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
Discussions about cheating, potential cheating, or cheat detection are not in the general forums. If you want to discuss join the following club.
https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum
I joined Chess.com around 2 months ago and have been amazed at how many suspicious games I’ve played. It seems especially prevalent in tournaments where people, having won two games normally, suddenly play like Magnus or Hikaru for their last three, assuring a podium finish.
It’s been very frustrating, so I’ve been thinking of ways to reduce the amount of cheating. Please do add more in the comments – if it gets traction, I’ll collate them all together.
Make cheaters play cheaters
There were 37.67 million games per day played on Chess.com in February 2023. We can only assume this has grown since then.
That gives Chess.com a massive pool of players at any one time to match together.
As cheating is hard to prove 100%, I suggest putting people who are suspected of cheating – played 95% accuracy in 10+ games and are rated under 1500, for example – into a pool together and made play each other.
Honest people will lose, cheaters will win, and it’s another way of building a case.
Prioritise anti-cheating technology over chess engine development
Does anyone care anymore if Stockfish now has an estimated elo rating of 3546? Does anyone care if they raise it to 3,600, or even 4,000?
Once chess engines go way beyond human understanding, they essentially become useless. The only reason for developing them further is some ego competition between developers, as if having the smartest chess engine makes them the smartest.
Chess.com is currently developing Torch. I would suggest they move all their resources, and people working on that engine development, into a new project focused on anti-cheating technology and detection.
Cheating is an existential threat to chess, and therefore Chess.com – reducing it will have a much more positive impact on their bottom line than their engine beating Stockfish in some computer tournament.
Incentivize losing
This one might sound weird but hear me out!
Chess cheating can probably be boiled down to two motivations – laziness and ego. Laziness, because the person doesn’t want to overexert their brain in a difficult situation and ego because they want to seem the smartest in the battle with their opponent.
It’s essentially a cultural thing – being good at chess is seen as being smart. Ridiculous of course, but it’s true.
So, let’s make losing more of a ‘win’. Here are some ways of doing it:
If we can start changing the culture of chess into being about learning and improving, rather than winning, we reduce the incentives to cheat.
Share IP addresses across chess sites
If you get banned on Chess.com, Lichess, Chess24 etc., they should be able to share your IP address.
Share anti-cheating technology
This may be happening already, but data and techniques between these big organisations should be shared regularly to improve each other’s systems.
You can probably never make it open-source, but sharing at high-levels is a must.
Have groups of volunteers cheating on website deliberately
It’s very easy to spot a cheater that plays at 99.7 accuracy in nearly every game. It’s harder to spot those that cheat selectively.
However, there will still be patterns. There are always patterns.
Chess.com, if they’re not dong it already, should have groups of volunteers to go on with the single suggestion – ‘Figure out a way to cheat at chess and not get caught’ – and then analyse the data after a period of time. Everyone will use different methods, but patterns will emerge.
One strike only
You cheat once, you’re banned. You will not be able to open a new account on the same IP address either.
There may be some opening for people to apologise and come back under strict conditions – people do deserve a second chance.
I won’t cover ‘improve the anti-cheating algorithm’ as I assume they’re doing this already. Although, we all know of case where we’ve reported obvious cheaters and they’re still playing.
As I said, please do add your own in the comments. This post will probably get lost in the fog, but you never know.
Thanks for reading!