How can people think they can detect engine use?

How come any non advanced player (<2000) think they can detect use engine use. If people could recognise engine moves then surely they would be making these moves in a game and have a noticeably higher rating as a result.

Perhaps they should try Guess the Move where you have to try and make the same moves a grandmaster did in a game and see how difficult that can be.  

Everyone knows what it feels like to play a much stronger player.  If someone your rating starts playing like that, even though you can't find those moves yourself, then it feels like something is wrong.

Also, it's actually pretty easy to have the best moves as candidate moves in most positions.  I think more often lesser players blunder by not being able to recognize why the bad moves are bad.  i.e. they can recognize good moves even if they aren't always playing them.

What if the person was "sandbagging"

shell_knight

I do not agree with you. For example I am loosing a lot and my rating is lower than should be for different reasons: playing tired or drunk :) But in most cases I lost when I played with Iphone application, there it is more difficult to play, you have lags on Wifi, or just you need to do something else(for example to change train in your way to work). 

So bottom line it is really possible that with 800 rating I may beat +1200 rating players, without any engine. Of course it is true in my rating categorie. Somebody with 1400 I have no chance to win.

I think you may perform just computer engine analysis that chess.com provides. If your opponent lower rating than 2600 doing the same moves he probably cheating.

In most of my beutifull wins (I like to gambit a lot) this engine found my mistakes. Therefore, conclusion - I am not cheating even when I am winning higher rating players :D

I'm not saying they're right!  (Usually they're wrong).  But just explaining why people think they can.

My second part was addressing the OP's "if people can see the best moves then they'd be playing them in their games."  It's not only that the moves look good, but afterwards you can't find fault with any of them on your own.  (This is when I get suspicious).

There's no doubt search engines are being used.  I play turn-base chess because I like to analyze, so that gives me time to do so.  For me, it's not a race.  I have no engines to use.........I still rely on a chess board and moving pieces around.........very old school approach.

People just don't like to lose, so they'll use any excuse.

Simple...After the game, you can use an engine/GUI combination and see evidence of it. There are mathmatical ways to determine if players use engines...

I am working on a system that can tell even if you turn it on once in a while, only in hard positions, after blunder, to keep from blundering, etc.

For those that don't have that sort of resource but have played both strong players and engines, the difference is rather obvious.

You will not be able to avoid getting beaten by players using engines. If there is a way to cheat, certain types of people will do it whenever possible.

For this reason, you need to acknowledge that ratings gained through online play are suspect. 

Here's what tips me off:  Everything that I can think of that might improve my position has been anticipated over a series of moves, and many of those moves in retrospect had 2-3 different and often subtle purposes.  I've been stomped on by much better players, but it doesn't feel the same.  It's one of those "I know it when I feel it" sorts of things.

Pretty much this. I don't know why you are giving it so much thought. I guarantee some of my opponents think I'm cheating when I destroy them in the Queen's Gambit, when the truth is that I know more opening theory than the great majority of players my strength, and know exactly how to attack in this opening if my opponent makes a mistake that I recognize.

IDK, it's weird. You will attack someone's queen and the don't even look at the threat and blunder their queen. Then these peoplw cuss at you say you're usinf an engine.

The main tells for me are:

1) Inhuman moves. Typically include seemingly useless pawn advances, retreating pieces when not under threat, bizarre king moves (e.g. h7 to h8).

2) Brilliant and obviously deliberate sacrifices. Most non-masters would stop calculating a sacrifice after a few non-promising moves. Seeing a remarkable way to regain the material five moves later is fishy at my skill level.

3) Weird timing of moves. If someone spends 5 seconds to play their second move, and 5 seconds to decide on a sacrifice or critical position later... it's probably because entering the move into an engine and reading the output is taking a consistent amount of time.

Reviewing a players statistics can reveal a cheater, eg., 20+ wins, 0 losses, high turn-base (online) rating, very low TT and Blitz rating. I recently reported two players with this type of dodgey stats and they were both banned within hours. Although you do need to check that the Blitz and TT ratings are based on a fair number of games.

It allows and scores alternate moves.

the lower the time control, the harder it is to cheat and the easier it is to notice cheating. i mean, it's somewhat hard for cheaters to hide timing tells and "computer moves" in a 3 0 game, but in standard and correspondence games... well...

let's just say that i find it hard to believe that a number of the top correspondence ratings here are completely "clean" (as far as the rules here go).

it's possible to use engines in 1 min no increment games. there are youtube videos of people doing this on chess.com in fact. it's not difficult to tell. the computer takes the exact same amount of time for each move regardless of whether or not it's forced. there are also other ways you can tell if it's a computer or not. Tiger Lilov uploaded several videos on this topic to youtube when he was analyzing Boris Ivanov's games.

yah i've seen that, but they seem to be banned rather quickly in every chess site with a half decent staff because, as i said, it's pretty hard to make it not obvious.

Yeah, except many super-obvious cheaters weren't banned before months or even years on chess.com...

And they can come back the very next day with a fresh account