Board Game Arena

Where can I report a player that i'm pretty sure is using some programme to play? When i wanted to report there is no such a thing. The case is i was playing with a player that is new to the site and is extremaly good at one game. Like he started and already crushing opponents. I became suspicious about this player after a game with him and i wanted to analyze 1 of his games. In the first game that I watched there is 100% proof that he's using at least a program that is counting resources and buildings. He knew exactly how many resources he has got to have and to collect in the next turns without even knowing the order of buildings to appear.After maybe half of the game he had already prepared everything to match all moves during the rest of the game. And using some kind of placement helper to place workers to match all of those future moves. This level of planning and "ability" to do that huge amount of calculations is beyond any master level and in my opinion impossible to do without any AI help not mentioning he's supposed to be a "newbie". Considering the shortage of time that he's got to do this makes it simply impossible. Or this newbie is a supermaster that is using second account. Anyways if someone know where can i find "report cheater" or something like that please let me know.

As you are obviously aware of, it is not allowed to post the user name of the player here on the forum. *But* you are allowed to name the game (not the specific table number, though!) you are referring to!

I suggest you go into the specific game's forum and describe what you experienced in more detail. You can then discuss with the experts of this game if what you saw is possible for a human player without external help.

Please note that a player with 0 games on BGA can still be a master of this game. They might be playing this game for decades in local, national, and international level in real life. Everybody has had his first game here in BGA and was not necessarily a noob then...

Yeah nearly everything is possible but some things would require some sort of savant syndrome to do so , or calculating power of a computer, but yeah i ll reach some experts in private and ask them.

It might also be a "new" account for someone who has been playing on BGA for ages. The new account could be reportable by itself (if it's someone trying to bypass a moderation or simply cheat) but it could also be legit (they could have decided to delete their old account and create a new one).

I've tried to find anything in BGA rules regarding using external tools and I haven't found anything. I'm not sure there are any restrictions and, as far as I know, the games with known AI, like chess, are not rated for that matter.

using at least a program that is counting resources and buildings

- this would also imply that using pen and paper falls under cheating, but should it? And I'm not playing turn-based games, but that's how I imagine they are supposed to be played - long calculations of the the probabilities of all the possible outcome. Banning this would feel wrong, wouldn't it?

As a developer, I think you're more likely to play against Rain Man than against an AI on this site.

tancerzdrb wrote: ↑04 February 2025, 14:19 Where can I report a player that i'm pretty sure is using some programme to play?

Where can you report something that does not exist because you are a conspiracy theorist? For reasons we simply do not know BGA have chosen not to include that option as standard. Perhaps just contact the mods on the topic, surely they must be deeply sympathetic to completely unsubstantiated claims that normal play constitutes cheating.

RobertBr wrote: ↑04 February 2025, 21:11

tancerzdrb wrote: ↑04 February 2025, 14:19 Where can I report a player that i'm pretty sure is using some programme to play?

Where can you report something that does not exist because you are a conspiracy theorist? For reasons we simply do not know BGA have chosen not to include that option as standard. Perhaps just contact the mods on the topic, surely they must be deeply sympathetic to completely unsubstantiated claims that normal play constitutes cheating.

Please do not directly contact the moderators. They are volunteers and using their personal accounts to play games, just like you. They are only allowed to respond to issues about moderation issues through the official moderation reports. Contacting them directly could be considered harassment.

buv3x wrote: ↑04 February 2025, 19:07 I've tried to find anything in BGA rules regarding using external tools and I haven't found anything. I'm not sure there are any restrictions and, as far as I know, the games with known AI, like chess, are not rated for that matter.

using at least a program that is counting resources and buildings

- this would also imply that using pen and paper falls under cheating, but should it? And I'm not playing turn-based games, but that's how I imagine they are supposed to be played - long calculations of the the probabilities of all the possible outcome. Banning this would feel wrong, wouldn't it?

Pen and paper would not work as there need to be done many calculations in a very short time. It has to be some programme with automatic calculator.

Also what i discovered is that this player can't be a smurf because in some of his games he played so weirdly, and lost to a very unexperienced player.