Are people cheating on the 15/10 games or am I just really out of form?

I used to be rated around 1650 on the Live chess 15/10 timing . I have only played Blitz for the last few years and have a rating around 1750.

I recently came back to the 15/10 games and everyone I play seems to be SUSPICIOUSLY good at chess. My rating has plummeted to 1380. I cant work out if I am just tired and not concentrating well, or there is something strange going on. In my last game against an opponent rated just 1400, I analyzed the game that I lost in about 12 moves. He played moves that were book moves, good moves and his final move was rated as "brilliant" . He destroyed my Pirc defence. Are 1400 players supposed to be that good?

I know ratings are not that important, but I am just trying to work out if I am too tired to play, or if there is something going on at chess.com. I would never name or accuse the player I played against. He took a lot of time on his first 8 moves , as do a lot of players on this 15/10 time.  

You'd be surprised how bad you are in rapid after blitz. Blitz basically destroys your chess ability. Take a look at your games before and after you started playing blitz and after there should be a significant amount of riskiness and positional keys you just don't notice because in blitz it isn't punished. rest assured it WILL be punished in rapid you have a long time to figure out how the pirc sets you at a minor disadvantage and thus why nobody plays it. Play the French if you must. Also that "brilliant" move means nothing it's mostly just categorized as a move which increases White's advantage significantly so a tactic will trigger that.

I don't think the often stated idea that lots of people must be cheating because they seem to be playing well above their rating really makes sense. If they did that repeatedly without being caught then their rating would be higher as a result.

Well, when you come back to a type of chess after a long break you have a much higher Glicko RD factor meaning your rating gain/loss is far bigger until you have played a few more games again, then it settles down towards the more usual +/- 8 for playing someone of similar rating to yours.

Your lost your first 4 games on returning and it was in those you lost the rating points.  Since then you have stayed at a fairly similar rating.  In the first 2 of those 4 the quick computer analysis shows you made a lot of mistakes, blunders and some missed wins, so your opponent didn't appear to do anything out of the ordinary.  The 3rd one was closer, but he was almost 100 points higher rated than you at the time you played and again his moves were nothing extraordinary.  The 4th you were winning and made 1 blunder that flipped the whole game on its head.  Beyond that I haven't looked at the analysis since you have basically just been winning and losing in fairly equal measure.

Do people cheat at the 15/10 games? Yes they do, frequently. This does not mean you have necessarily been encountering cheats because playing only blitz and coming back to rapid after a long time means you will need to make adjustments so it could just be a rustiness issue and you will tune in after a few games. I don't play the 15/10 pool but I play the swiss tournaments sometimes, mostly these are populated by non premium members and I see quite a few blatant engine users e.g. a 1000 rated player ( a rating established over hundreds of games ) with a 900 blitz rating crushing several 1600+ players with a playing accuracy of 99% + and going 5/5 has happened, funnily enough Chess.com did not agree with me or anyone else from the tourney that the player was suspect but this is a typical example and happens regularly even though I only have the time to play a limited number of games I see it alarmingly often.

Took a quick look at a few of your games. Honest opinion? I think you've just gotten kinda sloppy. Seeing a lot of positional errors along with just straight up hanging pieces, up to and including a queen, which I wouldn't expect a 1600+ to do regularly.

Looked at the Pirc game too. Your opponent's play was admittedly impressive for the rating, but in such a short game, anyone can get lucky.

 It might be true that " successful " cheats are 2000+ rated but it does not follow that there are no lower rated engine users and I know they do not all get caught.

You are definitely the most qualified person to make that determination.🙄

I don't have so much experience with 15|10 (may or may not affect my analysis, don't know) but I looked at the game in question with the brilliant move by your opponent, I see you made some mistakes in that game including the move before his brilliant move, still I think the computer had your game close until that last mistake, and then came the brilliant move, as far as your opponents moves, i can't really judge if that person had help, in general most of the moves look to me to be ordinary and some even modest moves, nothing spectacular until that brilliant move so my first, and I can see someone finding that move quickly also if they are practiced at tactics puzzles, so I'd say at the moment I would guess it was someone playing without help or I would proceed on that assumption at the moment if I were you... you say you recently came to back to 15|10? If I were you, I would probably analyze 15|10 games before your layoff and compare to now, I'd guess you'd find you are making more mistakes now than back then which has led to a lower rating, as far as your higher rating in blitz, I would say blitz and 15|10 are quite different in the way one plays, so maybe your game is just better suited to blitz at the moment because you are used to it, I noticed you had a lot of time left on the clock when your opponent had his brilliant move, maybe in the past you would have taken more time to make a move in 15|10 and potentially made less mistakes because of that?

Less than 1200 - 1000 rated players ( well established rating ) quite often crush the 15/10 swiss tourns I play, destroying everyone - sometimes there are players rated 1900 getting crushed by them too, sometimes you get rating points back, sometimes you don't, it happens and some of them do not get punished.

Please take this to the Cheating Forum club.