If I am playing a 30 minute game, is it cheating if I have an actual chess set with me and copy the moves that are happening online? I usually make less mistakes if I play on an actual board instead of on the screen, so before I do that I wanted to make sure it is okay to do that.
Thank you in advance for your help!
No it is not cheating
@Elbow_Jobertski. Many an organization has struggled with the challenges naturally present when using online platforms for official matches and online platforms are not in any way beholden to make sure that you cannot perform actions that are popular on their platform but if used during official matches would be illegal. Ability to exercise something on an online platform does not make it honest or legal for a match...it just makes it possible to execute.
They are beholden in that having features the only purpose of which is cheating is asinine. That I can flick on a setting that shows legal moves and lets me draw arrows on the board in a rated game yet then say that doing so is illegal is, well, stupid. Drawing an inference of legality from that is far more reasonable than the converse. I'm too old to tell but I think the legal moves option may be the default now, which, well...
FIDE or USCF or whoever can have their rules and try to put them in effect in certain online tournaments. That's one thing. But if chess.com wants to consider those arrows cheating in common games, I have a pretty good idea of a way they could stop it.
At that point distinguishing between drawing arrows on the board and using a separate analysis board is pretty semantic. It would be wiser to draw the line at engine use seeing that is actually enforceable. These rating points aren't blood.