Regarding the matter of cheating, your thoughts are welcome but my hypothesis is very simple. Most of the problem with cheating is one of perception, not reality. So long as there is no money or any prize for playing here at Chess.com, there is no significant motivation to cheat. There will always be a small number, but that number will be statistically insignificant. The only step that I suggest has to be taken is to recognize that some players do want to play with computer assistance and give this form of play it's own ratings category which I have requested and suggested here at Chess.com. If you look on the web, I am not the first to think this is a good idea.
Players want to discover how good they are relative to others, computer assisted or not. That is the only possible personal prize here at Chess.com and it cannot be won by cheating. We should remember that on the net we are always simply an alias and so our rating doesn't carry any tangible currency. Our alias existence has no real world existence and so there is no public credibility to our online chess rating even if we have been totally honest. It is just for our own personal growth that we like to know what chess rating we have and what we might be able to achieve. I will argue that computers do not change that objective!
If we take the cheating element to be a very small element of human personality dysfunction, then you can think of that element as a constant across humanity. At the same time, that constant will be distributed across all online chess sites across the globe, not just Chess.com. If this cheating element is very small, distributed and constant, then the only net effect is that online ratings will fall out of line with their real world counter parts (neglecting other ways that they fall out of line). However at all times, there is still a relative sense of how your rating is changing with respect to others, and thus the experience of online play is actually not impeded by this small element of cheaters. This is only for so long that there is no online prize money system that has currency in the real world! If there is such a prize, cheating will overnight become the norm. We cannot let that happen.
In any case, it is always better to go and join a real chess club even if it is just your local chess club! There you will meet real people face to face and the experience will be much more rounded! It will only ever be possible to eliminate cheating when two players face each other over a real board in a real environment under open scrutiny.
Hi there
Regarding the matter of cheating, your thoughts are welcome but my hypothesis is very simple. Most of the problem with cheating is one of perception, not reality. So long as there is no money or any prize for playing here at Chess.com, there is no significant motivation to cheat. There will always be a small number, but that number will be statistically insignificant. The only step that I suggest has to be taken is to recognize that some players do want to play with computer assistance and give this form of play it's own ratings category which I have requested and suggested here at Chess.com. If you look on the web, I am not the first to think this is a good idea.
Players want to discover how good they are relative to others, computer assisted or not. That is the only possible personal prize here at Chess.com and it cannot be won by cheating. We should remember that on the net we are always simply an alias and so our rating doesn't carry any tangible currency. Our alias existence has no real world existence and so there is no public credibility to our online chess rating even if we have been totally honest. It is just for our own personal growth that we like to know what chess rating we have and what we might be able to achieve. I will argue that computers do not change that objective!
If we take the cheating element to be a very small element of human personality dysfunction, then you can think of that element as a constant across humanity. At the same time, that constant will be distributed across all online chess sites across the globe, not just Chess.com. If this cheating element is very small, distributed and constant, then the only net effect is that online ratings will fall out of line with their real world counter parts (neglecting other ways that they fall out of line). However at all times, there is still a relative sense of how your rating is changing with respect to others, and thus the experience of online play is actually not impeded by this small element of cheaters. This is only for so long that there is no online prize money system that has currency in the real world! If there is such a prize, cheating will overnight become the norm. We cannot let that happen.
In any case, it is always better to go and join a real chess club even if it is just your local chess club! There you will meet real people face to face and the experience will be much more rounded! It will only ever be possible to eliminate cheating when two players face each other over a real board in a real environment under open scrutiny.
Cheers