How to Win: Cheat
Cheating in games requires us to bend or break the rules of the game. This allows the cheater to gain an advantage. One that otherwise would not have presented itself. Because of this advantage cheaters win whichever contest they are competing in, at least they should. Otherwise why would you cheat. But what happens when you get caught?
Sports
Major League sports are strict on cheating. There is a lot of money involved, from the stadiums, to the coaches, to the players, to the rest of the staff. Plus it is estimated that $200 Billion is bet on sports every year. When dealing with that much money and influence you want to prevent as much cheating as possible. Or at least that is what you would think.
Huston Astros
One of the biggest cheating scandals happened during the 2017/2018 Huston Astros season. They were caught for violating the rules of using technology to communicate that helped them advance through the regular and post season. They would record the opposing catchers hand signals to the pitcher live and send a distinct audible sound to the batter. The batter would recognize the sound and know what the next pitch was going to be. Thus helping them hit the ball, or know not to swing.
Stealing signs to get an insight on what the next pitch is going to be is not against the rules. It is known as type of art to steal signs. But the use of technology to aid your ability to steal signs is and frowned upon.
The Astros did exactly that with the use of a live camera in center field. The year they were accused and found guilty of cheating they won the World Series. They were not forced to revoke their championship win after they were found guilty. The Astros were fined and they also lost draft picks. But they still have their championship. But that’s the end goal, to win the championship not to win draft picks. And they cheated to get the win, and it wasn’t revoked. All that does is encourage more teams to cheat. It sends a signal to other teams that if you want to win, cheat.
Deflategate
Another huge cheating scandal is from Tom Brady and The Patriot. Delfategate, the deliberate deflation of the footballs during the 2014 AFC championship game. A deflated football makes it easier to grip, catch, and throw. This would help Tom throw the ball and his receivers to catch it. The deliberate deflation allowed Tom and The Patriots to lead their team to a victory over the Colts.
This would lead The Patriots back to the Super Bowl and win another championship. After the investigation of deflategate was complete Tom Brady and The Patriots were fined and suspended and lost draft picks. But they still keep their championship ring. Just like the Astros did.
So in both instances the teams cheated, they won their respective championship, and their punishment was insignificant, and they still keep their wins. Not exactly how you punish a cheater nor disincentives it. In fact, it can be argued that it encourages cheating. Because in the long run, all anyone will see is the number of rings you have, not the number of cheating scandals.
Chess Scandal
What about cheating in an entirely skill based game, like chess? How would that work? Well recently their was a scandal with Hans Nieman in which he is accused of cheating in an over the board chess match. It happened after he beat the current world chess champion Magnus Carlsen. Magnus in a subtle manner, after the game, accused Hans of cheating in their game with one another.
In part, it was because of the ‘unusually’ good moves Hans played combined with him looking distracted. Usually is in quotes because it is difficult to say what move is considered unusual. At any given time on the chess board there are a finite amount of moves that can be played. How do you determine which ones are good and which ones are unusual? It is difficult to say.
So how exactly do you cheat in chess? A Chess Engine. These engines are designed to generate all possible moves and then use variations of mini-max strategies to determine the best possible move on the chess board. So you first have someone watch your game live, and input the moves into a chess engine. When the engine generates the best move you have to then notify the player what move to make. If you do this you will guarantee yourself a win. No human can beat the current chess engines.
Why Cheating in Chess is Both Easy and Difficult to Catch
It is both very easy and yet very difficult to catch cheaters in chess. It all depends on the skill level of the player. If player has a low elo, a low skill level, then detecting cheating will be very easy. You look at past games, see how often their moves match up with the top engine move (this is, according to the computer, the best possible move on the board), and see if their game has a different percentage of top engine moves. If the percentage is greater than normal it is possible that the player cheated.
Low Elo
It is easy to tell will low elo players because they play the top engine move very rarely. Lets say like 50% of the time they play the best possible move. A game where the player cheats his top engine move percent goes up to like 95%. That is a stark difference in skill. Very easy to catch. They nearly double their accuracy (top engine move percentage) when the cheat.
You can also look at the types of moves they make. If in one game they blunder their queen, then the next game they make brilliant queen sacrifice into a forced mate in 10, there is a good chance they are cheating in the second game. This is simply because if you are good enough to see a complex mate in 10, they more than likely you would not miss a simple queen blunder.
Grand Masters
Grand Masters (GM) on the other hand are much more difficult. They have an accuracy rating of 95%-98% already. So if they were to cheat in a game their accuracy might not change one bit. The reason for this is because GMs know so much about the game that they nearly play at the level of a computer. Although like I said engines nowadays blow humans out of the water but I’m talking in relative terms.
In a game where a GM cheats he may only need the engine once during the whole game. And just that one move cheat will give them an enormous advantage. It gives him the advantage needed to win the endgame. Where the vast majority of GM level games go to. Detecting the one move in a game that was done with the help of an engine can be very difficult. But there is one way.
The Human Move
In chess there is the human move and the computer move. A computer move is the move that is generated using mathematical equations of the 64 squares. While the human move is the move that looks the best to humans. Not necessarily the best.
What this means is that a GM can be caught cheating by playing a move that not only is the computer move (which is hard to detect for cheating because of their high accuracy) but is also not the human move. Or the obvious looking move to be more descriptive.
Lets say there are only two possible good moves on the board, one is marginally better than the other and that would be the computer move. But the other move is much more human like move, almost everyone at any elo would see the human move and play it. At GM level chess you could be flagged for cheating if you play the computer move here. This is because the two moves are relatively equal, and you didn’t play the way a human would.
But even that isn’t cut an dry, GMs see around 15-20 moves ahead. The vast majority of people when they first start playing chess struggle to see 2 moves ahead. So to think a GM is cheating because “he didn’t play the human move” is crazy, they are significantly smarter than the average human. Like IQs of 160+, for reference the average human has an IQ of 100. An IQ of 160 is in the 99.997 percentile.
You Ain’t Cheating, You Ain’t Trying
As the cliché goes you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying. Cheating has been and always will be apart of luck and skill games. With the data and AI revolution we have become better at detecting cheating and the probability of cheating. But it isn’t perfect and I doubt it ever will be. But as long as companies like the MLB and NFL has menial punishments for cheating it will keep reoccurring year after year.