Othello news

WOF policy on artificial assistance during online tournaments

6 July 2021
Written by W.O.F. Head council

WOF policy on artificial assistance during online tournaments

The lack of over the board tournaments that have been possible during the pandemic has accelerated the needs for the international Othello community to have a suitable online platform for playing both individual and team tournaments. We have made great progress in this area working with Vint.ee to create a WOF tournament site with more updates in the pipeline.

The test tournament through April has been well attended, enjoyable and competitive.

The WOF has a zero-tolerance approach to the use of programs to gain an unfair advantage in all its tournaments. This is, obviously, equally important for online tournaments where the ease of being discrete makes the temptation much greater. Therefore, as part of the development plans for a trusted online tournament platform, the WOF is implementing a system to analyse games after WOF online rated tournaments. The system will flag up names where there are unusual patterns over time so that there can be further investigation. The following should be remembered:

·       The overall intention is to liberate tournament participants from having to worry about opponents’ potential unfair advantage. The WOF will take this responsibility.

·       The WOF will follow up (discretely) with every player where unusual patterns arise. This is not an automatic accusation of wrong-doing; the purpose is to investigate but with the assumption of innocence. So, if anyone is approached (and hasn’t been gaining an unfair advantage), it should be considered as the WOF and the players working confidentially together to maintain the confidence in the integrity of WOF online tournaments.

·       If it becomes apparent beyond statistical reasonable doubt that a player is using a program to gain an unfair advantage, they will be banned from WOF online tournaments indefinitely.

·       Ultimately, the responsibility for the integrity of a tournament starts and ends with the players.

·        If you have questions about the "WOF policy on artificial assistance during online tournaments" or complains, please contact the committee. contact.judge.committee@worldothello.org