Chess.com FAQs and Discussion on Cheating

costelus

"mauerblum: despite your cheating detection tips, I saw you played "GM" Anirac, who had an online rating of 2550 and a quick rating of 1100. Ha ha! How come this did not look suspicious to you?"

You are right. I missed that. But I do not investigate all my opponents.-

But he was already suspicious for me ! 300 parallel games and a rating of 2500. How can this work?)

To everyone: FYI, Anirac's account has already been closed.

I may have overlooked something ,but what is the procedure for reporting suspicious activity?

streetfighter, do you mean this thread?

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/chesscom---list-of-caught-cheaters

You could go to "today's hot topics"  and see if the list has been updated.

Yes, I think that's the only way.

 investigate,  investigate,  investigate..

Why you don't investigate the relationship of Don Erik with Cheater-1 ?

There is no business like show business. ;)

Where's Reb when you need him?

HOGWASH

Ahh the sweet bliss of ignorance  ;)

lol

Eat this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05urU_rpKDw

PEACE ;}

does my super-nerd friend playing my account count as cheating?

I think I am tracking the list of cheater forum topic, since I tracked it while it was still unlocked :-)

good man ozzie, now you just need to message myself, streetfighter, etc and etc when there are updates :-)

I'll put in a good word for you.

I just checked and yes I am tracking that topic. And this one. And no others.

 To escape the shame of being posted when they are posted. Strange that someone didn't abort on the first move.

Maybe it's a similar thought process which leads people in a poker game to tell you exactly what they have. They know that you won't believe them, because nobody is too stupid to actually tell you what they have, right? Right?

Although I have read a number of cheating related forums/articles here I had not paid any attention so far as it looked really far away.

A couple of days ago, 2 of my strongest opponents simply resigned their games and later I found out that were banned for cheating.

I have read the first post coming from Erik and gone to the link with all the names (obviously the 2 guys are also there)

It's great and fantastic the job you are doing here. I have to admit it.

After carefully reading the rules and everything exposed now it's clear to me that some of my opponents were clearly cheating (and some of them are cheating...)

I thought that you can only cheat on live chess (or it was easy to do it anyway, simply using any chess program) but now I have learnt several ways to do it even in online chess, so now it comes to me the following question:

Is it not making all this thing of going public, opening so many forums about cheating and giving that much importance to cheating, that more members learn about how to and are tempted to cheat? 

I mean that when you know nothing about something, you don't even worry about it but when you learn that there are tools, then you start investigating here and there and finally you start cheating too (It's clear that it will depend on how honest you are but please I think it will be more honest the silly than the smart because the first one doesn't know how to hurt you)

After all the literature I have exposed in my poor english (sorry for that) I have to continue and propose several things:

1.How is that possible that you can download all the tools that you need to cheat even in this very site? I believe that someone should fix this...no need to say more.

2.How can you make someone feel embarrashed because of cheating if you instantly close its account? He will probably not come back to the site or what is worse, he will create a new account with a different name and start over again.

My suggestion, you should let him/her to finish all the games ongoing, letting everybody know that he/she has cheated (using the same messages in its home page, posting here, adding that small icon...etc) and let him continue with his account for a while with all that messages until he/she demonstrates that he redeem all his faults and currently is not cheating. (I am sure that some of the Premium members which account has been closed would continue playing just to keep the money)

Or what is better, you can make all these warning visible to others except by that player...(I start to feel a really bad person now...:)) That way he will really feel embarrased.

3.You say that you just check players over 2200. Well I can say that there are players under that rating that are probably cheating...maybe not all the time but yes in some games....how to find out...well I am sure that your tools are applyable to anyone.

To kokino, Im not exactly sure how it says it above but they dont just check people over 2200, simply states that if people cheat they will win many games and therefore more than likely have a high rating which will more than likely quickly go to over 2200!

One thing ive been wondering about is, ive been noticing many more accounts being closed than there was a few months ago when i started on this site, how is there so many of these that are low rated people? Ive seen people like melanerz (who was a commonly seen character in the site) banned for cheating when they were like 1200. How would you find out if Mel was cheating when he is only 1200 and plays poor moves most of the time. Im using Mel as an example rather than defending him btw.

kokino,

Please report any of your current opponents which you suspect as cheating. Also, it might help if you say what is the basis for your suspicion.

Where on this site can you download what is required to cheat? I wasn't aware of this at all. Remember that computer analysis after-the-fact is ok, opening database usage is ok, and playing against the computer (the site computer) is ok.

I don't see how you can absolutely prevent cheating, same as any "crime". You catch as many as possible and toss them out and this site is doing a good job of that. I imagine that Erik and Staff do not have time/resources to catch people under 2200 cheating. I don't care if cheaters are embarrassed or not. These are people who choose to be slaves to a machine, the computer tells them what moves to make and they obey like robots for the phoney prestige and ego-tripping of always winning and having a high rating as if they were an excellent chess player instead of just a robot following orders from a machine. I don't know if such peoplef even get embarrassed.