A Convincing Case of Cheating Goes Unpunished

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1Uplift

Chess.com has a very high standard for evidence of cheating. The point, of course, is to avoid false positives, which is reasonable. No one who isn’t cheating should face penalties for cheating. However, I recently had an experience on the site which has led me to conclude that this standard is so high that Chess.com is unable to adequately protect its players. This is just my opinion and I may be wrong. The purpose of this post is to broadcast my experience in hope of positively influencing the debate over what the appropriate standard should be.

[Accusation and analysis removed]

Chess.com clearly takes cheating seriously; they have invested heavily in their cheat-detection techniques and staff. My contact also assured me he would watch [the player] carefully in the future and engine analyze all of his games. I appreciate what Chess.com does to prevent cheating, but I cannot say it is adequate when a player can cheat enough to win a USCF-rated tournament full of tough players and face no consequences.

The details of Chess.com’s cheat detection system are secret (to prevent cheaters from thwarting it) so I cannot give detailed suggestions for how to improve it. However, if the reported standard of a 99.9% confidence level is accurate, I believe it is too high. Chess.com might do well to have players intentionally cheat in a sample of games and check to see if a lower confidence level will detect cheating more often without false positives. Alternatively, less severe consequences such as temporary bans could be used for players who have almost-certainly cheated but the data are not 99.9% conclusive. No player should be able to get away scot-free with what I am convinced [the player] did, especially not when USCF rating points are on the line.

1Uplift

I appreciate your comment. The only terms and conditions I could find were at:

https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/articles/1444772-what-are-the-site-s-policies-

and I could find nothing regarding openly accusing a player. 

That said, I believe I was quite fair to the accused, as the post is about the incident and isn't an attack on that player, who I acknowledge could be innocent. I initially tried to resolve this by contacting support staff, but now that that has failed, I feel this is the only move I can make toward a positive outcome. I want to raise awareness about this issue and I hope Chess.com will rise to the challenge of enhancing cheating protection in the future. I will leave it up to the moderators to remove the post if they feel it violates policy.

torrubirubi
Impressive, and I am astonish that the player was not banned. The best evidence is of course the discrepancy in the level of play before and during the tournament.
BartSimpson50

To discuss the matter of cheating further, or to learn more about cheat detection, please join the Cheating Forum: https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum
Chess.com takes cheating very seriously: see
https://www.chess.com/blog/News/new-tools-for-fair-play-on-chess-com
https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection
https://support.chess.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1444879-fair-play-on-chess-com-what-you-need-to-know
https://www.chess.com/blog/DanielRensch/cheating-on-chesscom
See also

Cheaters are banned when they are detected. There are various tools that are used to keep them from returning without permission; these tools are familiar to anyone who has run an online forum.

However, discussions of cheating in the main forum is not permitted, as it tends to become very heated and result in lots of public accusations, many of which are completely unfounded; you might be surprised how many cheating reports we get about low-rated players after a game that was a complete blunderfest. If all these reports were aired in public, it would just cause an ugly flame war. Therefore, I am locking this post.

To report a suspected cheater to the Support team, please select Report Abuse under the Help menu, or use this link: https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/emails/new. All reports are investigated, even if there is no immediate visible action.

Thanks

BartSimpson50

Moderator

This forum topic has been locked