Chess.com FAQs and Discussion on Cheating

A noble attitude, to be sure.

But, having been thrashed by both humans and silicon, I have found that there is an important difference in the experience.

When I lose to a better player the game usually has some genuine drama and tension to it, at least until I blunder.  During a post-mortem of the game I can find places where I truly had my chances and get valuable, practical lessons from the post-mortem that improve my play.

When I lose to a 2500+ program the game has a different, and for me depressing feel to it.  If I'm extra careful and don't blunder material, I will be positionally suffocated.  If I take the slightest risk or show the least creativity, I am ruthlessly and instantly thrashed.   

The cumulative effect of this 'learning experience' would be to make me an overly timid player, unwilling to take the risks that make real chess against real humans exhilirating -- so I don't play computers willingly.  

The risk is worth running because the transparency into how many cheaters have been caught provides valuable public insight into the efforts being made by the site administration to curb this problem.  Prior to making the list public there seemed to be a fairly widespread perception that it was not being taken seriously.  Publishing the list of names makes it clear that there is, and has been, a program in place and that it is effective for detecting and ejecting those who don't play by the rules.

Also because I think the legal risks and ramifications cited in the past few posts are quite overstated.

I certainly understand your point of view, however I don't think you should feel in any way depressed for having lost a game against a +2500 chess engine... The cheater should be depressed as he/she is using an engine to beat you, with no gain whatsoever to them...

Mind you - I didn't say I like to play against machines here, I just say it's inevitable that sometime we will face one, but just play your normal game and I'm sure you will get better soon!

As Erik and others have pointed out here - the level of cheating is very low, compared with the total number of players, so don't worry too much about that... 

:) -- value to the public? -- I don't dismiss what you say overall, but I do smile at how seriously we online chess players take ourselves. My cousin plays online bingo. Imagine how amusing it would seem to you if her site claimed there was genuine value to the public to some element of that site. I think maybe perspective has been lost in paranoia about the few people who may have cheated one or more of us out of a chess game win.

I'm with those who are just going to enjoy playing my games.

I use "public" very loosely here to mean the users of the site in contrast to the administration, who are the operators of the site.

 you used the word "public" as an adjective not as a noun meaning that you thought it good that the site administration made the names and efforts public to us.  You never used the word as a noun and certainly not as *the* public, meaning the populace  at large outside of this site. 

Upon review, you're correct -- I took the quote at face value, and didn't realize I was being paraphrased.  I think, however, that it may be because the phrase "public insight" struck me funny as I was typing it for the same reason Pagan highlighted -- it still does seem to imply that it is insight for "the" public -- I just didn't have a better phrasing at my fingertips so I went with it.  I probably could have just dropped the work "public" altogether in that sentence -- its use as an adjective elsewhere in my post doesn't seem to have the same implied manifestation of the noun definition as it does in the sentence Pagan cited.

I'm glad I'm not the only pedant in here.

Judith Polgar once said that playing chess against a computer is a totally different game from playing chess against a human. 

Yes Grobe, good point: publishing the list of caught cheaters was an excellent idea. It was surprising to see that a small company like chess.com, with rather limited resources, bans about 20 chaters per week.

Well, the number of cheaters is not so low. OK, below let's say 2000 this number is for sure 0. Above 2500, I think that the number of cheaters is rampant. True, compared to the total number of players, cheating is insignificant. But for some players cheating might have a greater impact.

One thing I noticed when looking at the list of caught cheaters was how many were low rated. I am sure I understand this at all as I would have guessed most cheaters were 2200+ and above.

Well, part of that is, the closed accounts may have games going when the account is closed. These games eventually time out, and that lowers the cheater's rating.

On this we agree -- if you are being matched up against players in the top tier of rankings on this site, your probability of running into an engine user goes up.  For most users, though, myself included, the chances of actually getting matched up against a cheater is virtually nil.  In fact, I've not seen a single name on the banned players list that I've played a game against.

Publishing the list was an important step because despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of users are really not impacted by the problem, the general perception prior to the lists publication did not reflect this.  The publication of the list is essentially an effort to correct this misperception, and it really does seem to have helped.

A good point -- check the player's peak rating to get a better idea at what level they were playing.

I'd add that engine use is also not the only reason accounts get closed -- having multiple accounts is punishable by account closure as well.

No ... probably you looked at accounts closed for cheating in live chess. And those players had no interest in correspondence chess.

Chessnut, my good friend :)), was almost 2800 when he was banned.

I agree with the sentiment expressed above, that losing to what ends up being a computer is a different type of game. You just don't feel that you really had any winning chances - this is how I felt in the game with Chessnut23 that costelus made famous by publishing in another thread.

I also felt the same way against MirceaH, in the game where I had white.

It's a feeling that you are pretty sure you're going to lose, but you just don't really know how or when. A feeling, perhaps, of dread.

You don't. Well, generally you don't. But, as I said above, when you lose a game to what ends up being a computer, during the game it feels different.

I recently played a very strong IM (perhaps the strongest IM in the US) otb, and I played a great game. I had a good game out of the opening, (ok he outplayed me in the middlgame) but then I set a trap and he _almost_ fell for it, down to writing down the move which would have lost the game.

It's hard to put into words, but if you look at the Chessnut23 game, you may get an insight into what I mean. It might have been how some people felt many years ago when they played one of the more technical players (Karpov) at his peak.

You just know richie, you just feel. I played with two IM's on ICC 15+5 minutes (not simul). During the game I saw how they made a mistake, I had my chance, then I made a mistake and they didn't exploit it so well. I obtained a draw in one of the games.

I had the same feeling Ozzie describes when I played against Mirceah. It was an IQP position from Caro-Kann, I was white. Due to the pressure, I offered him some trades of minor pieces, and to my astonishement, he refused. Not just once. While, at the same time, he managed to increase the pressure. At that point I knew I play against a computer. 

Richie, admittedly it's always going to be partially 20/20 hindsight... but now that it's been said.

For me, the first suspicions are there when the opponent follows an existing game which give a bad position for black (say I am white). And then they come up with not just an improvement in the game, but an improvement which seems to be better, in all variations, while finding some pretty tricky moves. I always envision my opponent as having a far superior database as one option. The other two options, it seems to me, are that they use a strong computer to help them, or that they are themselves a very strong player. All are possible. But it's still a feeling of dread that one would probably get at the highest level when you walk straight into your opponent's home preparation. You don't know the eval of the position, you might even be dead lost (your opponent has so much more information than you do), and you just have to play the position at the board.

That explains how the suspicions can start during the game. I don't typically have any suspicions at the beginning of the game. Most players don't use help.

I knew about one other player, because it was so obvious. They made computer-type moves, in the chat they knew next to nothing about chess. I wrote a line (basically an alternative to what I played, what I would consider a main variation) and they said they didn't consider that at all. I still got a decent position, after finding some exact moves, and then I played a pawn sac which was just TERRIBLE in retrospect. The final phase of the game they also played like a computer, playing exactly the moves which lead to best position quickest. There are so many red flags there I don't know where to begin.

Richie, just to be clear, my opinion on the detection methodology is that the users are best at exactly that - reporting someone when their gut tells them something is wrong. The site is best at running the analysis to figure out whether the person's instinct is correct. It's difficult to quantify, but that doesn't mean it's not valid. Many players here have played a LOT of games against a LOT of human opponents, and it's not inconceivable that their gut tells them that the style they are facing has a nearest neighbor which is not so near.

I have been ground down and crushed a few times by different players, but only 3 times did I ever suspect cheating. One was a really deep tactic that started off with an exchange sac and about 12 moves later went into a mating combo, but in retrospect my opponent may have made the exchange sac on spec, knowing that his position would offer him some great tactical opportunities. Later I analysed the game and he made a few mistakes along the way and I was convinced it wasn't an engine.

In another two games I just KNEW my opponent was cheating. Firstly, I research my opponents. This guy's tactics trainer rating was less than 800 and mine was 2100+, yet I really felt tactically outgunned. He had no experience of playing the opening we were playing and, like Ozzie said above, he went into an obscure line used infrequently in the DB and out of both my books on the opening by move 6. His early games were a catalogue of serious blunders and then he suddenly started playing error-free games. I've been playing for over 30 years and seriously studying for the past 12 months and still only ever have a few games in a row that are relatively error-free and this is only if the games are resigned by move 30 or so - the endgames seem to throw up far more mismatches between my moves and the engine choices than the middlegame.

A month later his name turned up on the cheater list. I felt vindicated.

I absolutely HATE playing engines - both my own and online (knowingly or unknowingly). Like has been mentioned above, I am aware early on that I am certain to lose. In fact, since I bought my engine I have only used it to analyse games - I haven't even played against it once. Apparently playing engines makes you more accurate, but it just makes me feel a bit hopeless and hence bored.

It depends on the level you're playing at, Richie. What you describe is a keen student of chess studying their chosen opening very deeply and looking for every possibility in a pet opening, but what I describe above is someone who hasn't used the opening (at least, not on this site) and displays some additional inconsistencies in the information available on this site.