Fairplay violation but I still officially lost the game?

In round four of the October 1 tournament, I lost. My opponent played very well, 92% accuracy, but I didn't think much of it. A week or so later chess.com informed me of a fairplay violation on October 1 and a refund of my chess.com rapid rating points.

Sure enough, I saw on chess.com that my opponent in round 4 on that day was banned for fairplay violations.

The official USCF ratings for the tournament came to my inbox yesterday. I looked at the detailed records and found I was still given a loss for round 4, which of course cost me official USCF online blitz rating points.

The player in question is STILL banned from chess.com, so that rules out the possibility that an investigation later cleared him or her of the fairplay violation.

My question is: if a player has a fairplay violation in a USCF online rated tournament, shouldn't the game not count toward my official USCF ratings?

I doubt the USCF is automatically notified of any cheating on Chess.com. Hopefully the TD for that tournament will report the fact to the USCF and then the player should be sanctioned and your game re-rated. (At least that's what seems proper to me)

It is also my hope, that even if the player creates a new chess.com account, he is not allowed to rejoin the USCF Members only club... which would prevent him from playing in an future USCF Rated tournaments. (at least through this club's events)

Hopefully, one of the admins, or the TD will respond to your post.

It depends on when the closures happen and when the events are submitted. Generally if an account is closed for FPV before the games are submitted we verify if the games in any of the events are included in that closure or not. If they weren't, the games go through to be rated 

Martin, so if a game has been sent in to be rated before the account is closed, does that mean the USCF will never know a player cheated in their game?

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense.

According to the USCF rating report they received the results on October 12. I don't recall the exact date I was notified of the fairplay violation, but I am pretty sure it was something like 5 to 7 days after the October 1 tournament. I do have an email from me to my brother telling him about the violation on October 8, so the violation was definitely detected by chess.com on or before October 8.

In any case ... what happens now? Chess.com refunded my points, and banned the person in question. Is there a way to raise this to USCF after the fact and make sure this player is sanctioned? As for the rating points, I don't care as much about that, if its a lot of work for the TD to fix. I'll get the rating points back some day. But I just hate the idea of a cheater potentially joining other USCF events in the future (on lichess for example there are USCF tournaments).

US Chess staff aren't notified in any case. That used to be done but stopped within the first year or so.

I'm double checking, but it's very possible that there may not be sufficient confidence in that one game (the account was closed for rapid games, giving the refund, but that one game may not meet the criteria).

Thanks Martin for the info, and all you work here with the club and the tournaments. It is greatly appreciated.

I'm double checking, but it's very possible that there may not be sufficient confidence in that one game (the account was closed for rapid games, giving the refund, but that one game may not meet the criteria).

Ok, thanks in advance for checking.

I realize that cheating in chess is a complex issue.

Unfortunately there are many cheaters in these events which have caused me to stop playing in these.

Batman2508,

I don't feel like there are a tremendous number of cheaters, at least at the class A/B/C level, in these USCF rated games. A person has to pay money to be in the USCF, and why would they do that unless they really wanted to be legit good at chess and learn by playing?

I think fairplay is pretty good at catching the ones that do try cheating. In theory, if a person just used a computer a few times a game it might be very hard to catch them. But I feel like a cheater would become so addicted to using the computer's analysis that they would overstep pretty quickly and get caught. Let's face it: they're not learning anything by cheating. And if they play a computer's "best" move without understanding why it's best, they will have to go back to the computer time and time again when the opponent deviates from the "best" line.

My philosophy is, if a person beats me by cheating, then my rating is artificially lowered, so I'll just make more rating points (due to my lower rating) next time I play. As long as the percentage of cheaters is fairly low (under 5% or so), it won't matter too much in the long term.

Same thing happened in the event I played in -- maybe this is the same one you're talking about? The U1450 3|2 blitz event from a couple of weeks ago, the "winner" got banned for FPV and the game I played against them in the event was reversed, yet the results went through and are reflected in the USCF results anyway. Chess.com did the ban/reversal 13 days ago, results went to USCF 6 days ago.

RejectedMegamanVillain1337,

My event was the 10|0 on October 1, not the U1450 3|2.

I know the TDs are volunteers and I'm sure they don't want to deal these types of hassles on top of all the other work they do. I think USCF needs to come up with some kind of easy system TDs can use, maybe in conjunction with chess.com, and produce some clear guidelines on how to handle these situations. Ideally, chess.com (and lichess) could provide reports directly to USCF in cases of chess.com (or lichess) USCF rated tournament games with violations, keeping things totally simple for the TDs, and USCF could have policies on how they sanction such players.

As we've seen recently with the Niemann controversy, cheating has the potential to wreck competitive chess. The online communities and USCF need to get ahead of this problem and do it in a way that keeps the TDs from having to do additional work. Software can largely solve this.

I think you are entitled to get your points back but it may be difficult and take a little time--ask the USCF. On this site's various tournaments cheaters place in the top three, get caught cheating, yet retain their finish placing. Chess.com refunds your points but doesn't bump you up a notch in the final standings. Getting caught cheating in a USCF tournament is really, really bad. I hope you get your points back. 

I understand your argument but what I'm trying to day is that I face more cheaters here, then I do in the normal pool. That could be because I'm playing 3/0 and not 3/2 but still I just prefer to play in the pool

No changes will be made to that player's games in that event.

Those games were not part of the fair play closure.

That may be your perception, but it isn't likely to be that you are. In a smaller pool of players, the percentage is essentially going to be higher when an account is closed for FPV, just because the number of players is lower. But it's still relatively rare.

Based on my experience, this was the first uscf rated fpv I was notified of out of about 50 games. However I get fpv notices from chess.com or lichess about once per month, and I average maybe 4 games a day. So I've seen about 2% in uscf rated vs about roughly 1% in pool. But clearly I don't have a big enough sample on the uscf side. 

So I would conclude it's a similar amount, and in any case pretty rare.

I'm not had a lot of issue with cheaters in the USCF tournaments..... at least not in the way of engine use.... I have however seen people start and resign 15 games or so in a row so they could drive down there chess.com rating and then enter the U1450 tournament, and start new accounts with a low rating so they could win the U1450 tournament and stuff like that.... All of which is pretty sad in my opinion, but it's just part of it.