Farewell

Learning about the fact that he had a previous account on chess.com banned for cheating changes the way I perceive this situation quite a lot. His response to getting banned was also weaker than I would've expected. I've been on his discord and he seems to have accepted what happened with relative ease, as if he had been awaiting it at some point.

None of this proves cheating, of course, and I will still give him the benefit of the doubt to some extent, but my previous comment about "losing faith in lichess' cheat detection system" might've been excessive. After all, someone that has already been banned from a competing website and subsequently banned from this one is more likely to have done something fishy than if this had been his first ban.

@RockDog100 said in #131:
> a competing website

he works for that website -

how on earth do you think a chess player, a seasoned full-stack developer, that codes for the top chess site in the world... gets flagged for engine-use? Seriously.

Put aside that the games in mention had nothing suspicious, put aside he's a streamer that has been demonstrating his skill for a decade live, put aside the completely unprofessional messaging and instant closing instead of the flag people usually get, put aside all that --- what logic are you seeing here?

As pepellou was a fairly high rated player who played loads, he must have played against a number of cheats along the way.

I wonder if they have analysed the games he played against other engine-users.

@JoannaTries said in #132:
> he works for that website -
>
> how on earth do you think a chess player, a seasoned full-stack developer, that codes for the top chess site in the world... gets flagged for engine-use? Seriously.

The marked chesscom account - is that someone else?

I will ask the mods is it at least possible to restore his account here (open it) even if it carries the mark.

At least then he will get access to his studies, which seemed to be an issue for him.

User-closed accounts can be reopened by following the instructions here: lichess.org/contact#help-account-reopen
If an account is closed as a result of some mod action, the matter and the request to reopen the account can be addressed via lichess.org/appeal

There are obviously situations when this wouldn't make sense to do, for example, account was closed for fraud, impersonation, ban evasion.
In cases of fair-play violations, like cheating, boosting/sandbagging, I personally don't see why this would be a problem. The Terms of Service violation mark would however remain and be visible to other users.

@JoannaTries
> how on earth do you think a chess player, a seasoned full-stack developer, that codes for the top chess site in the world... gets flagged for engine-use? Seriously.

It's very simple: he could've overestimated his abilities or failed to understand the full extent of the way cheat detection works on lichess. Do you really believe that being a strong chess player and a "seasoned full-stack developer" means that you'll be able to cheat without getting caught?

> Put aside that the games in mention had nothing suspicious, put aside he's a streamer that has been demonstrating his skill for a decade live, put aside the completely unprofessional messaging and instant closing instead of the flag people usually get, put aside all that --- what logic are you seeing here?

The logic of correlation. Most players, including those that play tens of thousands of games over the years, including those that occasionally beat GMs, never get banned from either website. This one got banned from both.

Again, I don't necessarily believe that he cheated. He still gets the benefit of the doubt to some degree. But I thought it would be fair to partially retract my previous absolute statement in terms of "losing faith in cheat detection on this website" after I learned more about the case.

@cashcow8
> I will ask the mods is it at least possible to restore his account here (open it) even if it carries the mark.
>
> At least then he will get access to his studies, which seemed to be an issue for him.

He got offered the chance to reopen his account so he could have direct access to whatever he needed, but he refused, saying that they had "made it clear that they don't want him on this website". Another reaction that I would consider a bit strange, but I suppose it's a matter of interpretation.

Indeed as a "full stack developer" he'd have the technical knowledge to create an innovative way to cheat, but I think what @JoannaTries means is why would he want to harm his reputation and get banned from his favourite site for the sake a few more wins.

However you'd have to ask the above to all such players.

Also as a technical expert, if he was trying to experiment "how long can I cheat by this method and get away with it" he wouldn't have done it on his main account, but would have created some fake second account, and used it on a different device with a different IP so it wasn't easily detectable who was really behind it.

I'm just not down for this ' guilty until proven innocent' motto -especially when there's no possibility to do so.

The same happened to me when I posted a bunch of blog articles here. I was treated as a plagiarizer. I had to provide my personal work portfolio/website to prove I was the writer.

It's tough to feel like you're in a good community like this. Being an everyday player that uses chess to socialize, it really sucks.

@JoannaTries said in #139:
> I'm just not down for this ' guilty until proven innocent' motto -especially when there's no possibility to do so.
>
> The same happened to me when I posted a bunch of blog articles here. I was treated as a plagiarizer. I had to provide my personal work portfolio/website to prove I was the writer.
>
> It's tough to feel like you're in a good community like this. Being an everyday player that uses chess to socialize, it really sucks.

You're exaggerating by a lot and you know it. You were never accused of anything,

What happened in that instance is that you were publishing to Lichess tenths of non chess related blogs (when the blog feature had just been released) with no apparent source (as I personally recall) and one of us reached out to you and started a very friendly and respectful conversation and you didn't seem bothered by it.

This person said they were happy you were enjoying this new feature so much but was wondering if you were the original author of all those blogs. You replied linking to your portfolio and this person thanked you. It ended there and took literally 10 minutes.