Newcomers shouldn't be allowed straight into major tourneys

The bigger question is why was a player who won the tournament by playing a dozen nearly flawless games not detected by the anticheat algorithms immediately?

I think that the idea new players are being punished by having to play a certain amount of games is not necessarily true. In most modern games , new players have to build up to unlock new features. Instead of feeling punished they may feel like they are chasing a bonus feature and be all the more grateful when they are able to enjoy tournaments. Another positive is that players will feel invested once they have played the required game amounts and not just join, play one tournament, have a bad one and never come back. For sure it would not stop all cheat rats joining tournaments but would certainly decrease the amount they play in and hence stop fair players feeling cheated so often.

The point to concentrate I believe is in #11. How sensitive are the algorithms, how much data do they need before they react ? Is the area between false positives and false negatives wide or narrow ? But thats an area developers can help improve I suppose.

On a side note, cheating is an ego boost issue. If one is subsidising their self worth that way, 5 games, 30 games, N many games as a barrier wont matter. By the way, all of their N opponents are as frustrated as their tournament opponents. Shall we enforce N many games against an engine to newcomers without them knowing ?

I for one, have busted my ass against a 2100 (at the time) I thought that was human. Really took the game seriously and gradually lost under perfect moves. I share the heart break, but the remedies being discussed are far more worse than the disease I suppose. Perhaps we shall focus on requesting and insisting on better algorithms for detection. (and thank the people behind them, since there is such a thing)

Newcomers should have played at least 100 games bullet and 25 games of Blitz and 2 weeks of Lichess membership... To prove they aren't cheaters

@13 computer chess is still about chess and if cheats really want to, would not take a genius to hide it. Clearest way to discover a cheat is over many games. How many people have checked their own bullet games and had a low centipawn loss ?
Cheating is not always simply ego boost, some are programmers testing their applications simply because they can. Some people just enjoy cheating. How delusional would you need to be to get ego boost from something that you did not do. Ego boost from being faster than Usain Bolt in your car. Maybe I am missing the point.
If a cheater playing N games before being allowed to play tournaments is cheating others to get there, the ones he plays will assume they got beat by strong new player. It is not until a player in tournament is winning all their games easily in familiar style that it is easy to recognise the rat .
To say a suggestion like playing a small amount of games before tournament access is remedy worse than disease is very dramatic. Chess players around the world revolt as chess server made me play chess so that I would then be allowed to play chess in a more cleansed environment. (of course never clean)

isn't calling the lichess Daily Blitz Arena a "major tourney" a bit of an exaggeration? :-)

Just wanted to say in #13, "Shall we enforce N many games against an engine to newcomers without them knowing ? " was not real a suggestion. I guess in lack of tone and facial gesture, I'm misunderstood there. (English is not my native language)

@17 I did not think that you were serious on that point but I was responding to , 'By the way, all of their N opponents are as frustrated as their tournament opponents'

I am just defending the idea that it could be effective in helping reduce something i have noticed recently.
I played a 360 tournament and afterwards some guy says , is it okay to switch on program when its in critical position. Anyways, i assume he is joking but he really did perform well and against me I was winning comfortable until the end( going over the game I believe its more my bad moves that him turnng on a comp)
He says he was testing a program, who knows.
Maybe he is joking, I doubt it, I think he is looking to sell cheats .
http://en.lichess.org/tournament/cAiTAtcJ
I think he also hacked my account to make it look like I was swearing in the tournament chat room :o

@cptmajormajor, ok I think I see your point better now, and the anticipation that chess players would welcome a price to pay to gain a cleaner environment. Nevertheless, when I first got started with lichess, I was searching an alternative to chesscube's coin frenzy. There were open source software so I thought may be there is such a thing as open source chess and bingo. The first thing I did when I arrived was to join a tournament, lost a couple of games there being unaccostemed to auto starting of games and need to play within the first few seconds. But, I was genuinely thrilled to be able to join the tournament. I might be wrong but I guess it costed coins in chesscube or something. One of the first things I noticed was the low point of entry to competition, first time did I see a site allowing annonymous players to play unlimited amount of games. I think there are valuable things to be lost in that in approach, through barriers and check points. While the main device to improve is still the detection algorithms.

The way i see it, its not a price to pay , it just is. Most people accept things if they are not troublesome, being asked to play chess on a chess server is no trouble.
The detection algorithms are not worthwhile. Its like having perfect steroid detection, if its possible then cheats have it also and only enter environment where can be possibly tested when they know they show clear. Same with cheating with programs, does not take genius to manipulate and use at critical points. Notice there are very few tournaments for money online and the ones i can think of are Masters only. There are ways to tell cheaters of course but they take time to reveal themselves unless complete idiot instead of a normal cheat idiot.
To me there is no loss in having to wait to play tournament games . Its would simply feel like an unlocked bonus when it it arrives and they game limit does not need to be a lot. Anyways, people have opinions and preferences and my unemotional preference would be to have small limitation.
But to be honest, I do not care either way which begs the question, why am I posting so much in this thread.
Signing off :)