interesting relationship between accuracy, ratings and cheating

I started playing chess on chess.com a couple of years ago, mostly the daily game. I worked my way all the way to a rating of 1661 with a move accuracy of 73.0. I watched videos and read articles, trying to improve. While my accuracy went up in the last year to 74.4, my rating went down to a high of 1639 in this time period. This pattern has continued.
Highest Rating. Avg Move Accuracy
All time: 1661. 73.0
Past year: 1639. 74.4
90 days: 1529. 79.7
30 days: 1511. 81.7
7 days: 1464. 85.7

During this time period, the number of games my opponent has been flagged for cheating has skyrocketed. It used to be once a month. Now it’s about once a week.

So I ask myself why does it seem like I’m getting better by learning more and making better moves, but my rating has dropped drastically? There are of course many possible reasons. The baseball team with the highest batting avg doesn’t always win. But the team that drives in runs with the game on the line, might win games more often. By the same token, a chess player might make solid moves for most of the game, make one bad move at a pivotal moment and lose it all. But I don’t think I’m doing that.

I am convinced that I am getting better, but I am losing more games and taking ratings losses because of cheating. You might say, “Well but you’re getting the points back when chess.com detects it.” My answer is that chess.com is not catching 90% of the cheating. If someone follows a chess engine for their every move, of course it can be detected. But what if they only do it some of the time? Or what if they only do it 1 or 2 moves the whole game? Of course there is no way for chess.com to detect this, nor should we expect them to.

A couple of months ago I was playing a 1500 player. I slowly but surely pushed his king into a corner and separated his queen from his other pieces. I felt certain that within a few moves I would bust the game wide open. Then he made a very unintuitive move, sacking his knight. After 7-8 more moves his queen got freed up and I lost. I was certain he had cheated. Is it possible he could see 8 moves ahead? Yeah. But then a player that good probably wouldn’t have gotten into that predicament in the first place! My guess is that he got behind, looked at the computer for a couple of moves, and then when he got ahead, went back to playing without the engine. If he only got help a couple different times, how would chess.com. be able to detect this?

Anyway, is it reasonable to think that falling rating scores and rising avg move accuracy are indicative of opponents cheating?

Thanks

I guess you should have reported those who cheated. By doing that, your points will be back. 

How a can a person ever be sure if someone else is cheating, though?

Check their accuracy. If they got higher than their level, then they probably cheat. Also, check their games if they have won  most of them with very high accuracy. 

I would say a game without any blunder for below 1600 I will consider it cheating. However, not all games, but most of them.

And that is why many strong clean players decide to sandbag or stop playing (because they don't wanna be accused) especially if they are annonymous

Discussions about cheating are allowed in the cheating forum club.