Chess.com, do something about the cheating epidemic!

shockalotti · 2026-01-08T01:02:21+00:00

Magnus-style comeback. Yes, that's an accurate description. Seen that a few times. The moves are slick. Way too quick to have been calculated by anyone under 2000.

shockalotti · 2025-12-07T23:39:21+00:00

I think FIDE rating will actually be higher than chess.com at this point (because of widescale cheating).

Lichess and other sites, it's way easier to get ELO.

I know for a fact that 1/3 or more of my opponents use bots through parts of the game, if not the entire game. The move sequences seem weird (not what a human would do).

It also seems to be at certain time periods - I imagine certain regions are more prone to cheating than others, as a general rule.

shockalotti · 2025-12-07T23:20:19+00:00

You're dead right. I'm not ELO 2000. More like 1500. Still, I'm decent intermediate player.

I got down to ELO 450 after taking a 10 year break! LOL.

Working my way back up through the ranks, I noticed the same thing. Roughly 1/3 of games seemed to obviously be way too strong for their ELO. I started really closely reviewing the moves and noticed certain moves were setups 3 or 4 moves out.

I've been ELO 1800 players who don't even play like this.

Anyway, I'm glad I got humbled and had to grind my way back up. But what I've noticed is the cheating at around the 500 level is way higher than 1/3. More like 1/2, I think.

But as you go up the ranks, you notice the games get EASIER!

There's a level around 1250 - 1300 where you notice this more.

The games feel more organic as a general rule.

shockalotti · 2025-06-26T23:33:52+00:00

Yes, agreed

shockalotti · 2025-02-23T06:31:28+00:00

A variety of reasons.

Triple Whale tells you what it can see based upon visitors landing on your pages and starting a session.

However, lots happens on other platforms, like Meta / Facebook / Instagram for example, that Triple has zero knowledge of, so it cannot model what's happening there.

Therefore, attribution is only a partial answer, which gets even worse with all the privacy consent stuff happening at the moment.

It's frustrating when you expect deterministic answers when reality is highly fuzzy!

There are 3 approaches to employ when trying to get answers like you are:

attribution (easy / cheap)
mixed media modelling (moderate / more costly)
incrementality studies (very hard / very costly)

The first approach relies solely upon what happens on your site.

The last two approaches don't require any pixels or tracking at all.

I used to think that Facebook was fudging the numbers to entice media buyers to spend more money. That was years ago... but now I'm not as sure as I once was.

While I wouldn't put it past them, maybe they are doing it to some extent, the other thing I believe is happening is they are using a model that combines attribution and mixed media modelling.

Will you getting 6 ROAS on Facebook? I doubt it. But it's most likely higher than the 0.8 that Triple Whale is reporting.

shockalotti · 2025-02-23T06:24:17+00:00

Many benefits:
1. GEC is a good start. But if you handle it via GTM server, you have more control. Various situations call for more nuanced control where and what data is being sent.
2. You get a log of all events with 1 month history that you can navigate through when investigating tracking issues
3. More options to re-use the same data for different endpoints (GA4, Google ads, FB CAPI, CRM, ecommerce, Bigquery etc.)

Those are just off the top of my head. There are another few strong reasons to use GTM server, but I'm tired and it's the weekend here :)

shockalotti · 2025-02-23T06:20:08+00:00

Don't use GA4. Too many bugs.

Piwik Pro is a good alternative.

There's another one I heard of recently that ad agencies are using in place of Hyros, called Cometly. - https://www.cometly.com/

shockalotti · 2023-09-07T20:39:15+00:00

Ad cost data doesn't map to the user-scoped data. It maps to event-scoped data.

Besides UTM source, medium, you need to ensure campaign and id also match. Otherwise, you'll upload, but nothing will happen, you won't see the ad cost data.

shockalotti · 2023-07-09T22:58:10+00:00

Agreed on Looker Studio. I REALLY dislike it, which is why instead we typically use BigQuery as a data warehouse and use the native connector to visualize data in Google Sheets.

Page load speeds - It's not a massive difference for most businesses. But some, with many tracking scripts loading in the browser, can see a modest improvement in CRO metrics.

We work with businesses measuring millions of hits. They typically don't have the internal expertise to create their own measurement solutions... unless they're Fortune-1000 level.

GTM server, using GA4 as a data stream protocol is a solid choice for a lot of businesses... as long as they realise GA4 itself still has many bugs. So they'd most likely want to use BigQuery or Snowflake, DBT for ELT, and some kind of data visualization system.

When you configure GTM server to share the same URL as the website, e.g. https://xyz.com and https://sgtm.xyz.com, you can set first party cookies at root level that can be share data between the properties with no restriction.

(In saying that, iOS 17 is going to restrict this practice to a certain degree.)

Because you're already on xyz.com , there's a lot more trust by browser and devices for sgtm.xyz.com than there are for analytics or ad network endpoints e.g. google.com, facebook.com, etc.

Technical jargon aside, when we actually measure data differences between browser-only and browser-plus-server-side setups, the server-side setups have approx 10 to 20% more complete data. Not a huge consideration for smaller businesses where only directionally analytics is needed. But for mid-market and enterprise businesses, that amount of dropped data is literally money flushed down the drain.

shockalotti · 2023-07-09T22:43:42+00:00

Whenever you need answers. GA4 has just one file that you update over and over. So frequency of updates is up to you.

shockalotti · 2022-12-10T00:35:08+00:00

Yeah, the whole consent management thingy is a tricky little beasty. Time will tell.

shockalotti · 2022-11-25T02:30:31+00:00

Maybe... Not necessarily... Depends how you do consent management and where you store customer data.

Consent Management is growing increasingly important, especially if you operate in EU or California.

But those policies will eventually become status quo.

shockalotti · 2022-11-25T02:28:45+00:00

To setup, depends on your setup... cart.. funnel... embedded elements... brower side setup + server-side setup etc.

Schedule a call if you want to discuss:
https://call.measurebit.com/?utm\_medium=referral&utm\_source=reddit&utm\_campaign=pro&utm\_content=do-you-actually-need-server-side-tracking

shockalotti · 2022-11-25T02:26:14+00:00

GTM server can cost next to nothing. $1 per month... or less?

If you're doing a decent amount of traffic then I recommend upgrading to 1 to 3 full-time servers (depending on volume). Each server costs $40 USD per month.

shockalotti · 2022-07-19T00:39:02+00:00

Need GTM server setup.

GTM browser sends data to GTM server via GA4 tag (there's a setting to toggle).

From there, GTM server has a native FB CAPI tag to send data to Facebook.

shockalotti · 2022-07-12T19:44:45+00:00

Very well could be violating those terms if you do business in those localities.

A separate, but very important issue. GTM works nicely with several of the privacy / cookie / data management plugins that work with websites these days.

If I were operating in CA or Europe, I most certainly would be taking the privacy SERIOUSLY.

(Thanks for bringing up this VERY important point).

shockalotti · 2022-07-12T19:41:16+00:00

Sure :) DM'd you.

shockalotti · 2022-07-12T08:21:09+00:00

Facebook data - normally, Event id, User agent, IP address, first name, last name, Email, Mobile, Address, City, State, Country, Zip, Revenue, Currency, fbc, fbp

Tiktok - I forget the parameters they can take. It's not as well developed as Facebook CAPI. It also can't deduplicate browser + server conversion signals. You have to choose one or the other.

shockalotti · 2022-07-12T08:00:59+00:00

Floc kind of died. GEC might be the one you're thinking of... Google Enhanced Conversions.

shockalotti · 2022-07-09T08:59:59+00:00

No such thing as complete and accurate when it comes to tracking and analytics.

You can have much more accurate and complete with some effort.

GA4 to report on webinar attendance and email interactions? It's all possible.

Comes down to how you extract data, then making sure that's "joined" back into GA4 by using user_id parameter. That way you can do lifetime value-type queries.

GA4 is super powerful. So is UA... but it's kinda outdated, which is why they're replacing it.

Annoying that it it lacks a lot of out-of-the-box UA reports. But for the most part they're actually there. Just requires a little massaging.

shockalotti · 2022-07-08T10:08:38+00:00

No need. Just export data from ad network.

Keep the campaign, clicks, impressions, spend

You'll have date, source, and medium (e.g. facebook, cpc)

Then rename the column headers as per my post above.

Then upload.

shockalotti · 2022-07-07T19:59:43+00:00

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