Poll for future Hardback Arena season (and about cheating)

[ufm]

For chess, draughts, and reversi, let me tell you I went through a phase after had met someone just like you years before.
Now I don't play them here but elsewhere. I know the protocol here and the futility.
I don't mind stripping ELO or trophies for them or whatever. It's a stigma, a skeleton in the closet. Thanks for reminding me that.

Earlier version of Nine men's morris didn't implement draw. I'm serious. 90% winrate what you see is bloated due to a major bug.
Neutreeko goes the same. The game won't end in 2 win mode. Plus, the game creator revealed ideal opening line guide. Easy to study.
Gomoku? I was that good as of 2017. BGA Players' overall performance was way lower. No swap2 helped also.
Four in a row, sure, go ahead and analyze my games with your solver.
I even lost a game which I was the first player, and there is a known bug regarding player color which obviously I didn't exploit.
So, how about you then? Are you a master or grandmaster of everything above 300?

[surikkat]

For chess, draughts, and reversi, let me tell you I went through a phase after had met someone just like you years before.
Now I don't play them here but elsewhere. I know the protocol here and the futility.
I don't mind stripping ELO or trophies for them or whatever. It's a stigma, a skeleton in the closet for me. Thanks for revealing that.

all is said.

Ben Johnson who takes offense at doping.

[ufm]

Ad hominem, again. If I were to hide my misdeeds I wouldn't have spoken up at all. Take that as my repentance.
Also, wrong analogy. It's more like ex-offender finding other suspects guilty and trying to prevent further damage.
End of the line. Have a good cheating for life.

[JackHH]

I am personally now thinking it's best to just not have an arena mode. The number of players who are <150 elo rated that suddenly become Nigel Richards overnight is getting out of hand. I've witnessed a combination of players who are clear cheats from the offset, and then the other type who are players that maybe get beaten by the same player 10+ times, and get tired and of and decide using an anagram solver is the problem.

[ufm]

I am personally now thinking it's best to just not have an arena mode. The number of players who are <150 elo rated that suddenly become Nigel Richards overnight is getting out of hand. I've witnessed a combination of players who are clear cheats from the offset, and then the other type who are players that maybe get beaten by the same player 10+ times, and get tired and of and decide using an anagram solver is the problem.

When there is a solver readily available it is bound to be used.
If the platform cannot adopt anti-cheat method, nullifying the meaningless 'competitive mode' is actually more beneficial to the player base.
Now we're witnessing why. I have few other games in mind too, but at least Arena and ranks for word games should be disabled unconditionally.

[rdiley]

Cheaters can rack up points in turn-based while avoiding real time games, and turn-based player pool is actually larger than real time one.

It blows my mind that turn based games count towards ratings!! I did not know this. You are asking for people to cheat if you allow this. The question of what is cheating and what is not cheating also becomes quite blurred.

For example:

- Bob likes playing hardback, and typically he has 4 or more turn based games in progress at any one time
- Bob also keenly revises word lists, using a tool like zyzzyva.
- Bob wants to learn all 10 letter words containing the 8 core start letters for hard back.
- He spends half an hour drilling them, and for example picks up on LATRINES +CM = CENTRALISM
- Bob resumes a game he started before he did the word list drilling. He's only 1 turn in and played LATER on his first turn. Now his next 5 letters are MICSN. He notices that if he uses 5 ink to draw he will be able to spell CENTRALISM.

So Bob has effectively looked something up in a word list mid game and then used it to his advantage. Is this cheating? If you say yes, then by that logic, any players who have outstanding turn based games have to restrain themselves from doing any form of practise in case they come across words that help them in their ongoing games? Clear ridiculous. On the other hand, if you allow word list revision/lookups mid game, then of course people can either deliberately, or out of genuine curiosity end up revising lists mid game to give them an edge. Also stupid.

The only solution there IMO is to make turn based games not count towards rating.

The only solution there IMO is to make turn based games not count towards rating.

I completely agree with this. I must admit that by a stringent standard I have inadvertently "cheated" in turn-based games, not because I intended to cheat but because I love words and talk with my friends about them. I used to be an SAT tutor years ago when the SAT verbal section was little more than a vocabulary test. A time limit keeps the players from making recourse to web sites that build words quickly based on their dictionaries. I am a little bit proud of my vocabulary and seek to build it further. Yet I want to enter a game with what I have. If my lexicon grows during the course of a game, what does one make of that? Am I cheating. Real time games mostly avoid the issue. I've nothing against turn based games, and I enjoy the opportunity to mull over how to make use of a difficult combination of letters. Yet with a sportsmanlike spirit, I like to play with and against what we bring to the table.