Lying to chess players for alignment

I'm rated ~1700 on chess.com, though I suspect their ratings may be inflated relative to e.g. FIDE ones. Happy to play whatever role that rating fits best with. I work around NYC at a full-time job: I'm generally free in the evenings (perhaps 7pm-11pm NY time) and on weekends.

Two questions:

1. Do you anticipate using a time control for this? I suspect B will be heavily advantaged by short time controls that don't give A much time, while A will be heavily favored by having enough time to e.g. tell two advisors who disagree 'okay, C1 thinks that move is a blunder and C2 thinks it's great, you two start from this position and play the game out after C2 makes that move and we'll see if C1 easily wins'. I don't immediately have a good guess for what time control will be balanced.

2. Are C players allowed to use chess engines?

I'm happy to play on any  of the 4 roles, I haven't played non-blitz chess in quite a while (and never played it seriously) but I would guess I'm ~1300 on standard time controls on chess.com (interpolating between different time controls and assuming a similar decay as other games like Go).

I'm free after 9pm PDT most weekdays, and free between noon and 6pm or so on weekends.

I'm happy to be B if it'd be useful - mainly because I expect that to require least time, and I do play chess to relax anyway. Pretty flexible on times/days. I don't think I'd have time for A/C. (unless the whole thing is quite quick - I'd be ok spending an afternoon or two, so long as it's not in the next two weeks; currently very busy)

I've not been rated recently. IIRC I was about 1900 in blitz on chess.com when playing for fun.
I'd guess that I could be ~1900 on longer controls if I spent quite a bit of effort on the games.
I'd prefer to participate with more of a ~1700 expectation, since I can do that quickly.

So long as I'm B, I'm fine with multi-week or multi-month 1-move-per-day games - but clearly the limiting factor is that this is much more demanding on A and C.

Some thoughts on the setup:
It'd make sense to have at least a few fastish games between B and C, so that it's pretty clear there is the expected skill disparity. Blitz games are likely to be the most efficient here - I'd suggest an increment of at least 5 seconds per move, to avoid the incentive to win on time. But ~3 minutes on the clock may be enough. (9 games of ~10 minutes each will tell you a lot more than 1 game of ~90minutes)

Similarly between A and B.

This should ideally be done at the end of the experiment too, in particular to guard against A being a very fast learner.
B improving a lot seems less likely (though possible, if they started out rusty).
I don't think Cs improving should be an issue.
But it's plausible that both the A-B and B-C gaps shrink during the experiment.

A control that's probably useful is to have A play some games against B with entirely honest advisors.
The point here being that it can impose some penalty to have three suggestions rather than one - e.g. if the advisors know different opening lines, A might pick an inconsistent combination: advisor 1 makes a suggestion that goes down a path advisor 2 doesn't know well; A picks advisor 1's move, then advisor 2's follow-up, resulting in an incoherent strategy.
I don't expect this would be have a large effect, but it seems sensible to do if there's time. (if time's a big constraint, it might not be worth it)

It's worth considering what norms make sense for the C role.
For instance, if C is giving explanations, does that extend to giving complex arguments against other plausible moves? Is C aiming to play fully to win given the constraints, or is there an in-the-spirit-of-things norm?

E.g. if C had a character limit on the advice they could give, the most efficient approach might be to give various lines in chess notation, without any explanation. Is this desirable?

Would it make sense to limit the move depth that C can talk about in concrete terms? E.g. to say that you can give a concrete line up to 6 plies, but beyond that point you can only talk in generalities (more space; pressure on dark squares; more active pieces; will win material...).

I expect that prototyping this will make sense - come up with something vaguely plausible, then just try it and adjust.

I'd be interested to give feedback on the setup you're planning, if that'd be useful.

Note that, if there's enough time, you can, each turn have the experts play full games against each other, and copy the next move distribution of whoever wins the most. The dishonest experts can only win by making good moves, so you get good moves either way. So the remaining question is how possible it is to reduce the time required.

One approach is to set up a prediction market where experts can bet on the value of a given position, and resolve bets by playing out the game. That way, dishonest experts lose currency faster by being dishonest. This still introduces variance in how long a given turn takes, though.

AI safety via debate could also inspire strategies.

I'd be down to give it a shot as A. Particularly would be interested in trying the 'solve a predefined puzzle situation' as a way of testing the idea out.

I played a bit of chess in 6th grade, but wasn't very good, and have barely played since. It would be easy to find advisors for me.

I would participate. Likely as A, but I'm fine with B if there are people worse-enough. I'm 1100 on chess.com, playing occasional 10 minute games for fun. Tend to be available Th/Fr/Sa/Su evenings Pacific, fine with very long durations.

Based on my rating on the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) in 2015, I estimate I would currently have a rating of about 1270 on Chess.com (on the assumption that the average player on FICS in 2015 is slightly better than the average today on Chess.com) which is regrettable because it is probably too high to make a good advisee, but probably too low to make a good advisor. Still, I am willing to participate.

(I still play, but these years I play as a guest, not as a registered user, which means I don't have a rating.)

I would have thought that giving the players 24 hours to make each move would approximate scientific research better than giving 4 hours for all the moves (or 40 moves like they tend to do in competition).

I'd be happy to play any of the A, B and C roles.

I'm a around 1850 elo FIDE, about 2000-2100 on lichess. I play a couple of blitz games daily.

I'd be willing to play at almost any cadence and have a lot of free time. I actually live in France, so a one-move-per-day game with someone living in the US would probably be ideal. Live sessions can be programmed from 16 GMT to 23 GMT on weekdays, and from 7 GMT to 23 GMT on weekends.

As I said I would be happy to play any role. I think it would be more interesting if the lower player is actually not a total beginner - total beginners are probably not hard to deceive. A decent club player with advisors about 300-500 elo higher would be best imo. And if we can experiment at many different elo levels, even better.

Registering a prediction: assuming the elo difference stay constant, better players will be much more difficult to deceive. And a GM would consistently pick up who is lying if you could rope up Caruana, Carlsen and Ding to do the experiment.

I’m about 1000 ELO on chess.com and would be interested in playing as A. I play regularly, but haven’t had formal training or studied seriously. I’d be free weekdays after 7 pm ET.

Very interested in C, also B. I'm an over-the-board FM. Available many evenings (US) but not all. I enjoy recreational deception (e.g. Mafia / Werewolf) but I'm much better at chess than detecting or deploying verbal trickery.

Additional thoughts:

1. Written chess commentary by 'weak' players tends to be true but not the most relevant. After 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5, a player might say "Black can play 2...Nc6 developing the N and attacking the pawn on e5". True, but this neglects 3.exf6. This scales upwards. My commentary tends to be very relevant but I miss things that even stronger players do not.

2. Players choose a weaker move over a stronger move not so much because they reject the stronger move, but because they don't see the stronger move as an option. When going over games with students, I'll stop at a position, offer three moves and ask which is best. They'll consider and choose and explain reasoning. But there's a fourth option, a mate-in-one, and it was not selected. "You must see the move before you can play the move."

3. Based on 2, a deception strategy is to recommend a weak move over others even weaker. Stronger options? Ignored.

I could be interested in trying this, in any configuration. Preferred time control would be one move per day. My lichess rating is about 2200.

Are the advisors allowed computer assistance, do the dishonest and the honest advisor know who is who in this experiment, and are the advisors allowed to coordinate? I think those parameters would make a large difference potentially in outcome for this type of experiment.

I’m rated about 2100 USCF and 2300 Lichess, and I’m open to any of the roles. I’m free on the weekend and weekdays after 3 pm pacific. I’m happy to play any time control including multi-month correspondence. 

Hi!

I'm rated between 1500 and 1700 on lichess, I'd be happy to take part in the game in whatever role.

Open for any of the roles A, B, C. I should have a flexible schedule at my waking hours (around GMT+0). Willing to play for even long times, say a month (though in that case I'd be thinking about "hmm, could we get more quantity in addition to quality"). ELO probably around 1800.

I would be interested in this, probably in role A (but depending on the pool of other players possibly one of the other roles; I have no opposition to any of them). I play chess casually with friends, and am probably at somewhere around 1300 elo (based on my winrate against one friend who plays online).

I am happy to be A.  I haven't played chess since my teenage years, wherein my record was one of occasional games with friends and relatives, leading to almost unrelieved defeat.  But that was four decades ago, and I like to imagine I've become pretty good at judging arguments.  So if I competed, it would be on a basis of almost total chess ignorance, but ability to follow complex chains of logic.

Interested in any of the roles. I haven't played chess competitively in close to a decade and my USCF elo was in the 1500s at the time of stopping. So long as I'm given a heads up in advance, I'm free almost all day on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.

I can be any of A, B, or C. I've been playing chess for the past ten years, and my USCF rating was in the upper 1500s when I last played in-person a year ago. I'm usually available from 9PM-UCT to 2AM-UCT (afternoon to evenings in American time) every day, and on Saturdays from 5PM-UCT to 2AM-UCT.