I have some reasons to believe we don’t always play real people on this site.

My case is the following: Every time you start a challenge, the system finds you and opponent in within 2 or 3 seconds or at least it does to me, it never really takes more than 5 seconds. This is probably not enough reason to suspect they make you play against a computer from time to time to give the appearance of a lot of traffic on the site, but here is what led me to believe it might just be the case:

First, I noticed sometimes you will play another “person”, finish the game (no matter the outcome) then you stop for a few minutes (4+) maybe even close the app, then you star a new challenge and all of the sudden you get the same person you were playing with minutes ago. It is hard to believe this “person” you played against just minutes ago clicked on the rematch button and waited for minutes on you when they could’ve just started a new challenge and get another opponent in the matter of seconds. And it would be one in a million cases were your opponent will start a new game and finish it 2 or 3 seconds before you create a new challenge and you both coincide again. Ever since I started noticing this, every time it happened I would type in the game chat “Are you real?” and whenever I got an answer I would get a generic response and the conversation would never go beyond a couple more exchanges similar to a conversation with Siri.

 Second, it would be beneficial for the site to give the appearance of a lot of traffic by making you believe you are playing real people all the time but in reality, putting you against bots sometimes with a level similar to the rating you are looking to play against. After all, since this is all online is hard to prove there is a real person on the other side every time you play, especially when you play on blitz mode. I mean how many times do you engage in a conversation or meat someone in person from this site?

 If there is any statistic major out there, I would love to know the probability of getting an opponent within a couple seconds every time you start a challenge based on how many players are online all the time and how many different game modes there are (if it is even plausible that there are that many players online as they say there are with all the other chess sites out there). This shouldn't be hard I am just too lazy to do it myself.

 Please let me know your thoughts on this…. hope I don’t get kicked out for this.

I think the site does use bots every now and then, but it isn't  too bad. I don't  mind. 

Could you please link to some of these "bot accounts"?

If someone tried to do a half baked Turing test on me during a game, they should feel blessed if they even got a generic response. Too many crazies out there; best be careful and just focus on the chess. 

Post a couple of games. Don't include the names of the opponents though since that will be consdered "naming and shaming"

Sounds like paranoia to me. If they were doing this, it would be very easy for them to use bots with different names. Next time you think you have a bot, check their profile or try talking to them. 

The only bot on this site is me john

We sometimes play bots disguised as real people and we don’t even know.

why are you disguised as real people when playing bots?  and why don't you know?

You're wasted here autobunny

I dont think it is the site itself. I noticed there are sometimes "bot trains" when you have a day where several bots are "leveling up" their rating. On such a day you do lose about 100 to 200 rating points if you play a lot. Sounds much does it?

But it is not just me. I play in the 1500-1600 range mostly in bullet/blitz and on such a day you play the bots that crush you, easily putting out 2000+ performance but also other human players who suffer the same fate as you and are around 1400-1500ish but have a 1800+ rating in other time controls. These guys will bounce back up quickly, as you do over time but nevertheless you can feel the difference in play strength.

I was wondering for some time, why these bots are here and I think i found the solution. They are sold. People in fact buy accounts with a 2000 rating, They pay small money to experience high level chess for a couple of matches. Thats why many of these bots exist I think.

11 years of secret in this site is exposed!!

@OP, by a small chance lower rated player can play better than higher rated player if it is his prepared opening or his familiar tactical postion etc.

I mean , 1 in 10 games 1600 can play better than 2000+. ( This is normal, all human are hit and miss).

And also in theorey in less than 1 in billion ( 1 in 10^50) , an idiot or a random mover can play better than Stockfish.

Nothing on the internet is real.

Electronic media is designed to distract you while the demons harvest your life force.

We all should be spending time with real people in person.

Now THAT'S an interesting recurring forum topic. 😁

We're all bots and this is the Matrix

I agree. I also believe they have bots posting on the forums. They all say the same things. 

“online ratings are worthless”

“the only way to improve is by playing slow time controls”

“Shut up Staples13 you idiot”

maybe chess.com can borrow google’s software engineers for a little while to create some forum bots with a little more variety 

I dont think it's a big deal. They play pretty human like usually, but it does seem fishy. I think you forgot the main reason for suspecting computer use. Yes, it's probably done to make it appear like there is more traffic than there really is, but I think the main suspicion is 15 thousand new members joining every day, for a total of something like 30 million. I find that incredibly hard to believe, especially given the very limited pool of players. Maybe tens of millions of people sign up and dont participate in any way, but that seems unlikely.