thanks pretty, I'll get this to him ASAP

I have been one of the most outspoken people here against cheating, and I have personally gotten more than one guy from chess bay suspended for those same reasons. From my personal experience with chess.com I can say they are often right but not always. In the case of Gapguillen, I knew he cheated me all the way through game 1. I reported him and chess.com gave him a pass. I was mad as hell because I knew I was right and they were wrong. I reported him in game 2 because I suspected him again but really wasn't sure. The odd thing was that many of his moves in game 2 corresponded with my database, but this time he was suspended for a less clear case!

I am not a gullible person, so I looked at some of Star_Wors games and in some cases going down 12 moves (1/3 of the game!) his moves matched my database. So why would such games be flagged by chess.com? There's a simple answer: Over the last 20 years or so, GMs and IMs have used computers and people with which to train on a daily basis. Most of them can play blindfolded and have phenomenal memories. In an OTB situation they replicate their "preparation" moves that combine computers and humans, then those games creep into our database. If chess.com went move by move those "preparation" moves could be flagged as cheating when those players merely memorized computer material. I found one game in my database of Kasparov playing Fritz (the computer programme not the person) and lost to it. The rule is we can use games from our database. What if I copied the moves of Fritz from my database? Is that cheating since those moves came from a programme or is that legal because it's from my database? I don't know the answer. If I used that Kasparov-Fritz game here, I'm sure they'd say I cheated using Fritz because that's what their machines may read.

The pre-computer age chess games will find very few games correlating to a computer, except Fischer who many said he thought like one.

Chess.com's "secret" percentage of correlation may be in the region of 60%. But that's an arbitary number chosen. If they chose 61% Star_Wors may still have his account. The real cheating has a high level of correlation betwen the human and the computer in the middlegame because this phase of the game requires ideas and any software programme lacks ideas. In the middle game, in one given position, it would be very difficult to find Anand and Kasparov make exactly the same move because their ideas will likely be different. Even if their ideas are the same, the way they get there may be different: one guy may take the N2 highway, the other guy may take the back road, but they will still get there.

My analysis from my machines and database say Star_Wors moves correspond almost 96% with my database. I can't comment on the tools chess.com uses since nobody knows if they call up the CIA or FBI. Like I said earlier, they clearly got it wrong with Gapguillen the first time I complained and got it right the second time but with a less clear game (I suspected but was not sure.) They are prone to error too, so let's not brood on that too much. They're doing their best and this is still the best chess site on the planet.

So what can we do about Star_Wors old account? Nothing. Don't even try. Forget it. It's killed.

What can he do? Easy. Get a new yahoo or gmail address or whatever and start a new chess account under, say, Star_Wors2 or a totally different name, I don't care. At least we'll know he's back and playing. And if they close that, well there's always Star_Wors3. So if Bullshark and Sevelin can get this info to him, that's my 2 cents worth to clear his name --- at least with us--- and on how to proceed next. Stop moping and jump back on the perdjie.