vayamos has a 119-1 record at LOA…so why is his rating only 1978? It would seem because most of his opponents resigned without making a move (and mostly the same few players over and over again). I guess these are all alternate identities of his. I was trying to figure out his strategy for doing this, he did not gain any rating points doing this, maybe he was trying to get to the number one slot on “top 5 players in tournaments”. Regardless, this seems highly unethical. Also, his only loss was a game he resigned without making a move. any thoughts?

He's already appeared on some people's radars. See my post of 2008-12-01 on the Reversi forum, 'player cheater' thread.

“Also, his only loss was a game he resigned without making a move. any thoughts?”

The obvious thought is that he forgot which sock-puppet he was logged in as, and accidentally resigned the wrong one! :-D

Well, he's won all the games he's played, so he's certainly a good player. I took a quick look at some of his games, and noticed something strange: Where he wins after 1 or 0 moves, the opponent has not resigned (there would be a “resign” move in the moves field). Yet, there is less than ten days between the noted start time of the game and the end time, so the opponent should not have been able to time out. Any ideas what could cause this?

Oh, and in the one game he DID resign, the “resign” move is noted, as it should be.

When someone loses on time, I think the game record shows the time of the last move. If it's the last game to finish in a tournament, you can see the actual finishing time on the tournament page.

Example: This was the last game to finish in the last Amazons championship. Startstek made the last move on the 21st, the tournament finished on the 23rd when he lost on time.

Ah, well, that explains that part. Anyway, I can't see anyone getting hurt by this. He's not boosting his rating, he's not cheating his way to 2nd round MCs (the games were all in RTs), and he's not cheating anyone else for a win in the RTs (there were only him and the three dummies in all RTs). It's just - weird.

Maybe he was trying to discover how the RT system works, that is, who he would be paired with? Maybe he was planning on rating boosting, but decided it was unethical and let the dummies time out instead? Maybe (though very unlikely) someone else entered the dummies for some unknown reason, and he was very active in this period?

OK, I guess he got a little rating boosting for the first games, as timing out used to give you points even before making a move, as opposed to resigning. Still, wouldn't it have been easier to just let the dummies make one move and then have them resign?