
Being Called a Cheater: the Ultimate Compliment
First, let me apologize for the dumb thumbnail... As Mr. Wild once said, "I can resist everything except temptation."
I am back today with a very small post about something that always makes me smile: cheaters. And more precisely, being accused of it.
I have played my share of games against cheaters, most of which have been banned swiftly by chess.com. But today, I don't want to accuse; I want to talk about when you are accused of it.
It happened to me a few times, probably because I set my challenge to -25 to ANY, which means I sometimes am paired with people with 200, 300, or 400 more elo points than I have. When from time to time, I beat them, I tend to be accused. Of course, this is the ultimate compliment. If you haven't lived it, you should definitively stick to chess until it happens.
A few days ago, when playing my 999th rapid game, I had an awesome position out of the King's Indian Defense. I was already happy with my chess day, but then I saw my opponent wanted to chat. I accepted, as I always do, only to see this beauty appear:

I answered very politely. I thanked him sincerely for the compliment and added that if he felt I cheated, he should, of course, report me. I don't believe he did anything wrong. I fully understood his exasperations, maybe even his suspicion, and calling out potential cheaters to the chess.com team is a public service.
Although to me, the main sign that someone is cheating is time management. When an opponent spends the exact same amount of time (say 5 seconds) solving a complex tactic and taking back my queen or playing the only legal move, it all becomes pretty obvious.
Looking at the analysis, I must say I was quite happy with my play. I made one inaccuracy and found two very cool moves, so I figured it may be a fun game to share with people. It is not so much because there is a lot to learn out of it, but because there are few fun tactics.
I split the game into three PNGs, so that you can try to find the tactics I found before seeing the "answer."
Hope you enjoy it!
Part 1: opening and early middle game
Part 2: the first tactic and continuation