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[ackack]

What's up with this guy?

Looking at the leaderboard 7 days ago, http://bggdl.square7.ch/leaderboard/leaderboard-2011-11-14.html, he's a level 20 with 488 games. Today, he's a level 50 (!!!) with 1224 games played. CouncilRoom shows 1 game in the past 10 days. I don't see any obvious candidates for nickname shifting to account for this. So what's going on?

added: Ah, I forgot the obvious hypothesis. CouncilRoom does not log games that are sufficiently short, correct? So it's very possible that somebody is dumping hundreds of games on turn 1 to this guy, which might count for TrueSkill but will not show up as CR logs.

[DStu]

When you look at the leaderboard at the other days, it seems like he went up the ladder day by day... Strange how this happend without playing, maybe CR-bug? But still strange...

[ackack]

Yeah, what originally caught my eye a few days ago was somebody showing up at level 40 having gone up +5 overnight despite already having a few hundred games in the bank. Sometimes you see accounts with very few games played up there, and that makes sense. But that scale jump was very suspcious for an account so established.

added: And clearly he's playing. The question is where are the games. Either there's dumping like I'm guessing so that CR scrubs the games out, or he's playing the actual games under a different name to hide them and then switching the account nickname back to Karumah at the end of the day.

[kn1tt3r]

Could this be some other player with a new nickname?

[ackack]

Could this be some other player with a new nickname?

I don't think they can take the Karumah name without the assistance of that original player agreeing to change.

[jonts26]

Karumah is playing a guy named Kretin over and over. It's the last player to play him thats recorded on council room. When you view Kretin's history, he has only the one game against Karumah, yet according to the leaderboard has 736 games under his belt. Additionally, if you compare yesterday's and today's leaderboards, Kretin and Karumah have both played exactly 200 games.

http://bggdl.square7.ch/leaderboard/leaderboard-2011-11-20.html

The question is, how is he doing it. I mean, I guess he could just have two instances of isotropic open with both names and just continually resign against himself but that seems pretty tedious. Maybe he created some sort of script to do it automatically. In which case, he should be using these powers for good. Like creating a big money bot or something.

[DStu]

I greped the logs from yesterday for his name

Code: [Select]

-014519-c0834b50.html
game-20111120-014529-abadd047.html
game-20111120-014539-0e7a66af.html
game-20111120-014547-28935a23.html
game-20111120-014556-08f953cb.html
game-20111120-014603-2d0573e7.html
game-20111120-014612-1a702e84.html
game-20111120-014619-83593cd8.html
game-20111120-014628-47c3d016.html
game-20111120-014637-cc6ff199.html
game-20111120-014645-ec514c3f.html
game-20111120-014654-cb95405b.html
game-20111120-014701-ec2d52fa.html
game-20111120-014709-a3391e34.html
game-20111120-014717-0ca6e476.html
game-20111120-014725-e24160f7.html
game-20111120-014734-253c38f5.html
game-20111120-014744-0404193e.html
game-20111120-014753-7f17bfd6.html
game-20111120-014801-8fcc392d.html
game-20111120-014810-757e29a2.html
Maybe CR parser was bored from this?

Code: [Select]

Game log

Turn order is Kretin and then Karumah.

(Kretin's first hand: 3 Coppers and 2 Estates.)
(Karumah's first hand: 3 Coppers and 2 Estates.)


— Kretin's turn 1 —
Kretin resigns from the game.

All but one player has resigned.
Karumah wins!
/ignore

modify: C&P of the 150 filenames somehow doesn't work, but there's not much value, they all seem to look the same (that's not exactly true, he started the day with playing 3 games solitaire)

[greatexpectations]

Karumah is playing a guy named Kretin over and over. It's the last player to play him thats recorded on council room. When you view Kretin's history, he has only the one game against Karumah, yet according to the leaderboard has 736 games under his belt. Additionally, if you compare yesterday's and today's leaderboards, Kretin and Karumah have both played exactly 200 games.

his jumps in games played every day match Kretin's jumps in games played each day too.

what actually intrigues me more is his jumps in level. his level jumped from 20 - 30 - 35 - 40 - 45 - 48 - 50. those first few seem to be too rounded to be coincidental to me, especially when the outlier of 48 was a number that *should* have been enough to get him to number one. maybe he did some research into how the rating system works as well.

[theory]

That might just be because the script plays X games per day, and now that Kretin is at the bottom of the leaderboard it's about the same gain for Karumah per game.

[greatexpectations]

That might just be because the script plays X games per day, and now that Kretin is at the bottom of the leaderboard it's about the same gain for Karumah per game.

possibly, but yesterday is the only day he played a round number.  his game totals working back to his starting point are: 200, 154, 192, 104, 48, 38. no real pattern to that set that i can see. it might be nothing, it just seemed too coincidental to me.

[ackack]

I think what impresses me most about this is that despite resigning ~700 games in a row, Kretin is not the lowest ranked player on the server. (Probably a clear winner if you sort by mean instead of by level, though.)

[rrenaud]

At least this is an area where paying for a service an improve the results.  It's clear that you do really need a manual referee clearing out this kind of shenanigans.

[Jorbles]

That might just be because the script plays X games per day, and now that Kretin is at the bottom of the leaderboard it's about the same gain for Karumah per game.

possibly, but yesterday is the only day he played a round number.  his game totals working back to his starting point are: 200, 154, 192, 104, 48, 38. no real pattern to that set that i can see. it might be nothing, it just seemed too coincidental to me.

He's probably just doing something like turning a bot script on and then turning a bot script off, which would account for the lack of patterns in his game totals.

[rspeer]

I think what impresses me most about this is that despite resigning ~700 games in a row, Kretin is not the lowest ranked player on the server. (Probably a clear winner if you sort by mean instead of by level, though.)

If it were like the CouncilRoom openings list, players whose skill range is strictly negative would be sorted by the top of their range instead of the bottom, in which case Kretin is certainly the lowest ranked. Not that that actually matters, though, because the only players with strictly negative skills would be Kretin and one other, and I'm now curious what silly shenanigans the other guy is pulling.

A strictly negative skill range is kind of like scoring 10% on a true-or-false test. It takes deliberate effort to perform that badly.

[DG]

I'm not too concerned that someone has found a way to beat the rankings. There are plenty of ways to do it and plenty of idiots who are proud of their false achievements. He even could have done it much better if he'd put some more thought into it.

I'd be more concerned that someone has set up some bot or script that can repeatedly play games on the server. Nobody wants to see the server flooded with phoney bot players. We can only hope that this guy has really wasted his time by setting up all these matches manually.

[Jorbles]

Is it possible for the code to be changed for something like if someone has forfeited over half their games and if they have played more than X games then any games they play will be excluded from the rankings? Or can administrators just manually bump people who are clearly gaming the rankings from the leaderboard on a case by case basis?

[painted_cow]

I also think, that it isnt too hard, to figure such players out in the leaderboard. Everyone who cares identifies such persons as soon as they got like +5 levels above level 35 or something like that. A quick check in his/her councilroom date often reveals what is going on. Imo it would be easy to erase such persons from the leaderboard. Then all their "work" was for nothing, or they can try to start over. :-)

[Tables]

For those who care, under the new rankings, Kretin is... well, the leaderboard speaks for itself. Not only is he dead bottom, but he's about level -29 to the next closest player's level -15.

[olneyce]

He's back!

[Asklepios]

What I don't understand is what the point is.

You don't get a feeling of skill and achievement, as you know you cheated.

You don't get the respect of your peers, because you never play your peers.

You don't get the satisfaction of having fooled the other players, because... well, because of threads like this.

So what's he doing it for?

[Young Nick]

His skill is over 67.5. Sweet Jesus, if he doesn't get kicked off the leaderboard soon, he will eclipse 50 in rank.

[GendoIkari]

What I don't understand is what the point is.

You don't get a feeling of skill and achievement, as you know you cheated.

You don't get the respect of your peers, because you never play your peers.

You don't get the satisfaction of having fooled the other players, because... well, because of threads like this.

So what's he doing it for?

Trolls gonna troll.

[Jorbles]

What I don't understand is what the point is.

You don't get a feeling of skill and achievement, as you know you cheated.

You don't get the respect of your peers, because you never play your peers.

You don't get the satisfaction of having fooled the other players, because... well, because of threads like this.

So what's he doing it for?

It might just be the satisfaction of gaming a system. He doesn't pop on the forums to troll or anything.

[Toskk]

Hmm.. why would Karumah be continuing to accumulate points, though? I mean, does a win against a level -27 really mean anything? Most rating systems have a point where a win against a vastly inferior opponent is effectively worthless..

[mischiefmaker]

You don't get a feeling of skill and achievement, as you know you cheated.

You don't get the respect of your peers, because you never play your peers.

You don't get the satisfaction of having fooled the other players, because... well, because of threads like this.

You might get the feeling of skill and achievement -- either because you feel accomplished in having successfully gamed the system, or because you don't care that you cheated to get the #1 spot. Some people like seeing their name in lights and they don't care how they got there.

You might get the respect of many people and the satisfaction of having fooled them as well, because the number of people who play on isotropic and check/care about the leaderboard is likely to be a superset of the people who post here, and not everyone who posts here checks every thread.

You might also not consider it cheating at all -- different people draw the line in different places.

[Insomniac]

Looking at council room he does have some real games

[Ozle]

Ohh, he is my new hero. I may offer to have his babies!

[Razzishi]

He could easily have other accounts that he has dump games to him; all it takes is a new email address to get someone with a starting skill.

Note that his variance is extremely high, as is fitting for someone who has only played against a few players and presumably hasn't lost.  The fatal flaw in the TrueSkill algorithm is the use of only two parameters to quantify the known information about the skill of a player so that nothing is known about the skewness (or the kurtosis, or whatever else) of the distribution of possible skill values given the data.  The best part of TrueSkill is that it's able to find good matches for people so that nearly everyone has a 50% win ratio; when people are able to pick weak opponents (instead of being forced to play those of similar rank) its utility declines.

It seems to me that if this sort of manipulation is possible, it's quite likely that if you win significantly more than 50% of your games, TrueSkill will overrate you.  Not knowing exactly what the formula looks like I couldn't say for sure, but recall that people had "problems" before with someone else who got very high on the ratings board playing only weak competition and declining games from high ranked players.

[olneyce]

Speaking of which, kyrmanakos.  This person is 38-2 against 'kyrman' and otherwise has basically a .500 record.  You'll notice that 'kyrman' manages to still be a level 22 despite that astonishing 2-38 record against kyrmanakos by playing reasonably well against everyone else.

Seems like a new approach - managing your sock puppet up to a decent level so your slew of victories against them count for a bunch more.

The result is the highest skill level on the board, but 13.8 variance, producing a Level 42.  So it's not even really that successful of a troll.

[shark_bait]

Speaking of which, kyrmanakos.  This person is 38-2 against 'kyrman' and otherwise has basically a .500 record.  You'll notice that 'kyrman' manages to still be a level 22 despite that astonishing 2-38 record against kyrmanakos by playing reasonably well against everyone else.

Seems like a new approach - managing your sock puppet up to a decent level so your slew of victories against them count for a bunch more.

The result is the highest skill level on the board, but 13.8 variance, producing a Level 42.  So it's not even really that successful of a troll.

I didn't even realize that.  I've been looking the board a lot lately because my alter ego Luckyfin has been creeping up to the top in terms of skill and I've have been rather disappointed that I was second these past few days.  I guess with kyrmanakos being a semi-troll, that makes me the highest legit skill on the board currently. 

[olneyce]

Speaking of which, kyrmanakos.  This person is 38-2 against 'kyrman' and otherwise has basically a .500 record.  You'll notice that 'kyrman' manages to still be a level 22 despite that astonishing 2-38 record against kyrmanakos by playing reasonably well against everyone else.

Seems like a new approach - managing your sock puppet up to a decent level so your slew of victories against them count for a bunch more.

The result is the highest skill level on the board, but 13.8 variance, producing a Level 42.  So it's not even really that successful of a troll.

I didn't even realize that.  I've been looking the board a lot lately because my alter ego Luckyfin has been creeping up to the top in terms of skill and I've have been rather disappointed that I was second these past few days.  I guess with kyrmanakos being a semi-troll, that makes me the highest legit skill on the board currently. 

Hilariously, this is not true because MY alter ego (The 9th Doctor) is actually slightly ahead of Luckyfin.  In fact, that's the reason I noticed this at all.

[shark_bait]

Speaking of which, kyrmanakos.  This person is 38-2 against 'kyrman' and otherwise has basically a .500 record.  You'll notice that 'kyrman' manages to still be a level 22 despite that astonishing 2-38 record against kyrmanakos by playing reasonably well against everyone else.

Seems like a new approach - managing your sock puppet up to a decent level so your slew of victories against them count for a bunch more.

The result is the highest skill level on the board, but 13.8 variance, producing a Level 42.  So it's not even really that successful of a troll.

I didn't even realize that.  I've been looking the board a lot lately because my alter ego Luckyfin has been creeping up to the top in terms of skill and I've have been rather disappointed that I was second these past few days.  I guess with kyrmanakos being a semi-troll, that makes me the highest legit skill on the board currently. 

Hilariously, this is not true because MY alter ego (The 9th Doctor) is actually slightly ahead of Luckyfin.  In fact, that's the reason I noticed this at all.

Hmm... I hadn't noticed you creeping up there too, but I did accomplish it a couple days ago.  And not having lost with Luckyfin since then I guess I just assumed no one had passed me.  Look's like I'll just have to find more time to play dominion 

[olneyce]

Speaking of which, kyrmanakos.  This person is 38-2 against 'kyrman' and otherwise has basically a .500 record.  You'll notice that 'kyrman' manages to still be a level 22 despite that astonishing 2-38 record against kyrmanakos by playing reasonably well against everyone else.

Seems like a new approach - managing your sock puppet up to a decent level so your slew of victories against them count for a bunch more.

The result is the highest skill level on the board, but 13.8 variance, producing a Level 42.  So it's not even really that successful of a troll.

I didn't even realize that.  I've been looking the board a lot lately because my alter ego Luckyfin has been creeping up to the top in terms of skill and I've have been rather disappointed that I was second these past few days.  I guess with kyrmanakos being a semi-troll, that makes me the highest legit skill on the board currently. 

Hilariously, this is not true because MY alter ego (The 9th Doctor) is actually slightly ahead of Luckyfin.  In fact, that's the reason I noticed this at all.

Hmm... I hadn't noticed you creeping up there too, but I did accomplish it a couple days ago.  And not having lost with Luckyfin since then I guess I just assumed no one had passed me.  Look's like I'll just have to find more time to play dominion 

Success!  The 9th Doctor is #1 at the skill element with 56.429.

All this really proves is that good players can bump up their skill by creating new accounts and erasing all their fumbling around from when they were new at the game.

[^_^_^_^]

I bet when everyone moves over to the new application being made by RRG the ranking will be much different but people that currently struggle to get above, say, level 36(you know who you are ), will probably have a much higher chance than before at rising to the top 5-10 people.

[ftl]

Why do you think so? I assume the ranking system used will be different so a direct comparison of numerical levels will make no sense, but I would expect relative rank to stay mostly unchanged - the same group of people at the top will stay at the top, and so on. Or do you think that the trueskill ranking works badly enough that a reset makes a big difference? Despite olneyce's comment about The 9th Doctor having a really high skill, his original account (olneyce) is level 43 and the new one is 45, not actually that big of a difference...

[WanderingWinder]

Why do you think so? I assume the ranking system used will be different so a direct comparison of numerical levels will make no sense, but I would expect relative rank to stay mostly unchanged - the same group of people at the top will stay at the top, and so on. Or do you think that the trueskill ranking works badly enough that a reset makes a big difference? Despite olneyce's comment about The 9th Doctor having a really high skill, his original account (olneyce) is level 43 and the new one is 45, not actually that big of a difference...

Yeah, but skill is your real rating. Level is... a novelty, basically.

[ftl]

Heh. I haven't been thinking of it like that - the level seemed to me to be a more reasonable estimate of how good you are, precisely because a rating system shouldn't be rewarding a player for its own uncertainty. Like, a new player who hasn't played any games at all starts out at a skill of 25, but that's not really a valid estimate, their level (0) is a much better indicator. I'd thought the level system works pretty well - at least, on this site I haven't heard grumblings about how people are under-ranked and should be much higher level, or how people are over-ranked and should have a much lower level (except for players gaming the system, which is a separate issue). Have I just not been paying attention?

[Young Nick]

The only reason that people in mid 30's or so would receive a slight bump is because there would now just be more players. Theoretically, with more players, there will be less experienced online players, so for at least a little bit, those of us with Isotropic experience will perform relatively better against new comp than we would otherwise.

[jonts26]

Heh. I haven't been thinking of it like that - the level seemed to me to be a more reasonable estimate of how good you are, precisely because a rating system shouldn't be rewarding a player for its own uncertainty. Like, a new player who hasn't played any games at all starts out at a skill of 25, but that's not really a valid estimate, their level (0) is a much better indicator. I'd thought the level system works pretty well - at least, on this site I haven't heard grumblings about how people are under-ranked and should be much higher level, or how people are over-ranked and should have a much lower level (except for players gaming the system, which is a separate issue). Have I just not been paying attention?

I would think that level is a better predictor for new players but once the player has a certain number of games played, mean skill would be better.

[Deadlock39]

I have no complaints, but since I have been playing less lately I have noticed that my level has sunk a few points from low 30s to high 20s.  I suspect this is because my variance has increased, but I highly doubt my actual skill has decreased in any significant way due to playing less games per week.

[lespeutere]

Like, a new player who hasn't played any games at all starts out at a skill of 25, but that's not really a valid estimate, their level (0) is a much better indicator.

Is it? Not everybody starts playing dominion on isotropic. I think level 0 suits our intuition but that's it. I'm neither speaking pro nor contra looking at levels or skills, I'm just questioning your statement. ;-)

[Davio]

I have no complaints, but since I have been playing less lately I have noticed that my level has sunk a few points from low 30s to high 20s.  I suspect this is because my variance has increased, but I highly doubt my actual skill has decreased in any significant way due to playing less games per week.

But other players may have gotten better?

Because this still is an evolving game I like the sliding window as it shows who masters the current theories and accepted strategies best. If we would have a non-moving leaderboard, the #1 could have only played 1000 games when Prosperity was the newest edition and he would sit there forever. With new expansions out, can we still consider him the best Dominion player ever? Of course not.

I like having a moving leaderboard to make players prove over and over that they still have got what it takes. There's still a lot of research to be done. Maybe the moving board could come to a halt one year after the last expansion once the dust has settled and the main strategies are well known.

[Deadlock39]

Of course, my level definitely could have gotten lower for many legitimate reasons, and I also don't care about it, which is why I said I have no complaints.  I was just stating that my level decreased, and I don't feel that my level of play has gone down.  I am still winning at about the rate I expect, and haven't changed behavior in what opponents that I play.  What I have done is started having periods of time where I don't play any games, and every time I come back from one of those, my level has dropped 1 or 2 ranks.  I have frequently gained one back if I play a lot of games in the day.  I haven't been explicitly looking at the leaderboard and my variance, but I am pretty confident my level would level back out at 30-32 where it was before if I started playing about every other day like I was before.

I think it is a good thing for a leaderboard, but I don't think the rate of level decay in the current system is an accurate gauge of actual skill loss from lack of play.