Heya!
Today I was joined by two players in a game of Dobble that looked very suspicious to me.
I lost the game, which is certainly not suspicious itself — I typically lose 1 per 10-20 games at my current ranking — what was suspicious is how I lost it. My opponents were extremely fast...inhumanly fast, you could say. It's common that high-ranking players are faster than me, but there's still usually a few miliseconds gap between choosing the same symbols on cards. Additionally, the time between "rounds" varies. With those two players, it was either practically instant, or as if they were letting me pick something to make themselves less suspicious. My cards didn't even refresh, and they already chose another set of three in the Triplet mode.
The possibilities I saw were:
a) the two players were simply better and more experienced than me, with their skills being insane;
b) my cards refreshed with a delay in comparison to theirs, so what I perceived as suspicious activity was not that bad from their side;
c) the "players" were (using) a cheating software.
I am inclined to believe it's the last option — because there's more to that story: both players were from the same country. Coincidence? Two real-life friends, perhaps? I had to investigate. I checked their profiles. Both claimed to be from the same country and speak the same language, not the most typical one for that specific country. Both accounts' nicknames ended with random numbers or other certain symbols characteristic for multiple accounts users. Still, could be an experienced couple or best friends... But then, I saw a new table on the Dobble's main site... another player from the same country, speaking the same atypical language. I camped at the table list and saw another one, and another... all from country X (fiine, one had Romania listed, but matched the pattern), speaking the same language, and every single account I checked was created today (July 9 2022). Sure, it could be a... group of school friends who decided to try BGA? But with all the above, I decided it's unlikely.
I wanted to report the players, assuming the potentially cheating accounts would get investigated, but the 'report player' form neither has such an option, nor allows to put a description anywhere. So, I guess, all I can do is to make this post and 'red thumb' all the accounts I found.
Today I was joined by two players in a game of Dobble that looked very suspicious to me.
I lost the game, which is certainly not suspicious itself — I typically lose 1 per 10-20 games at my current ranking — what was suspicious is how I lost it. My opponents were extremely fast...inhumanly fast, you could say. It's common that high-ranking players are faster than me, but there's still usually a few miliseconds gap between choosing the same symbols on cards. Additionally, the time between "rounds" varies. With those two players, it was either practically instant, or as if they were letting me pick something to make themselves less suspicious. My cards didn't even refresh, and they already chose another set of three in the Triplet mode.
The possibilities I saw were:
a) the two players were simply better and more experienced than me, with their skills being insane;
b) my cards refreshed with a delay in comparison to theirs, so what I perceived as suspicious activity was not that bad from their side;
c) the "players" were (using) a cheating software.
I am inclined to believe it's the last option — because there's more to that story: both players were from the same country. Coincidence? Two real-life friends, perhaps? I had to investigate. I checked their profiles. Both claimed to be from the same country and speak the same language, not the most typical one for that specific country. Both accounts' nicknames ended with random numbers or other certain symbols characteristic for multiple accounts users. Still, could be an experienced couple or best friends... But then, I saw a new table on the Dobble's main site... another player from the same country, speaking the same atypical language. I camped at the table list and saw another one, and another... all from country X (fiine, one had Romania listed, but matched the pattern), speaking the same language, and every single account I checked was created today (July 9 2022). Sure, it could be a... group of school friends who decided to try BGA? But with all the above, I decided it's unlikely.
I wanted to report the players, assuming the potentially cheating accounts would get investigated, but the 'report player' form neither has such an option, nor allows to put a description anywhere. So, I guess, all I can do is to make this post and 'red thumb' all the accounts I found.
)
