1100-1250 blitz players with no blunders - cheating, or for real?

I've encountered quite a few 1100-1250 5' minute blitz players on chess.com that play entire games of 30+ moves, which when run through an engine for the 'centipawn loss', make zero blunders, and very small centipawn losses, often <12. (Most IM games I've seen are 12-18 if there are 30 moves.)

When I was 1200, I just automatically assumed these players were just 'that good', but I'm having my doubts now - I'm now playing at 1500 blitz level, and am sure I'm well above a 1200 rated player, but for sure, very few of my opponents at 1400-1500 make this few errors, which is making me seriously doubt that these 1200 level players are not cheating. 

I went through a brief ratings dip a month ago as well, and it was the same thing - I had a hellaciously hard time beating 1150-1250 rated players, which seems quite odd, as it's actually much easier to defeat 1400-1500s, for real compared to some of these lower-rated players.

Seriously, I ran my last 6 blitz games through an engine and ALL of my opponents were 20+ centipawn loss, and rated 1450+.

So are these awesome 1200 players cheating? Or are they legit?

ive only been here about two weeks or so and i have encountered some players who are very likely getting some kind of compuer help online.Unless the host has some programming that detects likely cheaters there is nothing that can be done about it and you just have to understand that such things are going to happen and its just the way the system is now.

Could be intentionally or unintentionally lowering their rating way past their actual play level . I can't really know why it is but i observed the same thing with 1200 players being harder than 14/1500 , and i'm in the same rating range as you .

It depends what time control you're talking about , ive ran into more than a few of them in 15 minute games but not any in blitz ( at least I dont think so) 

You know, I thought it was players intentionally lowering their ratings, but I do check when I suspect cheating, and while there def are sandbaggers, it's usually not 100+ points. More like 60-80 points. 

I think I'm realizing as well that when my opponent is playing me in blitz, starts the game 8-10 moves in, then suddenly pauses for nearly 2 minutes, then comes back to beat me pretty straight out without even getting to an endgame, it's probably because they took the time to fire up an engine and spent 2 minutes entering the first 8-10 moves. It's awfully suspect when someone your rating level, or even lower than you, can crush you in a 5' blitz game after wasting 2 minutes doing nothing.

Actually, you can have players play blunderfree with low ratings. My centipawn loss in an OTB in the summer was only 7, unfortunately my opponent - also FIDE 1600 something - was equal to it over 57 moves. In classic time control I am regularily at 12 or below. I find this measurement a good way to judge how well I have played, but it dosent rate the quality of my ideas. Anyway, sometimes we will come across players we suspect are cheating. For me this is usually most suspect when they throw out moves in very complicated positions. Just block them.

Yes, at standard long tournament OTB typical time controls, <10cp loss even at lower levels isn't uncommon.

I haven't played an OTB in over 12 years (!) but I do have my game log from back then when I was rated from 1200-1400, and I entered a bunch of my games into the engines for review, and sure enough, my cp loss was <12 in all of those games. (Obviously there were plenty of strategic inaccuracies I'd flag now as a better human player, but the cpu centipawn loss is pretty low.)

In blitz, I would say that very few of my games as a 1150-1250 player had <18 cp loss. Like well <10%, and the few that did have so little cp loss was because the opponent blundered, making the winning lines super obvious. 

Most 1200s I play blunder like crazy once we get to a equalish middlegame or sharp position, but a surprising minority continue to play moves that from what I'm seeing, are better than what most 1400s (blitz ratings for both) play in similar positions, which is why I'm suspecting cheating, now that I'm actually 1400+ and see what real 1400+ players play like in blitz. 

I play better than my rating here. I had technical issues that caused me to lose a bunch. Even now with that issue solved, I still experience more lag here than lichchess (i've no idea why) which causes time losses or more blunders due to time trouble. I just got my blitz here back above 1200 but on lich I'm like 1600. So maybe there's others like me with inaccurate ratings for similar reasons?

You are 1600 on lichess because lichess starts you out at 1500. So roughly +300 points compared to chess.com, until you get to much higher or lower levels where it can change.

I started at 1400 here.

hhnngg1 wrote:

You are 1600 on lichess because lichess starts you out at 1500. So roughly +300 points compared to chess.com, until you get to much higher or lower levels where it can change.

I'm around 1500 OTB and I play in regular USCF tournaments.  Some of these are open format tournaments where any player can play any other player, regardless of rating.  I played in one recently where in alternating rounds I faced players in 1000-1200 range followed by players in the 1800-2000 range.  This was just a quirk because most of the players were either in the lower range or the higher range.  For some reason on that particular day not many in the middle ranges showed up.

Each player had 1/2 hour per game, called quick chess by the organizer, for a total of 1 hour per game.  The 1000-1200 players all played pretty good chess.   No notable blunders, good openings, developed their pieces before attacking, and decent defensive play.  I won because they made tiny positional mistakes that eventually gave me control of the board, allowing me to crack open their position and break in.

I was very impressed with their performance.  If they play that way all the time they should only need to clean up their play a little to achieve a big jump in their rating.  I've analyzed all the games using Fritz 13 and it didn't find any big errors either.  I started playing chess back in the 1970's and back in those days 1200 level players made a lot bigger mistakes.  I believe that lower rated players are much stronger now than they were 40 years ago because they can now sit around all day and play against computers or on the internet, and there are a lot of instructional resources available cheap or for free.  Back then if a person wanted to play chess he had to leave his house and go around the neighborhood looking for a friend who wanted to play.  It was very hit and miss. 

Could be legit if you were playing very easy chess and forcing them to play obvious replies. 

If they have choices and they always play the slightly stronger move then maybe it's suspect or just luck.

There is obviously a consistent difference between 1200 and 1500.  If you are playing easy chess not all that well and the position is clear then that difference is not all that much. 

A 2 min nap in the opening in blitz is rare in my experience.  Maybe on move 29 in a lost/desperate position.

well if you don't threaten anything it's quite possible for them to play without blunders

I thought we all came here to test our engines, I'm tired of all those folks that actually do the chess by themselves and either drop queens or beat my computer on superiour positional skill - it's all a bloody waste of my CPU!!

My blitz rating is hovering in a similar range. I simply cannot compute moves that fast without playing blunders. But the range of players I've seen at this rating is ridiculous. Many players just blundering three, four, five sometimes easy moves per game and missing obvious tactics (on both sides) and then many players with almost flawless games.

Maybe it should represent a genuine spread of players but it really doesn't feel very natural to me.

Online Chess has become boring, because of all the unfair criminals that use assistance to win, why criminals you ask , because anyone who cheats would go further ...

4 years late.

 It's not cheating. And the issue's still there. 

 I've said called it many times. The rating ladder on this site at the lower elo means nothing. I've played many players at the 1100 bracket who are stronger than players several hundred points higher but they are "stuck" at their low level. Which defeats the purpose of a rating ladder as you really cannot gauge people by rating at all. That 1500 could be a weaker player than that other 1100. Im sure this changes when you are close to 2000 or above that. But at low elo? Numbers mean nothing. 

Im 1600-1900 in daily chess on another site and I can recognise when a 1100 is not a 1100 at all. 

Just take a look at pogchamps and the player ratings there, and how completely irrelevant the ratings become to gauge their playing strength. On the other hand, if you had a 2700 elo play at 2100 elo you'd most likely be able to guess who's going to outplay who. 

I have played about 30,000 blitz games on chess.com since 2008. I know I have improved immensely at blitz in that time but my rating is hardly any higher than it was then - around 1500. There is no doubt that the standard is going up all the time. I don't know how many people are cheating but I play people around my rating or lower EVERY DAY who play 0 blunders, 0 mistakes and 0-2 inaccuracies. I used to think that was impressive but now it's just normal. For comparison, my rating in daily games is over 2000.