What is it with the rampant cheating in Rapid games?

How can you tell if they are cheating?

Experience. I've been playing chess for 20 years and you start to pick up on tell-tale signs:

1. Knows book theory all the way out even in your obscure pet line.

2. Plays every move with the same cadence (time spent pondering), only differing by a few seconds whether it's an obvious move or a very critical position. It becomes blatantly obvious when you set up a forced recapture and the opponent still has to spend the same time entering the move into their engine to get the next reply.

3. If you're well versed on your opening and know from past experience what an engine prefers over a human's natural instinct when you break from book, it becomes another obvious sign when they play that engine's choice.

4. They are seemingly invincible and it feels like hitting your head against a brick wall, then you notice after the game that they are 900 in blitz chess, and have gained 400 points on a perfect winning streak in rapid the past few days.

5. You have chess.com's engine analysis go over the game to confirm your suspicion you were cheated against.

Thanks for that...

In the case of #2. i have a club-mate who does that in OTB games, I've seen him with 5 minutes left on his clock but using 3 minutes to figure his escape from check, when there only is one escape...

They key difference here is there's no change in pondering time. The forced recapture or forced single-move still takes them the same time to reply compared to a very tricky position. In one game, it got so obvious that I called the person out on it, and they began taunting me like it was funny. Joke was on them though, as they got banned for cheating after I reported the game.

haha, nice ;-)