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Backgrounds of the cheating during the OEMC Online 2007
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- Who was the winner?
An Asian female player whose name will not be revealed, since MahjongTime and EMA do not consider what has happend a malevolent incident.
- how did she cheat?
She gave her MahjongTime name and password to another player. The reason for her to do so is that the final round would be played at a very inconvenient time for her (Monday morning quite early), and she was very tired after winning six rounds and reaching the final round.
- how did one find out about her cheating?
After the tournament, MT discovered that there had been a change in the IP-number of the winner’s computer. It is quite normal that numbers can change during a tournament (e.g. you play on another computer: going to a friend or to your office to continue). So changing alone is not a signal of cheating. That was the reason why additional investigations took place to confirm what happened. Before the tournament, MT had tried to avoid all possibilities of cheating already, but obviously they had not thought about this way of cheating.
- what happened next?
William Sutjiadi, president of MahjongTime, contacted Uwe Martens, president of the European Mahjong Association (EMA). The online tournament was organized in co-operation with EMA. Uwe Martens was very glad about this, since it proved that MT wants to keep up a high standard of the competition. William and Uwe decided that the fraudulent winner would be disqualified and that a new final round would be played. The replayed final will involve the three losing finalists and the fifth-ranked player. The winner of this re-staged final will be declared OEMC-Online Champion 2007. It will take place next week.
- now that it apparently is possible to cheat, how likely is it that, in the past, players have also cheated on MahjongTime and have made money by doing so?
William Sutjiadi stresses that it is wrong to consider that abuse is widespread: ‘It is not.’ Sutjiadi: ‘However, should players try to gain an unfair advantage, our anti-collusion system is proven to prevent and detect many types of cheating, from the simplest to the most complicated methods. We check every single aspect of game play and spot every aspect of suspicious activity. We are entirely confident that our security systems and processes stop players from benefiting from malpractice.’
- why were the people involved not informed earlier?
According to Mr. Sutjiadi, it has taken him a little longer than he had hoped to contact all necessary players involved and rearrange the final round, because of the time zones of the players involved, the fact that MahjongTime is based in San Diego and because this is an amateur game and the players have other commitments.
- New online championships are ahead. MahjongTime wants to organize the OEMC Online each year, and it seems likely that it will also organize the forthcoming US Open Championship for American players to qualify for the World Championship in Chengdu, China, later this year. Will the confidence in playing online be restored?
Thanks to the prompt action of MahjongTime, this looks the case indeed. MT took the initiative in informing EMA and, later on, also the players. That is why Uwe Martens wants to continue supporting MahjongTime. Still, EMA considers the possibility of cheating a serious problem, so this organization decided that the official European ranking list and the online ranking would not be merged. This decision was already taken before the online tournament.
 Interview with William Sutjiadi before the OEMC Online >>
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