Let me warn you before I begin, this is the one page where I will mention
player's names. Why you say? Well, because I can!!!
And... because I am NOT besmirching any innocent person's name.
First, lets define cheating.
You are cheating on the zone if you, in anyway, raise your ratings
with points that you did not earn from a game you played on the zone.
This means you are not cheating if :
You play and win a game in a non-rated room, and "post"
the game in the rated room, under the same name and for the same or
fewer points provided you have agreed to this condition prior to the
beginning of the match.
You play a bunch of games to kick an incomplete and you keep
your ratings at the same number or lower.
You play games in a non-rated room! (Don't laugh, I
read one of the postings here where a poster insisted that playing
in a non-rated room was cheating!)
You choose the length of the match, or who you play by any
measure such as ratings or ranking.
BUT it does mean you are cheating if
You post a game under a name different than the one agreed
upon when the unrated game began.
You play in place of someone else under their nick in a rated,
to-be-posted, or tournament game.
You play a game in the real world, and then post the results
on the zone.
You post a game, that increases your rating, that you did
not honestly play on the Zone. Example - you take an automatic
resign from someone else who is "giving away" or "donating"
points.
So, what's so bad about cheating? They rob a legitimitate player
from their rightful ranking. In fact, I can look at the top 25 ranking
backgammon players on the zone and, conservatively, say that at least
5 of them have cheated to get to their position.
In particular, there are several things that really get me going.
There is one player, REDTUB, who shouldn't
even be alowed in the Zone. He was caught by both a sysop and ZRatings
himself using a little-known bug in the Zone software to cause his opponent
to be awarded a loss, and awarded himself a win without completing a single
move! WHY IN THE WORLD is he even there? Especially since two
of his predecessors, RIPOFF and SIGNOFF, were removed for that very reason.
Also, there are players who actively play
two different accounts in the top 25. My personal opinion is that they
are subverting the ratings, and thus "de facto" cheating. The
ratings are supposed to rank the best players against each other. How
can you fairly rank the same player twice?
Finally, let me say this. It is everyone's responsibility to report cheating.
This means cheating that they know to be true, not innuendoes to discredit
people you don't like. Not "Oh, he won a game and posted to one of
his other names...", or "His win ratio is much higher than mine
- he must be cheating!", I mean real cheating, gaining points for
games he did not play. If we don't identify the cheaters and expose
them, then we have no right to complain about them.
Any comments or disagreements? Post them to my forum.
