Was i playing against an engine?

Several times in this game I had been a bit sceptical, and an analysis of the game did not make me less sceptical.

not playing well these days so it could just be me playing blunderful, but my opponents attack felt a bit too methodical for our ratings.

You are not allowed to make accusations like that in the forum. If you have questions, send an email to support. You can also raise questions in a club called the Cheating Forum.

You should at least erase the names from your post.

thanks for the info I changed te PGN to hide names

more interested in thoughts on the gameplay though

 Dear OP
I cannot see the moves so I cannot say anything about them

more than likely you were, I have become used to players here and other sites using KOMODO, STOCKFISH, BOUQUET, RYBKA, HOUDINI, STRELKA, AND ANY OF THE OTHER STRONG ENGINES, THEY R WEAK PLAYERS WHO NEED THIS CRUTCH, WATCH DURING YOUR GAME, AND WHEN YOUR PIECES MOVE SORTA HERKY-JERKY, BE ON NOTICE, UNFORTUNATELY THEY ARE HARD TO CATCH, RONIN_DH----BEWARE!!!!!!!!

if you click the button in the bottom left of the chess board frame in the post, it will bring up the analysis board with the game.

@Quiksilverau --- yes suspicious. The whole ... g5 and all that to heat up your e-pawn (1700-2000 humans recoil in horror at that, period). The second time the knight went to g3.  Outside of the obvious best moves, there was a distinct pattern of 2nd, 2nd, 1st from the stockfish choices.

"but my opponents attack felt a bit too methodical for our ratings."
yeah, even when you played a lemon (exchange loss), they came back even harder, humans kind of ease up because we are naturally lazy. Bundling in the second rook after your b3 sealed the opinion in my mind. 

You just did multiple weak moves starting with 4. d3 (sub optimal move) and 5. e5??(strategical mistake). Then your opponent easily walk in.

I don't think you were playing against an engine. You made enough bad moves that the good moves toward the end suggested themselves, like the N fork of your two rooks and the fact you fell behind in Pawns and isolated them needlessly with poor moves like 20 f4 and 23 d4, and exposed your King.

chess.com's quick analysis says Black made 5 good (not excellent) moves and 2 inaccuracies and made the best move 64% of time. That's reasonable for a 1700 rated player.

You're obviously a skilled player, so I'd just chalk it up to a bad game.

Adding to what drmrboss said, by move five you're may as well be down a pawn. Instead of letting it go and trying to stay ahead in development you cripple your position by throwing everything into defending the pawn. At this point a strong opponent shouldn't have much of a problem. Also, I'm not good enough at live games to know this for sure, but if black happens to know a lot about the French defense then seeing all this shouldn't be much of a problem because at move five this just looks like a French defense gone wrong. On top of that, there are a couple moves from black that feel distinctly human (I've never seen an engine play a6 and h6 right in a row like that). So I really don't think you're playing against an engine here :)

best move 64%

but only 1 move (18. ... Be5) didn't appear in the top 2 engine moves. although even Be5 does pop in to the top 3 for a few seconds at the start of eval.

so while 64% were best, 95% were in top 2.

I made 2 'bad' moves in the game (f4 thinking it was protected, and allowing the knight fork), and a couple positional mistakes which shouldn't be lethal in a 1700 blitz game (e5 and h4), and a slow Qd2

and yet, a6 and h6 were the top engine picks for both  

- a6 was to prevent a knight jumping into d6 and pulling the e5 pawn onto d6

- h6 was to prepare g5, which I only realized in analysis afterward

of course I came out worse from the opening with e5, but I am talking about opponent playing 95% of top engine moves in a blitz game

They weren't hard moves to find, and honestly it's starting to sound like you're just looking for someone to agree with you.

 There are many ways to use engine in the game. They can use it to confirm their moves. For instance, if their move is one of the top 5 choices of the engine, they play it. It is just the matter of psychology and confidence that encourage people to use engine. So, it is really pointless to accuse someone using engine in a casual/rated game. Of course, when you play in tournament, there is AI system to detect the possibility that a player using engine.

Seems like an engine to me.  Players who use engines tend to be smart about it.  Sometimes only using it at a critical point.  One of my son's friends (2235 FIDE player) showed me how the youngsters are doing it.  Even in in 3/0.  No way a cheat detection system would catch them.  They purposely blunder and make mistakes but constantly monitor their chances via the evaluation.  It strikes me as extremely sad that the youngsters (and not so young) are doing this but this is human nature.  The ego is fragile.  I think playing online should be taken with a grain of salt. 

I may blunder (strategically for the most part) and play the odd rubbish game, but one thing I've never done is use an engine in any game, but it OTB, Correspondence, Rapid or Blitz.  Yes, I do use a database for Correspondence Chess, but that's obviously allowed.  The game above does look suspicious to me!

+ Most moves that are not first choice are second best move according to all major engines.

+ Even when 4 moves are very close (2 or 3 cp close) to the top move according to engines, it's always 1st or 2d choice that is played. That's really strange.

+ I compared his moves to SF9 moves and to LeelaZeroChess who I suppose makes more natural human moves. It seems opponent's moves are closer to SF9's move than to Leela's moves. This looks suspicious TO ME but I may be wrong.

The fact that your mistakes were easy to make use of is one thing. The fact that you expect someone to confirm is one thing, but that does not prove you wrong. The way it was exploited, is another. It sounds a bit engine-like. But I'm far from being a qualified advisor. I just want you to feel free if you really think you may have been cheated, to report your doubts to chess.com, there is a team for this, why not making use of this function when you feel in right to do it? There is no shame if you turn wrong. And it's a good service to the community if you're right and you help catch. Only this team is responsible if an innocent player is punished and I don't think it could happen so much; We here only GUESS. They do have REAL tools to make it clear when a players really cheats with engines. Plus they can use statistically upon many games. They probably receive hundreds of reports every day and only ban a very few who clearly indeed cheat, not the others. Just report, and let them do their job, and don't fell bad for this. But in the other hand, don't claim you're victim if you're not. Only if you receive back your rating points a few days later you may say.

pump : "Players who use engines tend to be smart about it. Sometimes only using it at a critical point. One of my son's friends (2235 FIDE player) showed me how the youngsters are doing it. Even in in 3/0. No way a cheat detection system would catch them. They purposely blunder and make mistakes but constantly monitor their chances via the evaluation. It strikes me as extremely sad that the youngsters (and not so young) are doing this but this is human nature. The ego is fragile. I think playing online should be taken with a grain of salt."

They finally really play like their rating, let them mistake what they appear to be with what they are and enjoy their false rating, and just play fair and know your real rating. They don't do that much harm if you really consider the situation when they do it on rated games like that. On tournament it's another story when there is a prize to win and that deserves more attention.

Opening Principles:

1. Control the center squares – d4-e4-d5-e5

2. Develop your minor pieces toward the center – piece activity is the key

3. Castle

4. Connect your rooks

Tactics...tactics...tactics...

Pre Move Checklist:

1. Make sure all your pieces are safe. 

2. Look for forcing move: Checks, captures, threats. You want to look at ALL forcing moves (even the bad ones) this will force you look at, and see the entire board. 

3. If there are no forcing moves, you then want to remove any of your opponent’s pieces from your side of the board. 

4. If your opponent doesn’t have any of his pieces on your side of the board, then you want to improve the position of your least active piece. 

5. After each move by your opponent, ask yourself: "What is my opponent trying to do?"

Middlegame Planning:

1. Expand your position:

a. Gain more space.

b. Improve the position of your pieces.

2. Decide on what side of the board to play.

a. Queenside: a-c files.

b. Center: d-e files.

c. Kingside: f-h files.

Compare, space, material, and weakness(es)

Play where you have the advantage.

3. DO NOT HURRY.  Regroup your pieces, and be patient. 

Do you like have this copy and pasted to post in forums looking for help? They're 1700 you know.

From what I see, you just made a number of silly mistakes. Your opponent just capitalised on it, nothing special here.