What are your thoughts on chess players using cheap/dirty tricks?

I would throw your children from the city walls for a +1 on my elo....

Just kidding, but if it's legal its allowed.

You can easily prevent Scholar's mate. In fact you should be happy seeing it because you will get a good position if you learn how to counter it.

GG

It is not really about that, it's about the intention to humiliate by the imposter using cheap tricks.

It is not the thing of humiliating anyone, it is just the only way they know how to win. It is semi successful at lower levels, so they keep doing it.

As a kid, I tried doing this as well, but only for a few games, because I learned that it is not really a good way to play.

When people learn more about chess, they stop doing it because it hinders their progress, and it doesn't work anymore. Basically at sub 800 level or so, this is what you need to contend with with black pieces, so you will have to learn how to counter it.

It's beyond stupid to say a perfectly legal way to play the game is "dirty". Like if you fall for scholars mate, that's your fault. It's really really easy to avoid getting scholars mated if you actually pay attention and learn how.

And stalemate tricks. That is not dirty at all, or even cheap like scholars mate. They add an element of risk for the winning side, and they can be quite clever. Again it's your job to actually watch out for it instead of just falling for it and complaining

This is exactly those takes I expect. Ppl say "it limits the position, if you know how to counter it", bro, not everyone is a IM or GM or whatever, most people are in elo hell.
To play that against worse players, pretending to have a bad elo, it's cheap itself and it's even cheaper to trap out weaker players all the time and laugh about them getting frustrating.
Also people forget that we are human beings and not everyone is a machine, having no emotions while getting absolutely crushed while having the intention to play the game CASUALLY. And most players want that.