chess team tactic: is this cheating

Our number 1 and 7 boards are dominant on their boards while 2 and 8 win about 60%. However, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are a near guranteed loss. So, lets say we expect 3 and 4 to lose next round and 3 is white. Neither makes a move until 4's opponent (white) makes a move. 3 then copies that move. 3's opponent moves. Then 4 copies that move, and so on. Basically, we make their 3 and 4 play each other, because we're guranteed at least a win, even if it's on 4 and 3 is a loss. 

How can be get owned by rules, as long as we don't make any signals or have any communication? We're just copying moves. It feels like it should be against rules, but also feels like it fits in a nice little loophole.

Players are getting outside help with their moves.

dude, bennett, i dont know what the hell is right with the fact you found the one way possible to cheat in chess, but truthfully, i think we were fine without, i guess. maybe if we actually trained our players and didnt goof around we'd be fine without. it was funny when my teammate came up to me and just said "dude, all those games are like, exactly the same" and i just sighed and shook my head xD

yeah, but there is no physical sign of that being true, but i agree. a lot. cheating at chess is just wrong, its a game where its down right impossible to cheat at

its usually not hard to figure it out. i mean, if 2 boards are doing it one match, maybe not. but if 4 or 6 are, and its every match...no way well not get caught. the question is, does it matter if were caught

Last time I read about someone doing this, chess.com kicked him out of the tournament.

Since I doubt there is a rule that comes close enough to specifically addressing this, I think the appropriate response would be for the TD to simply tell the team's coach or director that if the team does this they won't be invited back again (at least for a period of time).

Slightly off topic but I wanted to check the official USCF rules for whether there is a rule on this (my copy is 20 years old), so I went to their site.  It seems that the rules are not online and you have to buy a copy of the rules to get them.  I think that is quite lame.  They should be encouraging players to know the rules and making it easy to find answers to questions like this; not making it unnecessarily difficult.

USCF is all about extracting money from people, not encouraging chess in any way.

I just don't understand why anyone would want to cheat in an online chess game  You people are perverted

It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world

LOL but it's ok to cheat in an OTB game?  The OP didn't even say it was online (and by the way he described it it sounds like OTB).

This idea sounds unethical to me so I don't care whether it's "legal" or not, it's still unethical IMHO. If you're going to cheat someone go cheat BOA, Exxon, Monsanto or some other corp criminals out of as much money as you can, WTF is the BFD about winning some meaningless chess match?

i didnt ask for an ethics review. if you want to talk ethics, how ethical is it for private schools to compete with public ones, such as my own, who cant recruit players? 

i asked for an answer regarding how it would likely be handled 

You asked a question that involves ethics so why are you surprised someone brought up ethics?

Common sense should tell you that nobody here can tell you what some unknown future TD is going to do.  If you want to test it then go ahead and cheat and you'll find out.  OTOH you can do what we all know is obviously the right thing and we'll never need to find out.

I'm pretty sure if you do this, they can time you out.

 No it's not ok, did I say it was ok? But there is something to be gained by cheating OTB as opposed to the sweet f**k all you get for winning an online chess game, so it's understandable why people do it.

If the OP is planning to do this in an OTB match, then he better hope he's playing the school for special kids otherwise all their board 3 or 4 has to do is look at the goddamn board next to them and discover what's going on