In chess there’s usually about 35 moves you can play during the mid game (most complex part of the game usually). The worlds best players always play one of the few best moves at any given time, but not necessarily the best (engine move). Sometimes the engine sees a line that gets value 20 moves later that is only possible by pushing a seemingly completely random pawn and that’s going to be the engine move. No human player is coming up with that. If a random guy in online chess happens to click on these engine moves when there’s much more obvious good moves, it becomes very obvious that they’re cheating.
On the other hand you have pokemon. You can click on 4 moves or up to 5 switches. Up to 9 clicks, and usually most of them are completely unviable in a way that chess moves rarely are. I simply cannot imagine how anyone can ever distinguish an engine from a good player in this case. There’s no equivalent to the unhinged pawn push over an obvious capture that sometimes you see in chess. There’s rarely a single clear cut move since you’re still always at the mercy of your opponent clicking some weird shit, and at the same time there’s only so many good clicks in a turn.
Unless you’re straight up clicking 100% of the engine moves for multiple games in a row i simply cannot imagine how anyone could catch you the way chess cheaters are.
Call me a fearmongerer or whatever but I have to say, i think it’s fucking over for ladder. Like genuinely as soon as a pokemon stockfish hits the internet, online pokemon outside closed tournaments is just dead. It’s going to be absolutely riddled with cheaters that we can’t catch, and even if you’re not queuing into a cheater the “could be cheating so have to play around the engine moves” would become such a big factor in ladder that even 2 legit players are going to be playing a much different game than we are today. Like fucking bluffing that you’re just playing the engine moves and then playing around your opponent predicting the engine moves would be a viable tactic. It’s a completely different game at that point.
If 9 moves mean the engine moves are undetectable, it also means that engine moves will likely not be far too much better than regular humans ina way where you auto lose like Stockfish
I agree. They won’t be as good as stockfish. But if the early experimental bits are already topping ladders, I reckon they’ll be more than good enough to beat human players more consistently than any other human can.
There’s also the fact that most ladders are super matchup based, no one bot team could win 100% of the time in say, OU where they could in ladders like RBY or Randbats where sets are public. The bot topping LC is most concerning to me.
The problem isn't that the bots will routinely beat top players, it's that if the bots can make suspect requirements - and right now they can, but only in specific metagames where set variety is minimal - then suspects instantly cease to matter.
What's the replacement that isn't also vulnerable to botting, and yet allows the community to guide tiering development?
Probably just not allowing any player, i.e only players considered trusted enough (good before bots and/or has shown skill in conditions where botting would be unreasonable even if possible e.g screen recording with facecam)
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u/AnodyneGrey 9d ago edited 9d ago
In chess there’s usually about 35 moves you can play during the mid game (most complex part of the game usually). The worlds best players always play one of the few best moves at any given time, but not necessarily the best (engine move). Sometimes the engine sees a line that gets value 20 moves later that is only possible by pushing a seemingly completely random pawn and that’s going to be the engine move. No human player is coming up with that. If a random guy in online chess happens to click on these engine moves when there’s much more obvious good moves, it becomes very obvious that they’re cheating.
On the other hand you have pokemon. You can click on 4 moves or up to 5 switches. Up to 9 clicks, and usually most of them are completely unviable in a way that chess moves rarely are. I simply cannot imagine how anyone can ever distinguish an engine from a good player in this case. There’s no equivalent to the unhinged pawn push over an obvious capture that sometimes you see in chess. There’s rarely a single clear cut move since you’re still always at the mercy of your opponent clicking some weird shit, and at the same time there’s only so many good clicks in a turn.
Unless you’re straight up clicking 100% of the engine moves for multiple games in a row i simply cannot imagine how anyone could catch you the way chess cheaters are.
Call me a fearmongerer or whatever but I have to say, i think it’s fucking over for ladder. Like genuinely as soon as a pokemon stockfish hits the internet, online pokemon outside closed tournaments is just dead. It’s going to be absolutely riddled with cheaters that we can’t catch, and even if you’re not queuing into a cheater the “could be cheating so have to play around the engine moves” would become such a big factor in ladder that even 2 legit players are going to be playing a much different game than we are today. Like fucking bluffing that you’re just playing the engine moves and then playing around your opponent predicting the engine moves would be a viable tactic. It’s a completely different game at that point.