Cheating underreported stats.

The last mention about online cheating gave us statistics that <2% of players cheated online. In fact the figure they show is similar to the amount of cheating in the Military. This is very unrealistic to say the least so I gathered several surveys results and other data about online gaming and general and the general consensus is upwards of 40% of players on any given game cheat online. (40%, 50%, 60%, 6%)

Here's one: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2018/04/30/report-cheating-is-becoming-a-big-problem-in-online-gaming/?sh=4d9c3a1a7663

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1938090/discussions/0/3834298505972216326/

https://time2play.com/blog/is-it-cheating/

https://cse.usf.edu/~aii/papers/cheating_icwsm.pdf

This last one is an actual study that shows 6% which is a lot more conservative than the 40% by Forbes. Also it's on steam, call of duty and such which is A LOT harder to cheat on. Coding to bypass security requires bugs on the antivirus being implemented.

I noticed that a majority of players I play against get better as the game progresses, and I know that in itself is no direct link or "hard" evidence of someone cheating, but it's circumstantial evidence at the very least. The longer the game goes, the more complicated it becomes, yet they seem to all mess up the opening to a degree that they lose 2 pawns or a minor piece and seem to recover and get significantly better after that, even finding moves that I consider impossible, that with no time wasted on the clock.

Now I know this might be biased, because we all been there where we mess up and recover, but there is something about the consistency of someone gameplay that allows us to have hunches. When our gut is telling us something, is most likely due to this, the consistency. An inconsistent player will go from best moves to blunders a lot more often.

I am also extremely suspicious about the chess engine they use to cheat. I don't think they all use stockfish, I think a large portion of cheaters use a trick engine. I don't think they are any mainstream trick engines but they are not hard to code at all. You can also code scripts to allow the engine to take over for you, using monkey script as an extension. I could do this, I'm sure you can too. Someone dedicated enough (If he really wanted to do this) could even make his own detection system (using lichess detection system for reference) and trick the system once a flag is being raised.

Literally, if you put your brain and decide to cheat and become undetectable. It is doable. All you need is: The detection mechanism, The engine, and the script.

With all this being said, Like I've said, I believe at least over 30% of players cheat on chess.com. Not all the time, but on certain positions.

No way In hell, No way, cheating is under 2%.

Cheating only discourages honest players, and it messes you up psychologically pretty bad. Knowing that you played an awesome game yet still lose and that at any given second that can happen again is mental torture.

I believe that even a high level cheating mechanism shouldn't be able to beat simple logic, and the detection system could be improved massively by gauging consistency more precisely, the medium of the past 10 games (at the very least) I also thought of a probability pie chart where you can determine the likelihood of certain move being played (I noticed even commentators miss certain moves) the engine won't. This should be paired with time, and the consistency metric.

There's a lot more ways to beat cheaters, for example status change could be implemented on high suspicious accounts, where they get a fake ban warning (Cheat again and you will be banned) or (Your account is under cheating suspicion) change the status to a red icon for everyone that is playing to see that their account is under cheating suspicion. If they are cheating they will not care and will stop cheating, if they weren't cheating they will appeal it. this would be a lot easier to read and of course since it's fake, it would never amount to nothing. Just imagine waking up to a "You're account is under cheating suspicion" It will not be pleasant if you're an honest player.

But the cheating has to stop. They really need to do more. A lot more.

This is an example of someone wanting to beat the detection mechanism: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-tricks-and-tactics-chess-engine-detectors-use-to-identify-cheating-players

Chess is not an FPS. That said, Erik has said in interviews in the last 6 months that it's probably more like 3%, maybe 5% at the very top end

That's not evidence at all and it is incredibly biased. There's no way it's as common as you seem to think it is, that's just paranoia - which in turn leads you to play worse because you're angry at the supposed cheater. It's why we can't have sensible discussions of cheating in the forums and why this thread is going to be locked.

"All you need"? There's no way 30% of players are investing the sort of time & effort in all 3 of those areas to cheat in a chess game. Anything at that scale would have to be supported by cheating websites and platforms showing people how to do it. No such things exist - even you don't have one, you're only talking about doing it in theory: I think you'll find that it's way harder to actually do. So hard that maybe it's only do-able by, I don;t know, less than 2% of all actual chess players, most of whom have real jobs and real lives outside of chess.

You know that Chess.com is already almost certianly doing the simplest of those suggestions, yeah? The fact that they're not closing 30% of accounts is preally the best indication that cheating is not at 30% here on the site.

Will be interesting to see how much of this plainly ridiculous post the mods leave up when they lock it.

Okay, you seem to misunderstand the cheating between FPS and chess, somehow you think because FPS is FPS is more "cheatable", No in fact FPS is a lot harder to cheat on/code on. Do you know how much coding you need to know to cheat on an FPS? You need a substantial amount more of coding than on chess. Like I said, chess is 1000% easier to cheat on.

Second those articles were not all about FPS, in fact only the 6% one was about FPS. (The very last one) Those other 3 were anonymous surveys of overall gaming.

Third. There are plenty forums and Youtube videos that teach you how to cheat on chess. It is not hard at all. In fact Like i said, I could code an entire engine (MYSELF) and a detection system to avoid detection. Did you know how they cheat on bullet? With bots. The site is botted, top to bottom. 6% still nothing in terms of stats. That is a ridiculous figure. You mean to say That is ridiculous. 6000 out of 100,000 players. Please. Somehow you live in this bubble that just because it's a "prestige" "intellectual" game, that is not filled with cheaters.

You can't be serious, dude there is even a wikipedia forum about it. You seriously live in a bubble.

In fact I'll go far enough to say the site is botted just for the sole purpose to find vulnerabilities on it's detection system.

"Sensible discussion" You don't understand this is as sensible as it gets. The median of cheating on chess, is much lower than the average of games. 3X lower in fact.

yes cheating is rampant, yes it has gone and will go up as times goes on, and yes threads like this will be laughed at by the "purist" players who think that 700s are just blitzing out top moves under 2 secs in any position for instance and that is normal and just git gut and yes the site people will never admit it cause they just care about the money and coming out and just admitting that lots and lots of people are cheating is bad for business

https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-com-publishes-fair-play-report-on-titled-tuesday

Chess.com continues to investigate cheating in Titled Tuesday. Finds that level of upsets is similar to over the board play.

@justbefair You forgot to lock the thread

OP, there is no way the “the site is botted” to the extent you claim it is. Watch any of Erik’s interviews over the last few months and you’ll see how the site thinks about the issue and what they’re doing about it. 
The last article was the only one that was a proper study - the others were just surveys asking people to self report. Chess.com would need to conduct a similar survey of its members to get an idea of what it might be like here, since chess is not the same or even very similar to not just FPS but most other types of online games. 
Neither the Quora link nor the Wikipedia article are asking about how to cheat - they’re documenting how cheating could be detected and the history of how it’s done. But you seem tot think that people are going to watch a YouTube video and then go write some code? Those folks get caught nowadays in less than 24 hours. Why don’t you reach out to Chess.com support and offer to set up an alt account and cheat in the way you describe? That would help them improve on their cheat detection methods but also show you how quickly it is you get caught