A large multi-account cheating ring was banned today:

I'll schedule a stats reindex to recover lost ranking points asap.

wow...just, wow.

Good gravy...

Nice work Tom

Damn!

So what does the reindex involve?

All games they won being removed? All games they participated in?

look back at post #12 & #13 in this thread

^ Thanks.

Man.. that's a ton of work just to cheat.  Might be easier to just get good.

Several of those players have been ranked extremely high. At least on WGWF board ranking.

There are also quite a few players with a very low GR. therealdeal, for example, had reached 500 in GR.

They probably used some attacks as a always lose account, only to assist the "main" few.

Wow....18 accounts? And biggamehunter? He was ranked 1st in WGWF one time I looked. 

None of them regular opponents of mine, thankfully. According to my "Opponents" sheet this takes my total against disabled accounts 7 wins, 3 losses and 2 draws. And that includes games against previous disappearing acts. 

Wow, i'd played a bunch of those, mainly on WGW. That's insane...

WGWF was all bgh played, talk about obsession.

I believe Tom has just uncovered the tip of the iceberg.

I see anywhere from a few to dozens of new accounts created every day.  Most of these never join a game.

Then I see players join games that haven't even logged on in years (especially after mass bans like this one).  Not naming names, but just now someone started a game that hasn't played since 2016.

I think someone with nothing better to do has created hundreds or thousands of accounts over the years and written them down or put them on a spreadsheet, and just dusts them off and logs them in whenever the dozen or twenty accounts they currently used to cheat get uncovered.

Really, really disappointed in Biggamehunter. Recently, he was the only player ranked higher than me on Wargear Warfare, effectively denying my claim to the top spot, illegitimately, it turns out.

This is just sad. I thought the site had recovered from the multiple server outages of a while ago and was on an upward swing. Now this. Not good. Hopefully only honorable players remain...

redshift wrote:

WGWF was all bgh played, talk about obsession.

I felt like he was my nemesis. I guess I had more than one nemesis, it turns out.

camel wrote:

I believe Tom has just uncovered the tip of the iceberg.

I see anywhere from a few to dozens of new accounts created every day.  Most of these never join a game.

Then I see players join games that haven't even logged on in years (especially after mass bans like this one).  Not naming names, but just now someone started a game that hasn't played since 2016.

I think someone with nothing better to do has created hundreds or thousands of accounts over the years and written them down or put them on a spreadsheet, and just dusts them off and logs them in whenever the dozen or twenty accounts they currently used to cheat get uncovered.

I'm always happy to look into accounts that you or anyone else has suspicions about!

soft wizard wrote:

Really, really disappointed in Biggamehunter. Recently, he was the only player ranked higher than me on Wargear Warfare, effectively denying my claim to the top spot, illegitimately, it turns out.

This is just sad. I thought the site had recovered from the multiple server outages of a while ago and was on an upward swing. Now this. Not good. Hopefully only honorable players remain...

Did you ever get a feeling when you played him? I mean, he must have been a much weaker player than his ranking suggested. 

My feeling was that I did not understand how he so quickly became so highly-rated. I feel like, most of the time, I'm (and this will sound cocky, but please forgive me) playing at a high level, so to see someone clearly playing above my level, and me not really being able to figure out why--in retrospect, that should have tipped me off. Other warning signs, that I knew but didn't really mention, were that his stats in games with fewer players were not very impressive.

Good hunting Tom!

Stats reindex is taking place now so the site may be a little slow for a few hours.

All done.