Slitherine

pantherboy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 5:28 am I'm in the camp of MikeC. Just allow instances of reloading to be included in the pop-up dialog at the start of your turn. Shift the onus onto the player to explain the reasoning. By having the info on whether a redownload occurred or not a player will be able to analyze the replay for the frequency of unusual event before beginning their turn. For example if it happens in the first turn or two then obviously it will have no impact on the game and lends weight to any excuse. But if it is at a critical juncture of the game and a number of outcomes go the way of the re-loader than it would not be unreasonable to be suspicious. In such a case I would support the position that a player whose opponent reloads at a point in the game that they feel may give an advantage will automatically be awarded a win if they request one. Yes it could of been due to one's daughter switching off the PC (happened once to me while watching youtube) but that is still no excuse for affording your opponent an advantage whether sort or not.

I am not opposed to players having that sort of information, but I think if they were to get it turn-by-turn then there would be a number of major arguments leading to abandoned matches. The tolerance and common sense of players towards excess downloads is not uniform. Some players will readily accept that the isolated extra download they can see in the chat box might have a legitimate reason and will ask their opponent for an explanation of it (they may have played that person over a number of years), while others will immediately assume the worst (especially if there is "form" between the two players) and accuse their opponent of cheating. Once that accusation is made you cannot really continue playing with the other person. This undoubtedly will happen if a turn-by-turn system is introduced and we will lose players (some of whom will be completely innocent) and have tournaments disrupted because of it.

The only option that I think that might work is if players get this download information at the end of a game. Then they can report it to the Technical forum, or Richard, or myself if it is a FOG2DL match, and we can take things from there. Slitherine will need to establish a clear procedure for reporting these incidents. At least there will be no in-game arguments that way and an investigation can be made to ascertain why these excess downloads occurred (by contacting the player and asking for an explanation). Clear cases of cheating will then lead to permanent expulsion from MP while borderline/not proven minor cases will lead to a caution ("yellow card") which will be recorded. A second such instance by that player will lead to permanent expulsion. And there definitely will be some borderline cases where zero-tolerance will not be appropriate. Once expelled there will be no second chances for any player.

MikeC_81 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:02 am
Without meaning to beat the dead horse, the issue isn't the size of the net it is that the holes in the net are too big so to speak in your analogy. They are so big that you could drive a truck through it before someone noticed. Anyone with a reasonable understanding of how computers, files, and servers work can easily understand how to cheat the system. The number of people they round up per report is irrelevant. They could dredge up the top 100 names if they want and it wouldn't help because as I keep saying, they don't have context. We have no idea what algorithm for this is although from Ian's comments one can reasonably infer that a player has an overall upload vs download ratio that must be maintained or it flags the system. This would explain Ian's comment that the system is better at catching chronic cheaters than sudden spikes since a spike style usage of save-scumming could retain a reasonable upload vs download ratio while savescumming in one game (a critical game where they are behind or even) while doing no save scumming in several other games (ie the ones where he is ahead or unimportant and thus has no need to savescum).

But the system as it is set up now did catch dkalenda. He was flagged and sent a warning PM. When he said he had a poor internet connection he was re-instated (a proper investigation should have been done then) and told any further excess downloads would result in a permanent ban. The consequence of this was that he lost lots of matches, surrendered others prematurely, and was bottom of the table in 2 out of the 3 sections he had entered. Even if he had not given himself away in that PM he may have decided to pack it in at the end of the season as his time as top player was over.

All that we actually know is that in 4 matches this season dkalenda's excess download count was 225, 99, 18 and 5. We don't know anything else. We know nothing definite about previous seasons, apart from some anecdotal reports from his opponents, and we don't know if he has received a warning before. You have suggested that he must have built up, over a period of time, to doing that many extra downloads, but that is only your surmise. There is no evidence. My understanding is that he worked as a tour guide in Venice, an industry that has been totally wrecked by Covid this year, so the bizarre numbers we are talking about now might equally be a recent development. We just don't know.

The problem right now is that since the details of the extent of dkalenda's cheating are now public, any reasonable person with said knowledge of how a computer can now target the automated checker's weaknesses with surgical precision. Want to cheat in the DL? Enter as many sections as possible, target the section you want to win, save scum that division within reason (ie not dkalenda's ridiculous levels), while playing all other sections without cheating to pump the system full of clean games to keep that upload vs download ratio below the level of scrutiny.

Ian doesn't want false positives, so the threshold must be set high so there is no way for his system to defeat a targetted attack on it like I just described.

Iain doesn't want a system where innocent players are sometimes accused of cheating because those advocating zero tolerance have won this particular argument. Your last sentence in bold type just doesn't hold up as far as I am concerned. Presumably you could write a code where the occasional single extra download by a player is ignored but repeated low level extra downloads by the same player is flagged along with the most obvious abuses. Then the player targeting a particular section will be caught, just as someone who is doing regular multiple excess downloads is.

Without player notification of reloads, we are in the dark. With player notifications, it shines a light and when enough light starts coalescing on a player, we ourselves can act as the policeman when Slitherine clearly doesn't have the manpower to do that. By all means, they should still tighten up their automated checker but without transparency, cheaters will continue to prosper especially now that we have so much more information on where the weakness of Slitherine's defences are.

See my previous reply to pantherboy. I am in favour of some form of player notification. End of the game report - yes; in-game turn-by-turn - no.

We are moving in the right direction. Let’s have some patience and see how it plays out. Vast majority of players are gentlemen and don’t cheat. Let’s keep that firmly in mind.

paulmcneil (Frankish 751-887 with Slav 500-832 allies) defeats harveylh (Avars 558-631) 44-17

harveylh (Frankish 751-887 with Slav 500-832 allies) defeats paulmcneil (Avars 558-631) 44-12

As my gracious opponent said to me the difference was two rallies in our mirror image matches. His win over me was as well played as my win. Good games.

Score 1-1. harveylh wins on tie-breaker 32-27.

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:52 am

MikeC_81 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:02 am
Without meaning to beat the dead horse, the issue isn't the size of the net it is that the holes in the net are too big so to speak in your analogy. They are so big that you could drive a truck through it before someone noticed. Anyone with a reasonable understanding of how computers, files, and servers work can easily understand how to cheat the system. The number of people they round up per report is irrelevant. They could dredge up the top 100 names if they want and it wouldn't help because as I keep saying, they don't have context. We have no idea what algorithm for this is although from Ian's comments one can reasonably infer that a player has an overall upload vs download ratio that must be maintained or it flags the system. This would explain Ian's comment that the system is better at catching chronic cheaters than sudden spikes since a spike style usage of save-scumming could retain a reasonable upload vs download ratio while savescumming in one game (a critical game where they are behind or even) while doing no save scumming in several other games (ie the ones where he is ahead or unimportant and thus has no need to savescum).

But the system as it is set up now did catch dkalenda. He was flagged and sent a warning PM. When he said he had a poor internet connection he was re-instated (a proper investigation should have been done then) and told any further excess downloads would result in a permanent ban. The consequence of this was that he lost lots of matches, surrendered others prematurely, and was bottom of the table in 2 out of the 3 sections he had entered. Even if he had not given himself away in that PM he may have decided to pack it in at the end of the season as his time as top player was over.

All that we actually know is that in 4 matches this season dkalenda's excess download count was 225, 99, 18 and 5. We don't know anything else. We know nothing definite about previous seasons, apart from some anecdotal reports from his opponents, and we don't know if he has received a warning before. You have suggested that he must have built up, over a period of time, to doing that many extra downloads, but that is only your surmise. There is no evidence. My understanding is that he worked as a tour guide in Venice, an industry that has been totally wrecked by Covid this year, so the bizarre numbers we are talking about now might equally be a recent development. We just don't know.

Our brains offer us the marvelous power of inference and logical deduction Pete. The best predictor of future action is past action and vice versa. It is unlikely that dkalenda started cheating recently. The power of inference and logical deduction allows us to see that the excessive download counts that run up to 225 before being flagged means that tolerances are massively high. Ian's statement about their system's inability to catch spike rate cheating allows us to infer the mechanics by which they are looking at. Ian's statement about it being a manpower issue allows us to infer that they don't look through the data on a game by game level to determine spike usage so they must have some overall upload vs download metric that has to be tripped. The fact that it took 225 downloads in a single game to trip the system is exceptionally telling.

The problem right now is that since the details of the extent of dkalenda's cheating are now public, any reasonable person with said knowledge of how a computer can now target the automated checker's weaknesses with surgical precision. Want to cheat in the DL? Enter as many sections as possible, target the section you want to win, save scum that division within reason (ie not dkalenda's ridiculous levels), while playing all other sections without cheating to pump the system full of clean games to keep that upload vs download ratio below the level of scrutiny.

There is no reason right now to bend over backward to assume the best here. If dkalenda got busted for cheating and it turned out that he got caught after like 10 reloads, I wouldn't be nearly as adamant about having a turn by turn notification system. But we have instead a case of an insane abuse of the system followed by multiple posts from a Slitherine employee who is effectively trying to sweep this under the rug with the thinly veiled excuse of false positives. If this MP community does get torn apart because a single reload in an innocuous turn results in everyone accusing everyone else, then yes this community is filled with people who can't deal with context and the community deserves to die anyway.

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:52 am Ian doesn't want false positives, so the threshold must be set high so there is no way for his system to defeat a targetted attack on it like I just described.

Iain doesn't want a system where innocent players are sometimes accused of cheating because those advocating zero tolerance have won this particular argument. Your last sentence in bold type just doesn't hold up as far as I am concerned. Presumably you could write a code where the occasional single extra download by a player is ignored but repeated low level extra downloads by the same player is flagged along with the most obvious abuses. Then the player targeting a particular section will be caught, just as someone who is doing regular multiple excess downloads is.

You just don't get it. Such a system must continue to use some sort of threshold that is hard coded. They have repeatedly said they don't have manpower to look into and investigate particular cases. This system must also protect those with "weak" internet connections. These three facts state that there will be tolerance in the system for a systemic cheater as long as they are disciplined. Again, this is not something I cooked up on the spot. I knew how to cheat and how to likely get away with it on a continuous level from the first time I booted MP in this game. My only error was the assumptions that the tolerances were very low and that Slitherine would peak in. They have publicly indicated that they don't have the manpower to peak in (Ian's words) and we know how far a player has to go before they get caught (225, 99, etc etc). I was willing to live with a potential cheater getting 1 or 2 turns reloading on me. I am not willing to live with a system that allows for a cheater to get dozens of turns on me in a game.

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:52 am

Without player notification of reloads, we are in the dark. With player notifications, it shines a light and when enough light starts coalescing on a player, we ourselves can act as the policeman when Slitherine clearly doesn't have the manpower to do that. By all means, they should still tighten up their automated checker but without transparency, cheaters will continue to prosper especially now that we have so much more information on where the weakness of Slitherine's defences are.

See my previous reply to pantherboy. I am in favour of some form of player notification. End of the game report - yes; in-game turn-by-turn - no.

This is the most confusing and nonsensical stance of all. What better way to generate paranoia than to let players know reloads happen but not know when it happened within a game? What if the reload happened when it was a turn with no RNG sequences but RNG produced crazy results in favour of the reloader in a turn that they didn't have to reload? With a turn by turn notification, suspicion would only be raised when both a technical anomoaly results in a player having to reload *AND* crazy RNG happens.

SLancaster wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:00 am We are moving in the right direction. Let’s have some patience and see how it plays out. Vast majority of players are gentlemen and don’t cheat. Let’s keep that firmly in mind.

You know this how? How do you know I haven't been cheating. I had an insane 8-1 run with Zealots one time. How do you know Pantherboy hasn't been cheating? Or Nosyrat? Blind faith?

MikeC_81 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 1:35 pm Our brains offer us the marvelous power of inference and logical deduction Pete. The best predictor of future action is past action and vice versa. It is unlikely that dkalenda started cheating recently. The power of inference and logical deduction allows us to see that the excessive download counts that run up to 225 before being flagged means that tolerances are massively high. Ian's statement about their system's inability to catch spike rate cheating allows us to infer the mechanics by which they are looking at. Ian's statement about it being a manpower issue allows us to infer that they don't look through the data on a game by game level to determine spike usage so they must have some overall upload vs download metric that has to be tripped. The fact that it took 225 downloads in a single game to trip the system is exceptionally telling.

Yes, I think it more likely than not that dkalenda started cheating before this season, but I cannot prove it. If Slitherine could tell me if he had been warned before then I would feel rather more certain about it. But either they cannot tell me this because they do not know, or they wish to keep certain things confidential. I am fine with that, actually. They are in the games business, I am just a punter.

But again you are making assumptions. How do you know it was the 225 excess downloads that triggered the system? Perhaps it was the 5, or the 18, or the 99? Or maybe it was all of them together? So your argument in the paragraph above is very weak. You have no evidence for "knowing" that 225 is the tripping point.

You just don't get it. Such a system must continue to use some sort of threshold that is hard coded. They have repeatedly said they don't have manpower to look into and investigate particular cases. This system must also protect those with "weak" internet connections. These three facts state that there will be tolerance in the system for a systemic cheater as long as they are disciplined. Again, this is not something I cooked up on the spot. I knew how to cheat and how to likely get away with it on a continuous level from the first time I booted MP in this game. My only error was the assumptions that the tolerances were very low and that Slitherine would peak in. They have publicly indicated that they don't have the manpower to peak in (Ian's words) and we know how far a player has to go before they get caught (225, 99, etc etc). I was willing to live with a potential cheater getting 1 or 2 turns reloading on me. I am not willing to live with a system that allows for a cheater to get dozens of turns on me in a game.

Yes, I do get it. But I get it differently to you. I don't think we are going to find out the detail of exactly how the system was working before. The technical side of it might not be too bad actually, as it did flag up dkalenda, but it seems to be the human component of the process where the problem really was. Obviously Slitherine cannot employ people to observe what happens on the server all day, so the technological upgrade has to take up that deficit so that whatever system we have in future it is a substantial improvement on what we have now. I am not expecting perfection though, and I accept there will still be some grey areas, but I imagine it should be possible to differentiate between a player who has an isolated excess download and players who are either "judiciously" save-scumming on a more regular basis, or not even trying to be discreet at all.

This is the most confusing and nonsensical stance of all. What better way to generate paranoia than to let players know reloads happen but not know when it happened within a game? What if the reload happened when it was a turn with no RNG sequences but RNG produced crazy results in favour of the reloader in a turn that they didn't have to reload? With a turn by turn notification, suspicion would only be raised when both a technical anomoaly results in a player having to reload *AND* crazy RNG happens.

It is not nonsensical at all. I have to say though that if a player is feeling "paranoid" about being cheated during multi-player then it really is better that they stop playing in this tournament. Paranoid players will certainly not be welcome in the FOG2DL in future because, as far as I am concerned, players entering the FOG2DL are overwhelmingly honest and I am not going to tolerate anyone being subjected to false accusations. I would rather stop the tournament altogether than let this happen on a regular basis.

But if a player experiences a situation where his opponent has been flagged for excess downloads then I agree they should be given the full picture after the game has finished. It just will not happen in-game because some players reading in the chat box that their opponent has made an excess download in the last turn will automatically assume they are being cheated. I can guarantee it. From a tournament organisers' point of view I just ask myself, "What range of behaviours is such a system likely to produce?" and the answer is not a very pleasant one in a minority of cases. I cannot think of anything more likely to cause someone to withdraw from a tournament when they have had to put up with some paranoid silly-arse incorrectly accusing them of cheating without any real evidence.

So, if the excess reload count is shown at the end of a game and it has a discrepancy then the player with the possible grievance could take it up then. If it is a FOG2DL game they could contact me in the first instance. I would talk to the other player and then pass it up to Richard. Richard could then liaise with Slitherine in exactly the same way we dealt with dkalenda this time. Unless, of course, Slitherine have a better system for dealing with it in future. I was given the following details of the 99 excess re-loads match during the course of the investigation into dkalenda . . .

Excess downloads per turn were as follows:
Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 13
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 11
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 13
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 22
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 36 !!

So this sort of information is already generated by the system and could be made available to both players during the course of the investigation (provided Slitherine agree that it should be). If we do it along these sort of lines then you will avoid most in-game bust-ups, but the system will still be accountable to the playing community. A player who is shown, say, to have excess downloads in each of their first 3 matches is not going to survive in the tournament. Which, of course, is the whole point of the system.

You know this how? How do you know I haven't been cheating. I had an insane 8-1 run with Zealots one time. How do you know Pantherboy hasn't been cheating? Or Nosyrat? Blind faith?

These are the wrong questions. They are the questions of a paranoiac. The correct questions are - "How do you know pantherboy is a cheat? Or Nosy_Rat? Or MikeC_81? Because if you don't have any hard evidence to show me, stop wasting my time." The assumption in your question is that the player could be a cheat, in mine the assumption is that they are innocent.

In a thrilling final against paulmcneil where both players won one match each, harveylh narrowly prevailed on the tie-breaker 32-27 to win the (Avar) Themed Event. Well played harveylh.

MikeC_81 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 1:35 pm
Our brains offer us the marvelous power of inference and logical deduction Pete. The best predictor of future action is past action and vice versa. It is unlikely that dkalenda started cheating recently. The power of inference and logical deduction allows us to see that the excessive download counts that run up to 225 before being flagged means that tolerances are massively high. Ian's statement about their system's inability to catch spike rate cheating allows us to infer the mechanics by which they are looking at. Ian's statement about it being a manpower issue allows us to infer that they don't look through the data on a game by game level to determine spike usage so they must have some overall upload vs download metric that has to be tripped. The fact that it took 225 downloads in a single game to trip the system is exceptionally telling.

The process you're referring to is called 'inducton'. It is complemetry to, but different from, deduction. Induction is incredibly useful and we use it all the time, even when we don't realise we're using it. It is not, though, the best predictor of future events as you assert. In fact, it is condsiderably weaker than deduction.

Induction relies on a whole host of assumptions that are not proven, and so any conclusion you draw from it (eg Dkelenda was caught cheating this time and so therefore he must have been cheating before) is based, not on logic, but on your world-view, your assumptions about human-nature, and guilt/innocence, and many other things.

You are entitled to those assumptions; you are entittled to the conclusions you draw from them - you are not entitle to assert they have any merit.


Best Wishe

Mike

This topic has been active for a week now, surely that is enough time for slitherine to establish if anyone else has been cheating.

harveylh wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 11:46 am paulmcneil (Frankish 751-887 with Slav 500-832 allies) defeats harveylh (Avars 558-631) 44-17

harveylh (Frankish 751-887 with Slav 500-832 allies) defeats paulmcneil (Avars 558-631) 44-12

As my gracious opponent said to me the difference was two rallies in our mirror image matches. His win over me was as well played as my win. Good games.

Score 1-1. harveylh wins on tie-breaker 32-27.

Great pair of games Harvey. Very evenly matched. I think we can conclude that Franks are a better bet than Avars. Well played.

I'd be happy with banning reloads in DL and tournament games altogether. I guess people on a half duplex line via a manual phone exchange in the Congo may not be.

Congratulations Harvey. And commiserations to his opponent, Paul, who seems to have put up an excellent contest.

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:46 pm I was given the following details of the 99 excess re-loads match during the course of the investigation into dkalenda . . .

Excess downloads per turn were as follows:
Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 13
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 11
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 13
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 22
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 36 !!

If we could get and publish the reload data for all of the games played in division A this season, would that tamp down on the paranoia and suspicion of cheating(at least temporarily)?

Do you guys really believe cheating in FoG2 MP is common at all? Can be only a few players at most, I'd think. I mean, as someone else wrote above, it's not the Champion's League (not even DL is, sorry Pete! ), so the vast majority of us play for fun, right, and no money is involved (or is there a betting market? ), etc. And I agree that it shouldn't really be possible to cheat, but then that should be achieved through a technical improvement and solution, not through us players supervising each other. I have been around this forum very shortly, but I intend to continue assuming that my opponent/fellow players accept the RNG outcomes (even though they may, like I do, curse when it's to my disadvantage, and cheer when I'm lucky. Overall, it evens out, if not within a game then at least between games, that's my view.)

So give Slitherine some time to develop (and maybe present too) a solution, and then not only within the DL sub-forum, please.

kronenblatt wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 5:01 pm Do you guys really believe cheating in FoG2 MP is common at all? Can be only a few players at most, I'd think. I mean, as someone else wrote above, it's not the Champion's League (not even DL is, sorry Pete! ), so the vast majority of us play for fun, right, and no money is involved (or is there a betting market? ), etc. And I agree that it shouldn't really be possible to cheat, but then that should be achieved through a technical improvement and solution, not through us players supervising each other. I have been around this forum very shortly, but I intend to continue assuming that my opponent/fellow players accept the RNG outcomes (even though they may, like I do, curse when it's to my disadvantage, and cheer when I'm lucky. Overall, it evens out, if not within a game then at least between games, that's my view.)

So give Slitherine some time to develop (and maybe present too) a solution, and then not only within the DL sub-forum, please.

No, I don't think it is common at all. I will try and find out from Slitherine next week if they have any more stats to give us, but I am certain their main focus now is to improve things in the future rather than conduct an inquisition into the past. The really good thing is that they have quickly accepted it is time for a security upgrade.

I would second all options for additional information right now. Any data we can get on current reloads would be reassuring or at least would offer clarification.

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:59 pm

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:46 pm I was given the following details of the 99 excess re-loads match during the course of the investigation into dkalenda . . .

Excess downloads per turn were as follows:
Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 13
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 11
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 13
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 22
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 36 !!

If we could get and publish the reload data for all of the games played in division A this season, would that tamp down on the paranoia and suspicion of cheating(at least temporarily)?

I don't think for one minute Slitherine will be prepared to do that and, quite frankly, I think it would be a complete waste of time, because once you had taken dkalenda's games out then nearly all the others would be exactly the same showing no anomalies at all.

But consider another report, this time completely hypothetical, where a player has been flagged for 4 excess downloads in a game. All the zero tolerance people will be jumping up and down demanding that the player should be expelled, it's completely unacceptable blah, blah, blah etc , but the pattern of excess downloads is as follows . . .

Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 0
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 0
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 0
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 0
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 0[/i]

And when asked about them (without actually seeing the pattern we have) the player says something like, "my internet was bad the evening I started the game" or "there was a big thunderstorm when I started the game". What does the pattern of excess downloads actually show? It shows that were no excess downloads at the most important stages of the battle and that the explanation given for the early excess downloads is almost certainly a completely honest one. I would not want to expel a player on this basis, I would not even vote to give him a "yellow card" on our adjudicator's panel. Instead I would want to just give a verbal caution saying they had been flagged by the system for excess downloads; would they please try and avoid playing if climatic conditions are really bad; and please let me know if any other player is giving you a hard time about this so that I can put a stop to it.

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 5:58 pm

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:59 pm

stockwellpete wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:46 pm I was given the following details of the 99 excess re-loads match during the course of the investigation into dkalenda . . .

Excess downloads per turn were as follows:
Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 13
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 11
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 13
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 22
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 36 !!

If we could get and publish the reload data for all of the games played in division A this season, would that tamp down on the paranoia and suspicion of cheating(at least temporarily)?

I don't think for one minute Slitherine will be prepared to do that and, quite frankly, I think it would be a complete waste of time, because once you had taken dkalenda's games out then nearly all the others would be exactly the same showing no anomalies at all.

But consider another report, this time completely hypothetical, where a player has been flagged for 4 excess downloads in a game. All the zero tolerance people will be jumping up and down demanding that the player should be expelled, it's completely unacceptable blah, blah, blah etc , but the pattern of excess downloads is as follows . . .

Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 0
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 0
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 0
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 0
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 0[/i]

And when asked about them (without actually seeing the pattern we have) the player says something like, "my internet was bad the evening I started the game" or "there was a big thunderstorm when I started the game". What does the pattern of excess downloads actually show? It shows that were no excess downloads at the most important stages of the battle and that the explanation given for the early excess downloads is almost certainly a completely honest one. I would not want to expel a player on this basis, I would not even vote to give him a "yellow card" on our adjudicator's panel. Instead I would want to just give a verbal caution saying they had been flagged by the system for excess downloads; would they please try and avoid playing if climatic conditions are really bad; and please let me know if any other player is giving you a hard time about this so that I can put a stop to it.

I'm absolutely with Pete on this.


Best Wshes

Mike

Congrats on your victory Mr Camel Thief!

Challenge1 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 31, 2020 7:10 am Thanks for the kind words and to all my opponents for the interesting and challenging matches! We all know Arab Conquest to be a strong army list which definitely helped a lot!

Ehm, Div B.... Norwich or Sheffield Utd!?

Iain

More importantly will it be Arsenal tomorrow?