One of my opponents has today been banned for cheating (not a total surprise to be honest).

I currently have 3 games on the go against him - does anyone know what happens to these regarding rating points, etc?

streetfighter

I think you will get the points, it is only fair.

I actually think that the games should be set to unrated and resigned by the staff (or allowed to time out) so that there is no rating impact.

I wouldn't want my rating impacted because I'd "won" a game in this manner -- assuming the player was high rated, as any good cheater should be, it would really skew my rating upwards and also possibly become my best win.  It's bad enough that the cheater will have skewed other players' ratings downward in his ascent, it only makes sense to prevent further compromise of the ratings system once it becomes known and is preventable.

 I think I agree with this, but I have already lost 2 or 3 games (I think, I'll have to check?!) to this guy, so have already lost rating points.

To be honest, the rating points aren't all that important to me - I'm just curious about how it works?!

Yeah, in a perfect world, you'd unwind the cheater's impact on the ratings of everyone who's played them in addition to stopping any futher impact as they time thier remaining games out, but I can't imagine that the complexity of trying to do this is worth it to the staff here in light of all of the other stuff they have on their plate.

For example, ...

1. He beat someone. Their rating went down. They qualified for a tournament they shouldn't have.

2. He played someone. It was their 5th game, enabling them to qualify to play in tournaments.

3. He lost to someone. Their rating went up. They were prevented from entering a tournament because their rating was too high.

4. All of the people whose rating changed after playing him, subsequently played someone else - and those games had the wrong rating adjustments. All of the the people involved in those games subsequently played someone else - and those games had the wrong rating adjustments as well. etc.

5. etc.

Trying to repair the chess.com universe to achieve the same effect as if a partiucular cheat had never existed in it would be quite an undertaking.

It's not a secret. http://www.chess.com/echess/profile/Grey_Game

On chess.com, i believe that the games will timeout and you will go with the points (as long as more than 4 moves were played).

Personally, i think that this is the right way. Of couse i can understand if you disagree with me, but i believe that it was not fair on you that you were getting cheated by somebody else. i believe that the rating points should go to you to compensate the cheating, because you could have run the risk of losing the rating points unfairly.

Of couse this is merely what i think; other people might think otherwise.

Ravi

Was the cheating related to altering the time remaining for a move? What are the ways one may cheat and how do you detect them?

It's sad and a shame that someone would use a program (cheating) agaist Streetfighter.

  Streetfighter is a great Ambassador for chess with a great chess mind. He has played much lower rated players and that says alot about him alone. Most high rated players won't play the lower rated due to the possibility of cheating.

I hope all the cheaters get caught and banned !!!!!!!!!!!

This Guide for the Perplexed may clarify the rules for you.

http://support.chess.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=17&nav=0,6

ARTREF: WHAT IS ALLOWED

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/tournaments/games-explorer

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/what-are-chess-engines

 I guess the main point is, Aaron, that if we wanted to play against computers we could quite easily do that instead of playing on chess.com. And we would know we were playing an engine!

Quite apart from which, a $30 piece of software (or even a free piece of software!) could nowadays make mincemeat of the vast majority of us on here

streetfighter

Oh ... I cried... How come the evil guys at chess.com ban again a very strong player?? Poor guy ... too bad he is not a member of team Romania, so that nobody will make a petition to support him :))

Streefighter: when you accepted 3 games with this guy, you did not find anything suspicious with him? First, his rating: it is very hard to believe that a non-master can achieve a rating over 2500. Secondly, the number of victories. Didn't you see that this guy was beating everybody? Except probably some other fellow cheaters...

I wonder why all the things above did not make the staff at chess.com investigate his games earlier. This cheater was allowed to play 300 games and cheat without anybody to bother him!! Have you thought how many hours did his opponents wasted in vain?

Normally, you will get the rating points... Why would they even bother to make it unrated? It was the cheaters fault for cheating. It also won't make a difference considering they are not able to come back ever again. 

ADK

My point is that I wouldn't want the win or the corresponding rating points when a cheater is forced to lose his games due to his account getting shut down.  The win is tainted and the rating points I'd gain aren't reflective of my ability -- it's not disimilar to a high rated player timing out against me when I'm in a losing position only in this case there's something that can be done about it:  Retroactively set the games to unrated once a cheater has been caught.

Despite what I said earlier about rolling back their impact altogether it's actually less of an issue when the player is still playing, because win or lose, the cheater's rating probably reflects the level at which they (or rather their engine) play(s), so the level at which you played is represented by the outcome of a completed game against the cheater.

It should be considered unrated but...what if you were winning against the cheater?

Omg this guy was winning 255 games out of 297, why is he wasting his time online, International master.......It did seem strange

 Well Costelus, I was drawn against him in team matches, so I didn't actually challenge him. Also, I have played much higher rated players than him, with much higher win/loss ratios - are they ALL cheating?!?

What can be done about it? Chess.com seem to be investigating players quite regularly, and aren't afraid to ban those they are convinced are cheating.

What else can be done? Should players have to prove, say, that they have an OTB rating within 100 points of their online rating? I know some players in real-life who have correspondence ratings 300 points higher than their OTB level, and this is from before the time that computers could be helping them!

Unfortunately I don't have the answer to this problem. My own solution to not using an engine myself is to have a version of Fritz8 which crashes my entire computer whenever I try to use it!!

He will just eventually time out, and you will be rewarded the points, nice.

Its always so difficult to tell for sure if someone is cheating... I know Chess.com have some tools to deal with that and I believe they are doing a good and fair job on this site.

I would believe its not on their best interest to ban people for cheating but it has to be done, to mantain the integrity of the site and the fair play to everybody else!

My main point is - WHY cheat? They are only fooling themselves...

I think I'm cheating my boss, because he is paying my wages and I keep playing chess here during working hours... pssst, please don't tell him!