Shocked to Find Cheating on PlayChess.com

Several days ago this notice appeared on the USCF website:

“USCF & Internet Chess Club Join Forces to Provide Online Rated Chess!

The Internet Chess Club (ICC) and the United States Chess Federation (USCF) are delighted to announce the start of USCF online rated tournaments on the ICC. Bonus: 20% off ICC memberships for USCF members!” (http://www.uschess.org/content/view/12816/772/)

Wow, what a “bonus.” How about playing on one of the plethora of places where you can play FREE?

Today a new thread appeared on the forum under “All Things Chess”:

“New form of cheating on PlayChess.com ??”

by MikeMurray on Mon Oct 06, 2014 11:22 am #285620
“The last few days, I’ve experienced what appears to be a new cheating technique on PlayChess.com. What happens is my time seems to simply evaporate and I lose on time the instant my opponent moves. These are rated games. The last occurrence, with a huge material advantage on the board, I had about 25 seconds left and had a “premove” set up. My opponent thought for about 30 seconds, moved, and bingo, I instantly lost on time. This has happened more than once. The first couple of times (with different opponents), I thought I’d simply zoned out and not noticed my opponent’s move. But this last time, I was clearly focused and paying attention.
Anybody else experience this or something similar?
By the way, my premove did execute on the board, so I technically lost on time when it was my opponent’s move!”

A short time later Mike Nolan weighed in, as he does often, with:

by nolan on Mon Oct 06, 2014 12:07 pm #285622
“This doesn’t sounds so much like a way of cheating as a poorly designed or buggy playing interface.”

Next up was Hal Terrie:
by Hal Terrie on Mon Oct 06, 2014 12:14 pm #285623
“This kind of thing is frequently caused by lag. If you have a slow connection to the server your moves (and the replies of your opponent) will not be transmitted right away but meanwhile the server is still counting down your clock. This can result in the sudden disappearance of time as you have described.”
— Hal Terrie

Mr. Murray answered:

Postby MikeMurray on Mon Oct 06, 2014 1:52 pm #285629
“In the past, the server seemed to be able to account for lag. I’m wondering if some other applications I’m running on my PC might #### this up. I had Skype up, as well as gDrive, couple of browser windows and the usual antivirus.”

Hal took another turn with:

by Hal Terrie on Mon Oct 06, 2014 2:12 pm #285631
“I don’t think it’s related to other applications. I have had the exact thing you describe happen to me – I try to move instantly but 30 seconds or a minute just vanish. I have had this happen on both ICC and Chess.com. Some servers have an internal test for lag and won’t let you start a game if your connection is too slow but I don’t think it always works.r
I get broadband internet from Comcast and there’s a tendency to think it’s very fast. However, when overall usage is very high (for example, in late afternoon when all the kids are getting home from school and simultaneously logging on), I have sometimes found my connection slowing to a crawl. It’s not just the chess servers, web pages take forever to load too. All I can do is just log off and come back later. Sometimes, if I try logging in instead using an alternate ISP (I have a wireless laptop card from Verizon), the problem vanishes.”
— Hal Terrie
(http://www.uschess.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=20621&sid=70db42d2bdfc049f1cc046fd44d6b0a0)

Blame it on the “kids”!

I do not play chess on the internet and wonder why anyone would do so. But then, I also wondered why any fool would play poker on a website. If you play against other humans you can at least see them dealing from the bottom of the deck. (http://www.pokernews.com/news/2013/05/audio-tapes-expose-ultimate-bet-cheating-scandal-14986.htm)

I had a problem trying to listen to music from the Hearts of Space (https://www.hos.com/). When the music stopped a message appeared onscreen, “Your internet connection is too slow. You must be in the US, which means your 20th century low-speed internet, unlike the twenty-first century ultra high-speed connection in most other advanced countries, like Japan and South Korea, for example, runs circles around your antiquated, obsolete, low-speed internet, while you pay exponentially more for infinitely less service.” Or something like that…

I was talking with a gentleman from another country in a coffee shop just the other day as his frustration mounted. “I cannot believe how slow the internet is here! It takes me many minutes longer to do my work! In my country all I have to do is THINK about where I’m surfing next and the page will appear ten seconds BEFORE I realize that’s where I wanted to go!”
I told him to have another cuppa joe while he waited. “Good idea,” he said.

Casablanca gambling? I’m shocked!

Atlanta Kings Opening Night

If you have been a regular reader of either the BaconLOG or the Armchair Warrior you know I have had no interest in the USCL. I simply do not understand the rating cap. It makes no sense to have three GM’s and an Expert play as a team. Imagine the Atlanta Braves fielding a team of eight Major League Baseball players and one amateur. Strike that! The Braves do field a team like that, and have for two years now, with Blown Job Upton playing center field every day. Use another team, any team, as an example, and you get my drift…
I looked at the ‘starting lineup’ for the new Atlanta Kings yesterday and saw four strong players rated between 2382 and 2446 for the Kings. All four players are very good players, capable of beating any titled player on any given day, which is how it should be. These are the best players our team can field tonight. I decided to watch the games because I know three of the players, and have played two of them at the House of Pain. I went to the USCL homepage (http://uschessleague.com/) and looked in vain for the games. Next I went to the USCF homepage, and again came away empty. Since this is opening night, I found this strange, so I went back to the USCL website to look again. I found nothing. Then it occurred to me to go to the homepage of the Atlanta Kings (http://www.southeastchess.com/atlanta-kings.html). Once again I found nothing about where I could watch the games. This was terribly disconcerting. I did find this, “Updates available on our Facebook page.” I do not do the book with faces; never have and never will. Besides, who wants an update?
I did find that Grant Oen is the manager, with Leonardo Martinez the assistant manager, and Frank Johnson the TD. I was surprised to see that Thad Rogers is the “Overseeing general manager,” whatever that means. The Atlanta Braves could use one of those, I suppose. The one they have spent seventy-five million dollars to stick a black hole out in CF.
I scrolled on down to find:

Week 1: Carolina Cobras (CAR) vs Atlanta Kings​ (ATL)

Tuesday, August 26, 7:30pm – Press Release

1. IM Kassa Korley (CAR 2486) – Deepak Aaron (ATL 2446)

2. Damir Studen (ATL 2372) – IM Jonathan Schroer (CAR 2426)

3. Ilker Bozkurt (CAR 2383) – FM Kazim Gulamali (ATL 2397)

4. Richard Francisco (ATL 2382) – Kevin Mo (CAR 2334)

These teams are evenly matched! Now I was really lamenting the fact that I could not find the live games…Then I noticed the “Press Release” was underlined. Moving my cursor over it allowed me to click on, which I did, finding Frank Johnson’s blog (http://www.chess-coach.net/myblog). After reading this, “You can follow the games live on chessclub.com beginning at 7:30pm (EST) or you can visit the Emory Campus and watch the games live,” I knew the promised land had been found! So I clicked on and was extremely disappointed. The chessclub.com (http://www.chessclub.com/) is the Internet Chess Club, a pay site. Like a prescription drug company, the ICC offers to hook you with a “1-month FREE TRIAL!”
The interest I had in the USCL because my home city has a team is gone. Even though the big chess news tonight is the Kings, you will not read about it here.