I don't see the problem if those players don't cheat. They simply login and play the tournament, their screenname doesn't influence their level of play.
And as far as I know there are no real important tournaments here (like for example the Titled Tuesday where there is a good sum of money at stake). So the highest award is your name on the website as a weekly/monthly winner of a tournament. But that honor simply goes to the player who wins the tournament. The name of a person can hardly be relevant, as long as they don't cheat.
And lichess has proven to deal pretty well with cheaters, so even that's not such a big problem in my opinion.
And to respond to the three bullet points you mentioned:
1) Good point, but I haven't really seen that happening too often.
2) If you want to win the tournament, you'll have to beat them all anyway. Besides, it's more fun to play stronger opponents than weaker opponents in my opinion.
3) Are you saying you prepare for your opponents in lichess tournaments? I can hardly believe that because you always seem to like to play the same openings everytime.
And yes, I do know people who target you because of your obsession with these kind of things. So I think a little change in mindset can work miracles.
Doesn't mean there might be a slightly stricter limit to just making new accounts like that, but I stick to my point that I don't really see the problem as long as they don't cheat and just behave properly.
Simplest would be to request FIDE ID when opening an account.
Those without FIDE ID can also open an account, but if these start to crush masters that would be suspicious on its own.
#11
I am curious why you posted this:
"3) Are you saying you prepare for your opponents in lichess tournaments? I can hardly believe that because you always seem to like to play the same openings everytime. "
Does it matter if I personally don't prepare against someone who created an account that day?! Does it somehow remove the importance of the issue if I personally prepare or not. I know a lot of serious FIDE rated players - and I am sure you do to, that take preparation for opponents very seriously for one day FIDE tournaments. I remember once someone just refusing to play against a substitute opponent because they had not prepared against him.
Maybe its not like an OTB FIDE tournament, but having some idea of opponents over the longer term puts people on a more "level playing field". There are also quite convenient analytics available on the site - the insights feature etc. But also some adaptive openings could be used sometimes against players who play in a certain way, etc.
So are you really suggesting, that it is okay for these players to create new accounts to be as anonymous as they can be - and play in the "important" (time investment needed) tournaments as far as the number of hours invested is concerned (not prize fund necessarily).
Are you really suggesting it is okay for strong FMs onwards to just create new accounts, be anonymous and essentially be playing on a non-level playing field against everyone else?! Come on - surely you don't think this is a "level playing field" ?!
Although I also am not quite sure how big of a problem this is, wouldn't a simpler fix be to raise the required number of games to participate even further, rather than adding a second criteria?
If the requirement was raised to 30 or 50 rated games, few people would create a new account just to annoy you. :-)
@tpr good point!
@TricksOnlyNL yes I agree! KC you really have to calm down with your anger against specific players you have something that doesnt suit you. Play for joy man, it´s still just a game!
Preparing for FIDE tournaments is quite standard, but that got nothing to do with the current subject, so I'm missing the point a bit.
I still don't see how a different name and an anonymous account changes all this. It's still the same player with the same level of play. Yes, he might know a few things about you that you don't know about him. But in chess (unlike poker for example), having such a 'read' on your opponent can't really be of big value.
And once again, there is nothing on the line in these tournaments. Yes, it can be a big time investment. But that can hardly be a problem if you're doing something fun?!
#16 especially when the games are 1min bullet or 3min superblitz :D
I guess in bullet with pre-move it is valuable to know the opponent.
I could also understand that a strong player testing out a new opening online wants to do that as anonymously as possible so as to keep the surprise effect.
This is a really nice theoretical debate and all. But I don't see anyone suggesting an adequate solution.
We do try and limit the amount of accounts an individual has and we have more than a few ways to find an individual's related accounts, but they have their limitations. It's completely unreasonable for us to enforce a hard limit on the amount of accounts in individual has.
Increasing the minimum amount of games played to join a tournament is a way to increase the hysteresis between creating new accounts and joining tournaments. But this is going to stop no one that intends to spam accounts. At some point we need to ask ourselves if we're inconveniencing the many for the sake of a few.
Asking for FIDE IDs is also not effective without proof of ID to go with it. We do ask people who we are suspicious of to prove their identity, but doing this for all players is unreasonable and many players (including myself) don't compete OTB.
Dear KC,
in my opinion, this kind of "paranoia" posts, more than anything else, makes people provoke you even more because they see how easily you get annoyed. My advice would be to stand above all of that "internet trickiness" that we can't stop, let's be honest. The only thing someone gets by "targeting" you, is your attention and your anger, so don't give it to them. After all, internet chess is nobody's profession and the only point is to have fun, so let's have it!
Cheers, Max
