I have been following the MirceaH petition with GREAT interest. As I have never seen this person play and don't know a thing about him, I cannot pass any judgements. What I CAN do is give you EXPERT UNBIASED insight.

Having cheated at internet chess for over a decade, I can determine with 100% accuracy when I am playing a computer or a real person. I have conducted accuracy tests with friends who were trying to fool me, and I WAS NEVER WRONG.

I have NO CLUE what methods chess.com employs and will not speculate, but it's NOT about that. I am only here to enlighten you all with telltale signs of cheating at LIVE Internet chess.

Every rule has an exception and every exception will have an exception, but here's what to look for. Let's start from the VERY beginning of a game.

1) Many cheaters have to transpose moves from a program. This takes time. You will rarely see a move made in under 3 seconds. Exception: when the cheater has the game won and begins to make the finishing moves on their own OR when their time is running out. Raise a RED FLAG if your opponent cannot make an opening move in under 3 seconds.

2) Programs NEVER deviate from the opening book unless their opponent gets out of the book first. Try it out. When you play program vs. program they will play every single move and variation that it has in its database. I've seen them go 15 moves deep before they even begin to ponder. If your opponent is ripping through their opening moves every 2 or 3 seconds and then all of a sudden takes a much longer time for their first "out of book" move---RED FLAG.

3) Forget about trying to interpret the style of play. Ultra Strong play can mean one of two things: RYBKA or KASPAROV. Impossible to distinguish when just looking at the moves. Just because the moves are strong or aggressive or brilliant doesn't mean you have a cheater on your hands. But a "token" RED FLAG should go up when confronted with seemingly perfect play.

4) During the endgame, if your opponent routinely takes 3 seconds or more for every single move, even when moving out of check when there are only 3 possible moves--RED FLAG.

5) If you are an average player and get your butt whooped by someone, there can be no RED FLAG. However, if you are rated 2300 or more OR are using a program to cheat your opponent but still get your but WHOOPED--raise TWO RED FLAGS. See, in the history of human vs. chess program play, no human on the face of the earth has ever checkmated a program in a game of UNDER a one hour time limit per side. Many a program has lost in 40/120 play, but never in faster games. Progs are just too powerful and humans are too weak when the time is ticking away. Most GMs play like a 1700 player when the heat is on. SO if your chessmaster gets checkmated in a game with ANYTHING under a 2 hour per side time limit, YOU GOT CHEATED or you just played ANAND on his absolute best day ever.

Look at each of these criteria. If you play a person multiple times and you get these repeated red flags, you have just played a chess program.

Now, as for electronic methods of detection, I will not go into them with any detail as I have no desire to compromise this site, but I will say this, they are NOT reliable. I have no clue if this site uses electronic, human, or a combo of both to determine if you are cheating or not.

First off, let it be known there is ABSOLUTELY NO electronic gadget out there that can snoop in on your computer and find out if have FRITZ running in the background. Doesn't exist...CANNOT exist. It's like saying I can invent a telescope that can see into your bedroom in New York City from my house In Los Angeles. The laws of REALITY prevent that from happening.

Now, with that out of the way, most other electronic are so LOW TECH that fooling them is so easy it's not funny.

The BOTTOM LINE is this, unless you are a cheater yourself, you will have approximately a 50% chance of determining if a person is legit or cheating.

Pretty good post, but once again you made a claim not substantiated by any evidence that as a matter of fact is just downright wrong. 

"See, in the history of human vs. chess program play, no human on the face of the earth has ever checkmated a program in a game of UNDER a one hour time limit per side. Many a program has lost in 40/120 play, but never in faster games."

Just plain wrong.

In addition....

http://blog.chess.com/mwilkin9/how-to-detect-cheaters2

Well, I could say something easy like, "Prove it. SHow me one instance where a TOP LEVEL PROGRAM lost to a GM in anything but a regulation game." But then you would say, and rightly so, "Show me the proof that no human has ever beat a TOP LEVEL PROG at a quick game.

All I can say is that there is no documented evidence of a GM beating a Chess program in a game such as 15 minutes per side or 30 minutes per side etc. And I'm not talking about Chessmaster7000 either. I'm talking your FRITZ'S or RYBKA'S, etc.

And if you said that, you would clearly be doing what you do best and trying to manipulate words to win an argument. The point is you clearly stated in your first post that no human has ever beaten a program in any game under an hour for both sides. 

And the proof is not hard to find:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1497429

GM Nakamura has beaten Rybka in 3min  blitz games on ICC for example

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1497426

there are at least 2 more wins

interesting

Who cares if he is not accurate on computer and human chess- thats not the point even though everyone is harping on it: the point is how to detect a cheater  while playing chess. There is nothing bad about that. I was playing someone on yahoo. He was taking an odd amount of time on his moves usually about the same time each time. He would make odd moves hanging pieces then all of a sudden your piece would be trapped or you had no good moves. His rating was low(at the time) so I was surprised a little. I clicked stand up but didn't click leave so it looked like I left and guess what he said "You should upgrade to to the latest version of Fritz" . I should have known, his name was JacobFritzenhouse.

I knew it. I JUST KNEW some DOLT would post the Nak vs rybka games as some sort of proof.

Let me break that game down for you as I happen to know it INTIMATELY.

271 moves in under 3 minutes by Nakamura = ONE HALF SECOND PER MOVE. HAAA. HA HA HA. HARDY HAR HAR. There can be AT THE MOST 180 moves in such a game. You are simply not allowed to make 2 moves in one second. NO NO NO. Mr. NAKAMURA was given added time per move. That's a NO NO.

Second, I have analyzed this game before and white was ahead as much as +2.8 at times. How can the world's strongest chess program blunder away a lead like that? Well, it came out that it was MISPROGRAMMED to avoid a draw at any cost. Under normal circumstances, it wouldnt have blundered that away. You can see that once Nak sees that RYBKA REFUSES to draw (look at how many times nak asked for the draw by repeating the rook's moves ENDLESSLY) and with the LUXURY of added time, he begins to exploit the misprogramming.

Third, Mr. nak, with less than .6 seconds to make a single move had the wits about him to PLAY with Rybka and underpromote to 5 bishops and go for the fancy checkmate. THis game was an EXHIBITION game with RYBKA Dumbed down and NAK given added time.

NEXT........

Premoves. Taking advantage of programming flaws. Just b/c you can't win doesn't mean he couldn't and didn't.

cheater_1,

how does it feel to be a douche bag?  Your mom must not give you enough attention... I say that because you seem like the kind of person that still lives with their mother.

Just enjoy your games, for goodness sake!  Chess.com is out there to be enjoyed; don't spend your time worrying about whether you're playing a cheater or not!  This link is good:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/a-question-probably-obvious-about-rules

That should clarify things...it obviously depends upon whether you are talking about Live or Correspondence Chess.

OG

My sentiment exactly, OpeningGambit. When my opponent takes forever to start I knew the probability of cheating is good. But I played just the same. So my rating seesaw like crazy dipping as low as 1100 and as high as 1800. Doesn't matter, for livechess drops my games like crazy too thus depleting my points even more.

once you dwell on cheating, and negatively impact your enjoyment.. it's time to quit! do something constructive. fly a kite, kiss your girl. life is too short steaming over something difficult to control.

I have a program to detect cheaters. Cheater 1 are you ready, it's new, the program is called !@#$% $%^&* *((*(**(( error, error, error.

This message was enterupted by cheater 1.

Cheater 1 your so intelligent, please make a baby with me so the cheater name can live on.

I thought you were evicted, Cheater, I guess ideas can't be chucked

1) STARWRAITH, your comments hurt more than others, coming from a fellow cheesehead. SOLIDARITY!! ps, I no longer live with my mother, but she does do my wash from time to time.

2) KEPLER....NOW I CHOOSE to respond to you as you have decided to actually DEBATE the issue and forgo your TROLL-LIKE ways. I too owned SARGON on the commodore 64. You, thrashed it, eh? If I remember, and I CANNOT provide proof at this time, it was rated above 2000 back then. You were playing at a level CONSIDERABLY above 2000 back then, why you must be a GM now. As you can tell by my sarcasm, I dont believe a word you say.

Anyway, let me clarify things a bit. Chess programs have advanced LEAPS and BOUNDS in the last 30 years. Allow me to ammend my statement by saying that in the LAST 5 YEARS, no human on the face of this EARTH has defeated a professional strength chess program at its MAXIMUM playing strength, on DEFAULT settings, with NEITHER side having added time per move and each having the SAME time per side, running on a  CURRENT computer system, in games under 1 hour per side.  NEVER.

I read cheater 1's comments at night insteed of counting sheep, it puts me to sleep everytime. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Huh, what happened I must have dozed off.

 Why don't you add just one more requirement to make sure that the statement isn't wrong? I also could take a perfectly false statement and then add 10 requirements to make it true.

This could be a great debate if we could refrain from the personal attacks...