Cheaters Beware - You Will Be Caught

Keep up the good work. This topic has major implications for newer players who encounter these cheaters (and even better players too), how discouraging for legitimate enthusiasts.

Chess.com, could your administration board do an article that encourages learning and improving above racking up points?

Also, I've just decided to start a group. "Real Players Only", hopefully we can boot out anyone who can't (or isn't willing) to explain their games. As you all know, a strong player has strong ideas! We'll fish 'em out in live yet.

You've clearly misunderstood my point -- at no point did I say that chess.com should turn a blind eye to reports of cheating.

I'm confident that chess.com takes every report of suspected cheating very seriously and investigates thoroughly with no regard to rating.  Anyone who suspects someone else of cheating should use the "Report Abuse" link at the bottom of every page and trust that the appropriate action will be taken.

My point is this:  If you're reason for suspecting someone of cheating is simply because they're better this week than they were last, then maybe you need to re-examine your case because there are many other possible explanations and flooding chess.com with erroneous cheating reports can distract from the identification and expulsion efforts for actual cheaters.  Additionally, if chess.com were to take proactive measures (i.e. not waiting on abuse reports to investigate players) it would be an obvious gross mis-allocation of resources to focus these efforts on any group other than top tier of players by rating.

The bottom line is that cheaters are highly likely to propel themselves into the top teir of players by rating simply because of the fact that they are cheating so I really think that the idea that it is rampant at the sub 2000 rating level is absurd.

I am not inclined to take the word of people who generalize and hand-wave. Why not post a game? Why not post some derivative evidence?

I would love to discuss. I can't respond to statements so vague. Novice, the ball is in your court.

You need to go back and read what I'm sayin start at page20. See the whole thing is that you can't pretend it doesn't happen at lower levels if you don't go and see it for yourselfs. Another thing is that Chess.com only looks at 2000+ not becuase cheaters want to get that high but becuase there are just a few people at the top than at the bottom so it's just lack of resores.There are 750,000 players and a couple hundred above 2000. That's why.

Another thing is this. Kids get sick of losing and that's not fun and kids like to fun, so there gonna be cheatin until they have fun again, that's just life at the low levels. And this latest cheater MirceaH he's already a super strong player and he was cheatin AT HIS OWN LEVEL, NOT TO MAKE HISSELF HIGH but just to win a important match or whatever so everyone does it from time to time and besides it's easier if you look at the bottom than at the top, cuase people don't know about consolidation, and they don't know positional sacs and all that strategy so its just easier to see cheatin' happen at low levels when your a super strong player. So they should just grab a few super strong staff people, and just go and watch them games for a couple weeks or so, becuase hose people now what it takes to be strong and they now who's playin a slow-speed 1600-1800 quality game, but there doing it at quick or blitz speed and there just 1265 or 1353 like TheGrobe rating. They don't need no puter to do it, they just see it happening. Those blitz kids are using Vlad or Lacey for 10 or so moves in the middle if there in trouble until they got there game won. What you do is this. You just turn the engine off on CM and flip the board so your moves will be Vlad's moves. Than you move the pieces the way you want when your playing lightning or quick, than after several moves you just switch on the enging. There's no pause. Vlad will make the perfect move in a split second,he's like 1900 rating on slow games, but totally kicks but in quick and blitz so you just follow his moves. You can win a game in like 1 minute in about 20 moves or so. That's how you do it, and no one's gonna stop ya cuase your rating is so low and it's a blast! If you think there on to ya, just switch over to lacey for awhile until they go away.  My point is if Chess.com wants to admit that cheatin happens at all levels but they only has resores to watch the few at the top, than that's fine. But at least admit it.

How is it that you are so certain that what you are seeing is in fact cheating as you've described, and not legitimate improvement in a player's game?  You are making a lot of generalizations and claims about the motivations and actions of others, so I'm interested to understand how you're getting this privileged insight.  Also, have you reported the users you suspect using the "Report Abuse" link?

How about a real example? That would be the best way to make your point.

Post a game and annotate it. Don't include the names. Give some other numbers, even if you can't back those up. How often do you see it, on a per-game basis? What's the rating range? Do you have friends who you know for sure are doing this? (I don't need to know the names.) If you surveyed 100 players in a certain rating range, how many would you think have done this type of cheating?

Making your post longer doesn't change the fact that you haven't addressed any of these issues.

How?

Im a new player at chess my friend was showing me how to get chess mate in only four moves. He was accused of cheating. I dount agre with them.

OK NM, I'll send you a fernstince, but not here, so just check your messages.

I think people worry and complain too much about cheating.  For every one person you play that cheats and you lose points, there is multiple games your winning (and getting points) from timeouts that you possibly might not have won.  Everything ultimately gets balanced out.  If someone 200 points below you beats you, it's easy for people to say they cheated.  Have fun, this topic is beating a dead horse.

This is a good chess site lets just play chess. Sod the points

And stop calling me "NM". You may refer to me as "NM Ozzie" or "NM Cobblepot" if you like.

Can someone...anyone...please explain cheating at chess????  I absoultely do not understand it.  What rush do you get by winning games cheating?  Do you actually go around bragging about it?  I just dont understand the fascination with a HUGE rating, and or undefeated record that is based sloely on cheating. 

In my own experience, I've only encountered potential cheating here once.  It was in two unrated games with someone who claimed to be a novice on another site and asked to play a couple of training/teaching games with a stronger player.  So I set up two unrated games, one as Black and one as White.  I got blown out both times.  Yeah, I wasn't putting forth my best game and I was talking about the current issues in the position like you'd do teaching a novice, but I'm strong enough (1702 USCF / 2030 chess.com) that I ought to be able to beat a "novice" in a CC game while while doing all that and chewing gum at the same time too, you know?  I had a friend who is a stronger player look at the games and he agreed that who/whatever was on the other end was way too good to be calling him/her/itself a novice.

So was it an engine or just a strong player?  Who knows?  Who cares?  If it was a strong player, I guess technically it wasn't even cheating.  It was the weird human interaction part about it that was so disturbing.  What was the point of all that?

In normal rated games initiated here, I've never seen any evidence of cheating.  I routinely beat players below 2000 here on chess.com because they drop material or make serious strategic errors fairly regularly.  If they're cheating, they're doing a pretty incompetent job of it...  It's not like I'm particularly strong in the overall chess pecking order.  I lose more often than I win against chess.com players in the 2000-2200 range, but I don't feel like I'm out classed.  Players over 2200 here generally slap me silly, but it has more to do with my level of play than feeling like I'm up against a computer.

  I sometimes resign a hand full of games I'm playing at the time for a couple of reasons. One I think my rating is may be a little inflated and secondly to step back from the board for awhile. I hope that doesn't make me look like I'm cheating.

I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever played a game against cheater here.  I make pretty consistent use of the computer analysis feature available on chess.com, particularly when I lose (it, along with the Mobile platform, was one of my primary reasons for purchasing a membership).  Even some of my worst beats -- games where I though my opponent played pretty close to flawlessly, are full of errors by my opponents that I'm simply not (yet) good enough to see in order to take advantage.

As long as you're not doing it in order to get under the top end of a tournament's rating band it's cool, and if you need to lighten your game load that's your prerogative, but I don't understand why you would resign perfectly good games because you felt your rating was inflated.

Your rating is the sum of all of your games, and so by definition is representative of your play relative to the other players on this site (note that ratings only make sense within their respective contexts -- chess.com ratings can't really be compared to ratings generated elsewhere).  If it's high, it will take care of itself as you complete more games and the level at which you played them gets factored into the calculation.  By resigning games you might otherwise have won you're doing more damage to the representativeness of your rating than by simply letting it sort itself out.

Perhaps you underestimate yourself.

Ozzie, and who else might be interested: I posted a computer analysis of a game played here on chess.com. The forum thread is this one:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/computer-game-analysis

Please see: Chess.com Policy on Cheating :)