Cheating at king.com?!

[DonkeyRhubarb]

I was looking through movies of people playing at king.com on youtube when I came across this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OeEgG49Kh8

Do you guys really think this is true? I mean I know there are some impossible scores but wow. It looked like he hit them perfectly every time...

Now I know to watch out for people playing this game.

[afort56]

Hmm, something like that should be prohibitted on King in the Terms and Conditions. I'm pretty sure there's something to the effect of "You may not use 3rd party software to gain an unfair advantage..." I'd have to go back and read King's terms, but I doubt this is "legal" in King's eye.

It's probably just some tinkering with frame rates of his video card. The problem with this is that the game is going to take longer to play at a slower frame rate. I'm sure King keeps record of time to complete games and someone using this would stick out like a sore thumb upon an investigation.

[Jacob]

I don't think it ever happens in a cash game...once you're set up as a gold player and start your first cash game, King.com installs a security protocol that monitors the game and verifies your score (that's why you'll always see a little green light on the bottom part of your game).

[anq159]

Yeah, there was a cheater in the last Carnival Shooter royal cup. I lost to the cheater at round 10 of the cup. I scored 44k and thought I have a decent chance of winning, but lost to a score of 47k. The cheater ended up winning the royal cup with by an average of 3k over all others. It was pretty obvious that the person was cheating. The cheater probably got blocked three quarter of the way through the cup since she last played 2/27/08 and the cup ended 3/15/08 and she lost and entry in a walkover to someone in the second half of the bracket. The money got confiscated by king.com and placed in the freeroll funds.

[DonkeyRhubarb]

I messaged the guy on youtube who put up the movie and he said it worked flawlessly for him on cash tournaments. He also said he is selling guides on how to do it on ebay and that he's already sold 6 :O.

[Jacob]

Would you be able to get him to post here, please?

[anq159]

I messaged the guy on youtube who put up the movie and he said it worked flawlessly for him on cash tournaments. He also said he is selling guides on how to do it on ebay and that he's already sold 6 :O.

Of course he would say it works since he is trying to sell it on ebay. I would not trust his words.

[andrew2110]

Cheating at king.com IS possible when using 3rd party apps in cash tournaments - also its illegal, I think its classed as fraud, so very illegal. I know this because whilst at university a friend of mine wrote 5 or 6 different 'cheating programs' for king.com in games mahjong masquerade, pyramid solitaire, who wants to be a millionaire and a few others... Part of the reason I set up dukesbox was because he showed me how easy it was to cheat on these sites using 3rd party apps, and I found a way to stop it....

King.com do have a way of catching these cheats as well although I believe its not flawless - I believe they analyse scores, and also that security thing they make you download, I believe that monitors any active processes on your computer whilst a cash game is in progress, so if it finds a cheatingprogram.exe or something suspiciously named, it will flag it. That parts just a guess on my part though.

[rahnnyboy]

so I also messaged him on youtube and said that I do this using something to slowdown my framerate on my video card (just copying what ikagura posted up there)...he responded "that's a cool idea, I actually just use software to slowdown my CPU"...
he didn't say which software but rest assured I tried this using the stuff that comes up on google and the only things i could find are things that actually grab some of your processor capacity, so they actually make the game harder to play (i.e. birdy is at coordinates x,y on right side of board, next tick is at z,w on left side)!

I'm not sure what he uses, but it's more novel than CPU grabbers.

The thing about king is the cheats will gain so much skill rating they will only be playing each other....which really sucks for people who are actually great at the games (ask me about keyword!). The really good cheats are the ones who know how to throttle themselves...these are the scary ones...

[afort56]

In my mind, creating what I would call "true" games of skill lead you to a Catch 22. Some examples of "true" games of skill would be Keyword, Freecell, Mahjong Masquerade, etc. Games where the "board" to be solved is completely visible and there's nothing unknown, like the deck in Pyramid, or falling jewels in Bejewled. An "ultimate" solution exists for every lay-up. Those with great vocabularies, or great abilities to visualize clearing a Freecell lay-up, or a Mahjong Masquerade Lay-up excel.

However, these games lend themselves to being exploited by screen reading software and A.I. If the computer can quickly "read" the game board, in a few seconds you could have the 3 best words for Keyword, or step-by-step directions to solve Freecell. Hell, why not automate the mouse movements as well so you can max out the time bonus in Mahjong Masquerade. Sure, this would be a complex undertaking, but with time and programming knowledge, it's entirely conceivable. It's pretty obvious that it's already commonplace in Keyword.

In reality, you almost need "skill games" to contain an unknown element. The "skill" almost becomes the skill to adapt to the unknown and strategize moves that maximize flexibility in the game. For example, I'm a fairly good Solitaire player. Solitaire is definitely one of those games with nearly half the game being unknown. All you can do is try to maximize flexibility and expose as many hidden cards as possible, hoping it's the correct move to uncover that missing Ace, or likewise. The "skill" key is common lay-ups among users, i.e. The Ace is buried in the same place for both users, etc.

I think this is probably why I prefer King Solitaire over Worldwinner. The lay-ups are the same for all games at both sites. Except, unlike King where you get one entry for every game (except progressives), you can enter the same multi-player again on Worldwinner, and you get a different lay-up. So I play a 4-Player premium and get 800 on a bum lay-up. Two other players are in the high 700's. One of those players enter's the final slot in the game, gets a good lay-up and boom...1842. There's no skill in that, just luck that the second-game lay-up was good and they were able to grab that last spot before anyone else.

But anyway, "true" skill games generally create a prime setup to automate it with A.I. It's a balancing act, and you'll never get rid of all the cheaters. Unfortunately, it's just part of playing the game.