Solitaire collection events cheating

Hallo Daniel,

I would say that the 1:36 was a "Pseudo" or if you prefer a "Fake" account entered by a person having access to the operating system. The account appeared after I was at first place for some time and before Franswar came in a few seconds faster. Whoever entered the account forgot to mark the "expert under 5 minutes" in the event profile. It was probably put in there to show us that "We are watching you", usually happens after there are too many people complaining about cheating.

The time of 1:36 was entered so that it would always be at first position and all the top players could see it. I would say that Microsoft has several "helpers", "watchers" or whatever they are called, playing in the online events, and on Solitaire one is always in the top twelve.

"And a thanks to the person who mentioned how to find where you place overall after the game is over.  For those who are interested and didn't see it, once the game ends and you get your final placement, go to the top 100 board and then close the popup.  Then at the bottom of the image on the page is a ribbon at the bottom that displays your placement.  I found that in every instance, the player just ahead of me and just behind me had the exact same time, so maybe they place you on the basis on who finishes first with that time."

I believe I've mentioned that in the past.  By closing out the leader board with the Top 100 displayed, you get to see (on the bottom row)  your placement over all 400,000 that have played. When you close out with your local board or friends board displayed, you see on the bottom your placement in your local board or friends board.

As for not finishing the game in one session, sure. I've done that where I had to stop for some reason and then go back to finish later. I'm sure that happens often enough..  I just get suspicious when it seems to happen in the top 5 all the time. As I said...I finished 2 and 3 on the local 100 the last two contests...and stayed there for an hour or two only to drop back to 5th each time. Maybe a lot of people just take breaks...or maybe they go play the hard or expert games on their other account before returning to finish.

I also don't care if the Top 100 is really a bot or droid or macro contest. And if some want to solve all the games, and then have a enter the results by hand as fast as you can competition...knock yourselves out.  I would just like to have a segment of those who only play each game once, by hand. We don't have that now, we have a mix.  

As I mentioned earlier, about a month ago, much to my surprise, JoanPesh appeared in my local 100.  Yeah, I recognized the name immediately. She didn't take any breaks. She topped the Top 100 board with a time of less than 30 minutes. And it was one of the tougher World Tours. Only 8 people managed to even finish on my local 100. I did finish, but my time was WAY more than 30 minutes....LOL. There were a lot of people with good times at 4500.  And even with my crummy time, I still made the top 5% world wide.

Daniel_1001ZV

I found the response from JoanPesh very interesting, but it didn't bother me.  It was good to know how some were doing it.  I don't have the time or interest to play the games several times  and getting on a board of the top 100 has no payoff to me if it requires that.  For those who have the time and interest, they are welcome to do so.

Related to people who stop and then start up again, the answer is quite simple when I do it.  Part way through the challenges I hear "Time for dinner" or some other type of message.  In the challenge yesterday, I stopped twice.  Once for a call I was expecting which ended up taking over 30 minutes, and another time for lunch.  When that happens, I close out the game not knowing when I will be back. 

I can't remember the exact time I recorded, but playing only once (although in three separate segments) with no cheating, I came in second.  So, for all those people who finished earlier in the day, I passed all but one of them when I finally completed the challenges.  My final time was in the top .7% of all the players (somewhere near 2800 out of 400,000) but nowhere near the top 100.  If my math analysis is correct, being in the top .7%, my chances of coming in first rather than second on my own board of 100 was 30%.  And on my board, the person who came in first had a time that was slightly less than a minute ahead of mine, but about 30 minutes more than many of the top 100 people. 

And a thanks to the person who mentioned how to find where you place overall after the game is over.  For those who are interested and didn't see it, once the game ends and you get your final placement, go to the top 100 board and then close the popup.  Then at the bottom of the image on the page is a ribbon at the bottom that displays your placement.  I found that in every instance, the player just ahead of me and just behind me had the exact same time, so maybe they place you on the basis on who finishes first with that time.

To my mind,  the top 100 is a different game, and to compete at that you need a different approach. That is not of interest to me, and I enjoy the games I play competing against all the rest of us who do the game once and play it without any assistance other than our own wits.

Hello Joan. Are you THE JoanPesh, the current global #1? If so, thank you for posting. I thought that we will never hear from anyone of the top ranked.

1. On the top 100 leaderboard, do you know where exactly begins a section of players who do not use any tricks? I have PaltryAmoeba564 on my friends list, to have her as a reference, and also hoping that she was not using tricks, since there were some small inconsistencies in her performance, so I hoped that it was a sign of a pure human player, since bots would not be inconsistent. I also asked her if she would maybe make a video of her solving the games. I would love to see the power of a pure human brain, would be such an inspiration. But, if she is not the puritan, then how can we tell who is and where to find one? Do you maybe know some high-ranked expert player who is not using tricks?
2. Do you, the top 10 or so players, actively compete among yourselves and how? I mean, do you have bots/macros/whatever that can be configured, or a script that can be edited to change some parameters, so you can compete in who makes the best use of the software or who has the better hardware etc? Do you have a friends board with players who compete exclusively by engineering?

And there you have it...words of "wisdom" from one of the top "players" in the world...the inimitable JoanPesh.

"One of the most common methods of doing this is to open a second account, playing the games on the second account, writing down the moves and then playing the game on the first account. Then a 30-game-event will take about an hour."

Aha!!!  Just as I thought. Play out each game on one account, record the best moves, then replay on a second account.  Now...if that is all you do, then the second account game play will go fast. However, I've seen other players seemingly start and then not finish for several hours, then come back to finish fast. That makes me think they don't bother to do this for every game, just the harder games. So they run all the easy and medium games and maybe some hard games, but then go to another account to run the expert games and come back later to finish the initial game. Or maybe they just split the time to throw off anyone watching. 

So, yes...I too could do this...and it would move me up into the top 3 of my local board. I did the last Solitaire World Tour in 90 minutes and was in 2nd place on my local board...and the previous World tour in 85 minutes and was in 3rd place on my local board.  Those places held for an hour or two, but I've ended up in 5th place in both contests. The winners in my local 100 were around 60 minutes. It's funny that there are only a handful of people doing this, but it's pretty consistent, so I'm guessing around 5% of the people playing world wide are doing at least this level of "tricking".  5% of 400,000 equals 20,000.  And since they would have at least 2 accounts, that's 40,000.  

I will admit that it's quite interesting that JoanPesh did not mention macro's but did mention bots...and droids. Yeah, I kind of thought there was another level to the game...where the top 100 players were competing at bot tweaking more than competing at solving solitaire puzzles.

Oh...I think I mentioned before...once recently my local 100 had JoanPesh playing in it. You shouldn't be surprised to learn that was well ahead of everyone else. 

Too bad JoanPesh did not discuss the recent player that won with a time of 1 min and 36 seconds.  Hey Joan...what happened there?