The perception of cheating levels is orders of magnitude more than the actual amount. The vast majority of games and players are clean.
https://support.chess.com/article/648-what-do-i-need-to-know-about-fair-play-on-chess-com
https://www.chess.com/article/view/online-chess-cheating
https://www.chess.com/article/view/chesscom-update-march-2025#FairPlay
The site closed more than 100,000 accounts in February for fair play violations and has a full team of staff working on reports along with some automated systems for detection.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/fair-play
That said, discussions of cheating, potential cheating, or cheat detection are not allowed in the general forums. If you want to discuss join the following club https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum
We should be allowed to be highly selective of opponents - I play 30 min games so quite a large time commitment.
I shouldn't be docked points for not starting games against players I think have a high probability of cheating in their past - 1300 rated players with accuracy ratings of 95 percent on matches featuring 60 moves etc.
i think there's an element that there's so much of it, other people start doing it to keep up, and maybe I'm attracting them, with my profile pic - but its easy to tell because you've not got any space after 20 moves - it's obvious at this level we're not magnus or hikaru etc.
often see people saying 'it's rare' or downplaying it in these forums - frankly only a cheat would downplay it.
there are players who cheat infrequently, regularly getting beaten by 1300s then playing games with the kind of accuracy GMs would struggle with.
The website needs to either allow us honest players to be highly selective in game selection, or come down on the cheats with a ton of bricks. If someone cheats in 2 matches, they should be banned, we can allow one freak game, perhaps.
If the website can't do this, allow us to be selective without docking points- the current setup is simply forcing honest players to play cheats.