Beating Engine Users in 3|0 Blitz

Not on this site, so mods don't freak out that my opponent was cheating and I said the "c" word.

Well... at least I think he was. I played him twice, and all his moves took 4 seconds. Opening moves? 4 seconds. Recaptures? 4 seconds. Difficult moves to set up strategy / tactics? 4 seconds.

So even though not 100% of the moves were stockfish10, it makes me think it was a lesser engine being used by a caveman level cheater (manually transferring moves is the most basic way)

Still, beating someone like this is a great feeling

With hundreds of engines of all strengths available it wouldn't surprise me.  I know a guy on here that uses some engine rated around 2000.

Nice game! You didn't give up which is the best attitude in chess, just having fun and trying to win your opponent. Based on what you said, yes most engine users will try to use weak engines and make it look like they are capable of losing to lower rated players in my opinion. From what I saw on white, it looks like white misplaced his queen on c4, an inactive vulnerable square. qe3 looks better and you might have gone for a nice simple kingside attack if possible, even though you didn't want that. If you didn't want a complicated attacking position, 0-0 in any manner/order might work to me. Sorry I don't have a clear analysis here, still it looked like you had a lot of fun there!

I've (more or less) had the position up to move 10 OTB a few times, so I was just going on autopilot theory mode there.

Yes, castling opposite sides and calling it boring is probably a little silly of me.

Also I thought if I could hold the central squares in balance, I'd get some trades and an equal position... it was silly to miss the b5-b4 idea, meaning I had to find immediate trades or counterplay.

I see. Its okay if you made a silly statement, I done worse, I even castled 0-0-0 in the maroczy bind sicillian as WHITE. Good riddance I got crushed by using that strategy.

I have it happen once in a great while that someone tries to use an engine in a 3-min blitz game on me. When I suspect they are, I try to make very fast 'turtle' moves to keep them constantly having to input the moves in their engine. If you're fast enough you can confuse them and run them out of time before their engine can checkmate you. I've actually beaten engine users doing this, though it only works maybe 25% of the time. Still though cheaters at this time control are rare, so I try not to worry about it.

I rarely play against engines... there are just so few of them below 2000 rating that I don't have to worry.