Board Game Arena

Hello there,

in my last game, I had the unpleasant experience to meet a player who uses AI to win the game easily. He did not only play every move perfectly (as I checked after the game), he even told me during the game that he is using AI to beat me.
I think that this behavior destroys the whole purpose of playing games. Is there any policy to deal with such players? I could not find any option like "cheating" in the reporting system.

Kind regards!

PS: I am aware that I can use the red thumb to avoid playing with this player again. However, I am pretty sure that nobody wants to play with an AI-player.

I have seen the same question in chess forum... https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 88&t=15499
It may help you... (but I don't know if it helped me )

Earlier today I have resigned a game against another AI-player, and like you I was looking for a way to report it. It seems that BGA chooses not to free up resources to deal with this problem, and although playing AI-players is highly annoying, I do understand this choice. It's quite timeconsuming, and proving it beyond doubt is very hard. I have read the chessforum concerning the same problem, and although it doesn't help in terms of solutions, it was insightful to read. I guess the best we can do, is sharing those experiences here, and red-thumb the opponents in question for ourselves.

Urgh, I am participating in "Go The Round Go fortnight" tournament where I am confident there are at least 2-players that are using AI. It is frustrating playing them, not because of the perfect play but more of the disrespect for other players. What is the point of coming 1st in the tournament when you are aided by AI?

One of the player, which I don't know if I should name, has been using AI to reach a high ELO in Go (and many other board games that can be computerised, such as Chess, Checkers, Connect 4, etc.). Upon reviewing the 5 Go-game he loses at, they are all terrible games. As if he/she doesn't even know the rules of "eyes" and "liberty" and they alternate between horrible stone placement to a perfect sequence! This frustrates me.

So how do I know at least 2-players are cheating? Because I showed my games to my other IRL friends and we are all 5D and 6D amateur Go players on OGS in Australia. And one of them even run one game through KataGo and deemed 98% preferred move by AI. So there is very little doubt that we are wrong.

What can we do about it?

BGA cannot run anti-cheat algorithms for obvious reasons. This is not a dedicated site for abstract games.
Closing competitive features like Chess, Gomoku and other solvable word games is the only possible solution.

Yeah, sadly BGA doesn't have the resources nor expertise for these cheating detections!

Oh, just to update. After I confronted the said-player of using AI and showed him evidence that he did cheat, around 30-minutes ago he closed his account (created back in 2016)! So if he wasn't cheating, he can make a come back, but seems that his action showed that he is.

Now, one more player to confront.

Hi I just played a game of Carcasonne against a player named Bug_Abuser. He was able to change or remove my meeple with his. Clearly "Abusing a Bug". He used the chat during the game to let me know he had a "Surprise" for me. Then removed my meeple and replaced it with his and winning the castle. Very frustrating. Anyone else run into this? There doesn't seem to be a way to report this.

1. Report the bug.
2. Report the player (there is a category for exploiting a known bug).
3. Write in the Carcassonne forum, not in the Go forum.

Think of it like this: If the lives of these cheaters is so small that they need to play AI games to make themselves feel like they have some worth, then they are actually the ones to be pitied. I am certain that there are people that use cheats to play several games. And though I am angry and frustrated at the time, I realize that for me this is a game and that my life is rich and full of wonderful people. I don't need to cheat at an online game to feel that I have worth. Its obvious that the cheaters do need to do this to feel they have value. Sad really.

Hi, do you think is there a way to cheat at Heat pedal to the metal?
It's absurd to see everybody playing perfetcly in any game, even by 150 elo players! When I play live with my friends I end P1 or P2 most of the times, while here it's been two years since I can't reach 200 elo again (while in 2023 it took me just 11 races to get to that score from zero!), so to have an involution like that makes no sense, there's definitely something suspicious here.