I am familiar with cheater_1.  I have read his comments.  I know he is a trouble maker.  Can someone please tell me exactly what he did that got him and all of his related info deleted from the site?  And assuming he broke the rules, why are so many upset he is gone?  Dont we need rules?  And lastly, isnt this Eriks site?  Cant we agree that someone, Erik, should have the authority to make the decisions that are in the best interest of the site?

What he did was refuse to say something that he felt was untrue when Erik demanded he state it as truth.  Erik threatened to ban him if he did not post Erik's version of truth as his own, and it drove cheater_1 over the edge, and he decided to quit.

He was bullied by Erik, pure and simple.  He did not violate any rules whatsoever, but Erik most certainly did by bullying him off of the site.

Some people have even said that Erik and Cheater_1 are the same person - I couldn't possibly comment!

Whoa, he's gone?  Great.  He was annoying and I refused on principle to respond to anything he said and I don't know why other people did.

I was following that thread last night and I'm pretty sure that all his content was just deleted by default when he closed his account.  The thread went away around the same time that the account did.  I'm not sure if cheater_1 knew that would happen, though, because I doubt he would have closed the account like that if he knew all of his content would go away.

ERIK bullied HIM? You gotta be kidding... He was just a troll, going as far to the edge as possible. All he wanted was for people to get annoyed at him and to get banned himself so he could complain that he did nothing "legally" wrong and still got banned. Erik tolerated all his talk about cheating, while he could have banned him for that as well. I'm sure that if people were in Erik's shoes, many would have banned cheater_1 much earlier.

Why does it matter. It's not like cheater_1 is important to chess.com. But what did he say so that erik had to "bully" him.

That is incorrect. Cheater_1 is important to chess.com. Cheater_1 did not insult anyone personally, but only offered radical views that sparked people's interest. Even though he changed his excuses for losing the game against chess.com, that was no reason for erik to ban him. The Party has blown a hole in its perfection.

I've never posted on any cheater_1 thread. I always felt he was a pathetic individual who would just wither up and die if ignored. I don't care if he is banned or not so long as he's not allowed to play chess against individuals. I don't think his so-called Cannibal 37 even exists. He just has the same chess engines available to everyone. 

BasicLvrCH8r wrote "Cheater_1 did not insult anyone personally..."

Not true. I posted one time in a forumn of his (BIG mistake) and he insulted me personally without addressing my point of view.

Cheater_1 had become increasingly bold and manipulative and Erik finally had enough - and rightfully so.  Towards the end, Chtr_1 began playing the victim in order to manipulte people... to play on people's good nature (laughing at everyone who actually bought into his act) and then turn people against Erik.  Please don't be a fool and buy into his act.

yippeeeee hes gone

I never support illegal harassment. Without reason, cheater_1 would be grateful to erik for allowing him to stay on the site for this long. He would not turn against erik for no reason. Erik is guilty of harassment.

OH SNAP!! WHO SAID WHAT? OH REALLY DID HE? NO HE DIDNT. LIKE FOR REAL? TOTALLY UNBELEIVABLE. RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

Too many people are taking this way too seriously. Who really cares?

Dont care much at all - not taking this seriously at all - I was just curious - I have no idea why anyone would be bothered by something so insignificant.....

Could some please give me the relevant parts of the story. I want facts not opinions.

Nothing at you directly. I agree with you, this is getting blown out of proportion.

cheater_1 to me seamed weird, and he was a bit annoying, but life goes on

Forgive the cross-post, I hope to put this to rest.

So it seems cheater achieved a final conflagration in the forums – confusion, disarray, generalizations, side-choosing… sigh. I suppose you can chalk it up to something of his last success, for someone who thrived on sparking such chaos.

In any case – it might be time for cool heads to prevail and to bring an end to this. His exit was somewhat spiteful to Erik, I suppose that was due to a stylistic necessity of forcing the issue – once he made the decision to leave for good, I suppose all courtesy was subjugated to the tactic of making the biggest splash he could muster – taking a stab at the site administrator. I’ll say this for him – such an act was consistent with the character.

It’s regrettable that… achem, impressionable young people aren’t as able to perhaps appreciate the performance for its hyperbolic theatrics and instead find themselves caught up in the carnival of it all… ah well.

I feel it would be pertinent for me to provide a quiet re-cap, for no other reason than it speed this site’s return to normalcy. I meant to say nothing, but I’ve been watching the awkward construals of this situation spiral out of touch with truth and I suppose I cannot help but throw my proverbial hat into the situation. Let me offer him something of a eulogy, then.

For those of us who’ve been around awhile – Cheater_1 was this recurring forum character, as it were (though he often protested his fictionality) who basically exploited a trollish niche perfect for a chess website – praying on the chess-players notion of the malevolent chess cheater and tweaking the character to hyperbolic and super-villainous proportions.

It always skirted the boundaries of permissibility. He was terribly nuanced about not over-doing it; never posting too much in one go so as to force his expulsion, always generalizing his critiques, always being just enough tongue in cheek so as to err on the side of entertaining enough to belie deletion.

Therefore, as an ongoing narration, as a recurring character, as the pet villain, his presence was, though always flagellated in practice, at least tacitly (and unspokenly) welcomed, at least in part, a welcome which erik’s extension of permission created a tenuous overall relation.

Once upon a time, after cheater_1 berated the site as collective cowards for fearing the might of his computer program (the reality of which is dubious), erik rallied the site together in a massive vote chess game, wherein we all battled the cheater once and for all. It was genuinely somewhat exciting – as the site’s collective anti-cheater sentiments finally found tangible expression. He was defeated (legitimately – though he did try to fraudulently reframe this later – which is at the crux of the issue that precipitated this departure) – largely in part to the efforts of a site member Webgogs – offered up his defeat speech and things returned to normal.

Later, he began berating the site once again, demanding a rematch. This was after group vote chess had been launched, so in a conciliatory move (to remove that talking point from his possible themes he could repeat in the forums, while at the same time conforming to site rules) I made him a group, and he was able to start a game against the Lightforce.

In the last few days – it seems Erik became frustrated with cheater’s thematic denial of having lost fare and square and told him that unless he told the truth about that, he might face his account being closed. It seems cheater chose that moment for his impetuous exit, deciding to shoot one last anti-Erik volley before disappearing.

Now please – I’m begging for a modicum of reasonableness here on the part of some younger members who see this as a cause du jour requiring some kind of action; it really isn’t. If you appreciated the story cheater crafted in his time here, so be it, but don’t confuse the story with reality.

I trust that at the end of the day – the person who made cheater_1 really did like chess.com – how could they’ve not, in so far as the time they spent and invested in a creation (however insidious) that on some level they must’ve been proud of. I bet it was hard for this person to finally leave it, but maybe it was time. Maybe there was only so long before vitriolically stressing one’s immatability becomes, well… one note.

I have a tendency to run on – I apologize. There’s more I can say. I think that cheater_1 succeeded in infiltrating the psyche’s of people on the site for a while – there’s no doubt he didn’t draw enormous attention, like a side show, like an impossibly opinionated itinerant street preacher, like some vagrant with a cardboard sign decrying the coming apocalypse.

I appeal to the site’s maturity in moving past this. Recall him with a chuckle, – as a perhaps negatively creative, humorously inflammatory presence, sure, or as a disrespectable nuisance maybe, but it would be silly to make an issue out of this such that one is actually upset with Erik or moved by some absurd zeal to fixate upon the event.

He closed his account. Likely, he suspected it was time. Maybe the mask was becoming tired? Who knows – perhaps part of the fun is in never really knowing the degree of truth or fiction in it, just remembering it like a weird myth – a shadowy fantasy in a trench coat and fedora who, with a comical cackle decided to disappear in the flash of smoke.

__________

To all of those still being worked in a tizzy: if you’re pointing fingers at one another, demanding answers, questioning Erik and acting frenetic in general, well, you’re playing right into the joke. Please relax.

__________

To Cheater_1: I tip my hat to you, irreverent chap. If only you didn’t leave such a mess behind for me to clean up! Hah!

May cheater_1's account rest in peace.