Chess.com FAQs and Discussion on Cheating

If I report an user I am 100% sure he cheats, I expect him to be banned in one-two weeks. If this does not happens, it means that there is a clear discrepancy between what I think is cheating and what chess.com thinks it is cheating. If the discrepancy is so big, then clearly there is no point for me (and others) to report suspected cheating.

I reported someone more than a month ago. Back then he was like 1500, with 30-40 games played. Now that person is 2100+, with 400 games played. Really, after that person cheated almost every player in live chess, there is no purpose to ban him now. If chess.com wanted to close his account, they should have done it more than a month ago, before he inflicted so much damage.

By the way Grobe, you say that I am a PR nightmare. What about the cheaters? Let's say Victormpm, who cheated in THOUSANDS of games. I am a nightmare, the cheaters are beneficial for the site, isn't it? :))

Fundamentally I think that what we disagree upon is the approach.  If I'm hearing you correctly, I say zero tolerance, you say legitimize but compartmentalize.

The difference is that if the site retains the zero tolerance course while the detection methodologies mature in order to get a better handle on the feasibility of actually stopping it the option to legitimize and compartmentalize down the road will still be available if it turns out that it can't be stopped -- which I do not believe to be the case, incidentally.

If, on the other hand we legitimize but isolate now, well, that's a balloon that just can't be un-popped.

I think that Erik more than deserves our patience.

Has it occurred to you that the discrepancy might be between your expectation of how long it takes to make the determination and the actual duration? 

And just because I think that you do this site a disservice doesn't mean I support those that cheat -- this is exactly the type of disingenuousness that I think taints the positive contributions you bring to this discussion.  I think we both agree that the cheaters are the root cause of the problem.

costelus, keep up the good work, you are a part of the detection algorithm for the time being.

Agreed -- please do not stop reporting people.

Richie, sometimes I feel smarter after having read what you've written, and for that I am grateful, but in this case I just don't know what you're talking about.

Despite the length of this thread, I still don't think there's been any serious discussion about setting up another type of chess category to allow rated Advanced Chess.  There are many, many people who enjoy this kind of chess already (I have yet to find anyone consistently rated 2500+ here who isn't already playing it according to my own Rybka analysis) and there are undoubtedly many others who would learn to enjoy it if it was available since it's an interesting mix of chess and hardware (high geek quotient!). 

Simply saying that Advanced Chess is already allowed in unrated games completely sidesteps the issue.  If you don't allow rated games then you're not acknowledging the legitimacy of that type of chess.  You may not like it and you may not want to participate in it but you can't deny it's legitimacy since it's also played at the elite level by Anand, Kramnik et al.  

In some respects, I think the allowance of rated Advanced Chess games would discourage cheating since I imagine there are players who would like to "come out of the closet" so to speak.  There are also advantages to drawing a clear line between engine use in Advanced Chess games and standard chess games.  By doing so, you avoid the problems we've seen in the past with players like mandelstam who ended up closing his account because he didn't realize he was cheating.  No one can deny that he was a valuable member of the community or deny his chess skills since he was a 2200+ FIDE player who contributed a lot to the forums etc.

If chess.com wants to be the best the chess site in existence they need to allow Advanced (or Freestyle) otherwise they're not serving a large base of customers.

An analogy with shoveling snow would have driven the point home too.

But can you imagine if one of the top 20 people starts playing advanced chess, if they created such a category, and then all of a sudden their blitz rating suffers?

No way.

Unless perhaps they would just play advanced chess in both categories? Or perhaps they would cease to play non-advanced chess?

I guess since it may be seen as a tacit admission of guilt you may not get too many of the top rated players to do this. Just my 2 pence.

I'm going on the assumption that anyone who is cheating in non-advanced chess categories will eventually be banned.  After the banning, they'll reincarnate and instead of going right back to cheating like they do now, they'll instead play Advanced Chess.

Also, I have a feeling that chess.com would ban many more members were it not for financial considerations.  I know there are Premium accounts that get closed but my gut tells me that money probably discourages bannings in some way.  If they offered advanced chess they could ban people who are premium members knowing that that if they wanted to continue as Advanced Chess users they can come back with a new account and do that and STILL be paying customers.  The monetary hit is a punishment for breaking the rules but at least they've given you an option of playing the kind of chess you want to play without fear.  It might even encourage more premium members since who wants to pay if you might get banned any minute?

What, then, would be the motivation to play in the "no holds barred" category?  When any advantage is allowed how is an advantage obtained?

I doubt we'd see a wholesale migration of "advanced" players into an advanced chess category, and this motivation is precicely the reason.  At the end of the day, rooting engine users out of the human-vs-human section of the site will still be required.

You may be right.  I don't know.  My feeling is that having an Advanced Chess category will give the powers that be much more freedom to crack down.  The current system provides chess.com with a monetary incentive to NOT crack down.  I know they will never admit that - it may not be true at all - but as I said before, the empirical evidence presented by Costelus seems to suggest that my assumption might be correct.  Having an Advanced Chess category changes the dynamic completely and allows them to take a much harder stance in non-advanced categories.  The business side of banning a large swath of users is no longer a limiting factor.

richie... richie...

The money is the reason. Always follow the money.

I just don't see the money at chess.com - except for the house taking money - therefore I don't think that cheating is that rampant. All the fence cheaters are sitting on the correct side, and the people who are actually cheating would cheat anywhere.

My point exactly.

This is in response to the sports analogy.

Cheaters will always cheat, as you point out. But money will cause all sorts of others to cheat as well. My point is that if there's no money in it (as is the case in internet chess here at chess.com) then the people who will cheat will just be the cheaters. And thus, the problem will always be a restricted problem.

QED

*ducks*

Your position doesn't take into consideration the possibility that some people actually enjoy playing Advanced Chess.  I know it's easy to think that engine users just like to beat the hell out of humans to soothe their ego but speaking from experience, I know that's not true in all cases. 

I want to play engine chess vs other engine users.  I love Freestyle chess.  I have a 2800+ rating in the Playchess engine room (and an ICCF rating of 2500+) and have finished in the Top 10 in several major Freestyle tournaments.  There are a ton of Freestyle players just like me who would love to give the bird to Playchess but right now they're pretty much the only game in town for Freestyle.  We had high hopes that the Infinity server would let us break free of Playchess once and for all but they've gone down the tubes.  Chess.com is missing out on a golden opportunity....

Exactly!  At worst, allowing Advanced Chess puts us right back where we started - no harm, no foul.  At best, it helps to reduce cheating and even makes Erik an Co. a little coin.

Eastendboy: I have absolutely nothing against advanced chess, as long as both players are allowed to use an engine. If both players agree they don't use engines, and one of them still unleashes his Rybka, that is not advanced chess, but cheating.

Erik I think should consider setting up an "advanced chess" category. That is the ICC way: they do not ban anybody. You simply get a (C) suffix to your user name and then enjoy centaur chess. A human player can play with a cyborg, if he wants to. He is warned that the cyborg is on the computer list. If the human ignores this warning, he cannot complain after that of cheating.

And don't cry for mandel... I bet he has another account now, and achieved a 2600+ rating. Of course, not using an engine, but his natural ability for chess.

Please keep private information private.

I agree.  This is the reason why you don't see me and my Skulltrail sitting atop the rating list. 

I don't care about zero-tolerance for computer chess or other approaches. I would like the approach of chess.com to be fair and transparent. Like yahoo, for instance. You know very well, if you have the curiosity to go there, that anything is allowed. Even plugging an engine to inject the moves without any human help. BUT YOU KNOW THIS, and make your choice accordingly. If you don't like advanced chess, you can go to ICC. Expensive, agree, no community like here, also agree, but less cheating. 

I don't like that chess.com says that it has a zero-tolerance for cheaters, but, at the same time, cheating is significant at the high level (2500+ let's say). I mean, either you fight cheaters or you don't. Chess.com apparently chose the "money way": ban some cheaters, but not too many, enough to claim that it does not tolerate cheating. In this way, they hope to attract bad ICCF players, who get crushed on ICCF by better cyborgs, but also honest correspondence players, who stopped playing CC when engines emerged.