yahoo tic tac too cheating hacks

Complete_Idi0t 53 minutes ago#1 I started playing tic-tac-toe online on Yahoo in 1998 when I first was in grad school. Cheating existed from the beginning. People would use computer programs and beat the s*** out of you. The thing was, they tended to float pretty high on that power. I made it my policy never to play anyone rated 1650 or higher. Until the mid-2000s or so, I could play up to about 1600 as my rating. This is pretty good. I have never once used a computer to cheat; I don't even have a tic-tac-toe program on my computer. I will confess once or twice I have used tic-tac-toe books to figure out an opening. Mea culpa on that. Now, however, things are totally different. People playing in the 1200s are fierce. Hell, I play people in the 1100s who are playing tight, tight games with no mistakes. Keep in mind that you start out with 1200 points on Yahoo just for signing up (although you are marked "provisional" for 20 games). It is extremely frustrating to see someone playing an advanced opening like the upper-left with a low rating. Needless to say, I have not become a worse tic-tac-toe player. The reason is cheating. There's a lot more cheating going on (quantitative), and a lot more subtle cheating going on (qualitative). The effect has been to push everyone's rating down, creating the situation in which even people with extremely low ratings are playing very well. A few months ago, I played people over the board for the first time in years. This was at a Mensa meeting (!), and these guys seemed fairly confident of their ability. Now, objectively speaking, I don't think they were very good tic-tac-toe players, but in any event I destroyed them. I didn't lose a single game and wiped the board with they ass. So I am genuinely curious how good I've become over the years. For all I know, I've been playing a lot of bots and very good players and am now a decent player myself. I just don't know.