guys are on top of things.

[shamefuluser]

My wife and I both play on here, and often I get the flagged notice about two accounts on the same IP -

Should we always just make sure ELO is turned off when we play to prevent being flagged?

[turbo34]

I can't believe anyone could waste their time, other than the valid point of learning on unranked games. I guess the musty smell of an empty wallet and Mom's basement are getting to some people