Ok, here is a topic that is not too popular. It is the subject of cheating by the pros. We all know the incident where if you just use paper rock scissor at the beginning of the game, the loser quits, and the winner gets points. If you do this often enough and long enough, you get a high rank because you gain more points winning than losing. So even if it is 50/50, you will start ranking faster than if you win some and lose some with each game lasting over 20 minutes. In this case, you can end a game within 2 or 3 minutes if the partner agrees to do it. Multiply by the number of games and you can get over 10 games of points rather than just 1 game of points in the same period of time. The second type of cheating is the problem blizzard started when they starting using central servers. Now if you are losing, all you need to do is to check the ip address of the player you are playing with and do a DDOS attack on his computer when you are losing. In the end that forces that player's network to crash, and he gets kicked out of the game because of non-response, and you gain points for winning because his essentially quit. Hypothetically, you can just send a large number of packets to the port that his SC2 game is using. Preferably from another computer on another network, so that it doesn't end up crashing your game too. I can see it now. A pro signaling his friend on another computer on another network (who may be watching the game live), and his friend ends up overloading the ip port of the victim the pro is playing with. I think the GSL in korea uses the same connection to the blizzard server, and it is easy to do the packet spam by tracking connections. Hope the competitions allows a local server (rather than through the internet), or this will because a major problem. The third type of cheating is where pros team up with gamblers. The gamblers will essentially start influencing the outcome of the games. For example. Lets say that the overall pool prize of the GSL or other games is $100,000. Lots of gamblers will make bets on these games (discretely), and what the organizer of the gamblers will do is offer the pro player $200,000 if he just loses the game. The organizer will simply take bets from about lots of gamblers betting $100-$10000 (not uncommon I think). In the end he makes a profit, because it may be 5-1 that he wins, and if you factor in the odds that the number of people will bet that 5-1, he ends up making double or triple the $200,000 that he gives away to get the guy to lose. The pro playing will calculate this in his head: I win the game I get maybe 30K. If I lose, I get $200K. Soon, it becomes more profitable to simply lose the game. Now factor in 1million payback if he loses a game, and an organizer who take bets from the whole country. The pro will probably not make more than 1 million in his whole gaming history, but if he just dumps one game, he win enough to retire. This is why sometimes you will see odd games where a good player loses a match on odd circumstances. Like when for example, the protoss usually make sentries to block, but instead make none until it is too late. Or making carriers battlecruisers or units that no one usually makes in the middle of a big game. The fourth type of cheating is where the organizers of the bets also influence the people organizing the event. How this works is that when the pro player is supposed to lose or win, and the other guy he is playing with is too good or is not playing along. In this case, the organizer needs to reset the game so the current game is not played out to the wrong way that the bets were supposed to go. To reset the game (thus start over), the organizer will signal an ally of the event, and that person will shut the power in a circuit somewhere, and the whole game will end. Blame will be put on the hardware malfunction. Sometimes, the organizer has influence over the judges, and they will pause the game, and blame will be put on the keyboard, or monitor, or earpieces or whatever. The fifth type of cheating is through the earpieces. Sometimes pros will wear a earpiece and over that another big earpiece. The inner one has communication from a friendly ally who is in the audience or is watching the game and is one of the judges. This ally will signal via the inner earpiece about the game, so basically the pro can know ahead of time what to build or where to move to counter units. The sixth type of cheating is through drugs. The pro will digest some drugs that will make him think faster and time slows down. Sometimes the pros will usually be absent before or after the game, or their eyes or facial composure seems different. It is similar to why some druggies wear dark glasses because it affects their sensitivities. The seventh type of cheating is to run a background process that helps you with your build. For example, a background process can every now and then make a drone, marine, or after a new unit is made, automatically place it within a certain hotkey for easy access. Sometimes a sophisticated background process can actually read the packets from the other player and basically provide cues as to what units or placing of buildings are in the game. The eighth type of cheating is regular game cheating. In this case, you take advantage of bugs in the game itself. This is sometimes allowed if it is new, but sometimes, it never gets patched if you keep it a secret. Lastly, here is a legal cheat: Hatchery rush. If done right, can't be stopped! http://www.edepot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5014
Sadly, you could say that this could happen in any form of competition (I'm referring to the bookies "cheating"). We just have to have faith that all games are legitimate. Life would suck if we were skeptical all the time. Lastly, you couldn't possibly play that "coin-flip cheat." You don't see people on the ladder enough. 20% of your server is in your division. That's a lot of players, and to say "Bro lemme win and I'll get you back next time." What would you say if someone asked you that? Good discussion possibilities here
Moved and monitoring. I'm not sure what edepot's intentions are with this post since this is just a list with no arguments or proposals. Also I didn't get the first paragraph at all, and the link at the end has been posted elsewhere on these forums, so the post is a bit suspicious of advertising for more page views? I'm not sure. Also it's a copy-paste which can be found at sc2armory as well as the official forums.
