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@carl-winkler It is not a matter of “thinking” someone is a cheater. People DO cheat on the tournaments and Rovio is aware of it. Browser plug-ins allowed endless use of power-ups. Back when only 2 (or 3?) power ups could be used, there was a player that posted a video at this site showing him achieving a top score and it showed the use of all power-ups. When his top score and video were challenged, he apologized, stating he did not realize he was using his “practice account” that used one of the browser plug-ins. Tournaments used to end every Monday at 7 am Finland time and the cheaters would play the tournament within 24 hours prior to the end time. Because of the weekend any suspected cheaters reported by players were often not investigated by Rovio in time because no one was working. Thousands of other players, including myself, suggested varying end times/days. This is part of the reason why the tournaments now do not run a whole week. Rovio also worked on a program that would use a scoring matrix to detect cheaters, who were then ejected from the tournament. Unfortunately, many return as guests until they can create a new account. It used to be a more common thing to see players with names like Guest 12345 in first place with scores that are statistically improbable when compared to other players near the top. If, when close to the end of a tournament, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., players have scores that are all close and 1st place is several thousand above them, cheating may be the reason. I have in the past reported many suspected cheaters and most have been confirmed (unfortunately some too late for Rovio to boot before they won) and some have been deemed legitimate.
I stopped playing ABF for many months because of the cheating. Now that I have resumed, I no longer care about cheaters. I have dropped from D8 down to D2 and have worked back up to D5. I do not check top scores near a tourney’s end because it used to be too frustrating to see 1st place having an unbelievable score. But Rovio must be doing a much better job weeding out cheaters because typically all top scores now seem to be statistically close.