Why so much CHEATERS?

When I started my chess journey a year ago (Rapid 30min/1h) I was delighted with chess.com user-friendly interface and the game itself. Unfortunately, when I reached level 900, everything changed significantly for the worse. THEY showed up. Cheaters.

If you play often enough, are deeply focused, deeply in reality, in this moment, you can sense the average skill level of your opponent over time, regardless of whether you are playing at level 1000 or 1500 or 2000. You can sense the average opponent, their tactical level, their ability "see" own weaknesses and your intentions, as well as how much time you need on average to respond to more complex moves of your opponent.

So at first my suspicions were only at this "feeling" level, but later many empirical factors joined it. At this point I can say with full confidence that despite chess.com bragging that they have a top notch cheater catching system, that is absolutely not true.

Clearly, chess.com catches cheaters playing with 99 accuracy. It's as easy as taking away candy from a child. However, most cheaters are not so primitive and maintain lower accuracy according to the average level of opponents. At level 1000, 80-85 accuracy is enough to defeat most opponents. Sometimes even 75 is enough.

So, I have noticed several factors that define that a cheater is playing against me:

1. Poor positional awareness early in the game followed by a rapid jump in quality. At first, the pieces are not developed, the opponent locks them himself or even loses them. But then, all these disadvantages suddenly disappear, the opponent's game improves tremendously, and you have the feeling that you are playing against an "invincible idiot".
2. Playing at level 1000, most players do simple attack concepts that a good chess player would counter. People are emotional. They want to attack quickly and easily. The computer, on the other hand, sees ahead that these ideas are wrong, so it does not recommend such attacks. Since cheaters listen to the computer, they don't have the typical adventurous attacks that are so common at level 1000. Instead, they get the pieces amazingly correct positionally so that you don't have a single meaningful move.
3. When playing against a cheater, you lose significantly more time than usual, because you have to think about each move much longer. You immediately feel a huge difference from other games. If they can't win quickly due to their opponent's mistakes, they win by taking advantage of their opponent's timeout. Against a stronger opponent, they cannot afford a higher volume of Stockfish moves, but still at level 1000 it is enough to cut off all attack ideas through illegal help and simply wait for the opponent to run out of time.
4. Cheater does not understand the moves suggested by the computer. For example, if you sacrifice a piece, cheaters usually choose not to listen to the computer and take it, because it seems obvious to them. They believe that there is no need for computer help here. A similar way is to create a situation where most of the intuitive options in the opponent's move are mistakes. These are usually the only mistakes cheaters make. Therefore, sacrifice is almost the only way to somewhat resist them.
5. Their rating fluctuates tremendously like 900-1400-900 but always stands still in long run. I think this is due to the fact that at 1400+ they have to do more Stockfish moves to defeat stronger opponents and they are afraid of getting caught. To cheat above level 1400 and not get caught, you need to know how to play chess.
6. Around level 1000, I've played ~500 games and failed to defeat opponents higher than level 1200. A friend of mine who also plays around level 1000 has played 15,000 games and hasn't been able to defeat a single opponent above level 1200 either. Cheaters, on the other hand, have consistently beaten level 1400, 1700, or even 2000 players. Why doesn't chess.com wonder - what are these people doing at level 1000?

I have regularly blocked such players and reported them to chess.com, but none of them have been punished yet. This means that chess.com is unable or unwilling to consider the listed factors and the big picture from their profiles in order to define suspicious players, place them in a special monitoring group, or otherwise restrain them.

Of course, this is not an absolute factor, but the cheater's origin in most cases is Africa, India, the Middle East. In places where the average level of infantilism is higher, people cannot cope with their egos and wants shortcuts. Based on my experience so far, I have decided not to play with people from these regions in the future.

Unfortunately, you have to become a chess racist, because this website cannot ensure that everyone is equal against the law.

You might think that getting stuck at level 1000 is just a matter of player skill. "Learn to play better and you'll beat the cheaters!" - that's what arrogant level 2000 players might answer. I will say - not everyone wants to play at 2000 level. Chess is and should be enjoyable at any level. So it's not fair that I have to get past some "cheeting treshold" to avoid those disgusting games.

Chess.com - If you want to make money from cheaters so badly, why not take example from Rockstar and put all cheaters on Bad Sport server? Let them play against each other!

The perception of cheating levels is orders of magnitude more than the actual amount.

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

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chesscom-update-august-2024#FairPlay

The site closed over 57,000 accounts in July for fair play violations and has a full team of staff working on reports along with some automated systems for detection.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/fair-play

That said, discussions of cheating, potential cheating, or cheat detection are not allowed in the general forums. If you would like to discuss join the following club https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum