Cheap Moves

1. d4

Whenever an opponent beats me, I assume he must have made a cheap move somewhere along the line.

Taking someone's queen without letting them recapture is really cheap.

When someone traps my king, and stops the game with me one move from trapping his king, that's really cheap.

It's also cheap when someone kills my horsey.

Any game played with the use of performance-enhancing lack of drugs or alcohol is against the spirit of chess.

i play my best after my daily visit to the  clinic

now quiet my head feels like it will shatter to a million peices

alekhine was an alcoholic

he also died in destitute

But he did have an awesome cat.

 Nope.  He died in Estoril.

Hey madhatter, if you I'm understanding your position, your opponent had the King, KNight and Bishop while you had the lone King. This type of checkmate is difficult to execute by most players because it comes up in only about 1 in 5000 games (according to Muller and Lamprecht in their writings on mating patterns). It also takes a larger number of precise moves compared to other types of endgame mates. Therefore, you stood a great chance of walking away with a drawn game. Is playing for a draw a "cheap move?" Ask the player who casually plays chess and then ask a professional player with a $5,000 prize on the line and a single 1/2 point standing between him and the prize. Playing for a draw is within the rules. Is it a cheap move, I'd say no. Personally, I'll play for a draw when given the choice between draw and loss.

I think this is what you're alluding to...   that special feeling where one knows they should have won (it would've been the "right" thing to do)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindle_(chess)

 They better pay me to take that one off their hands.

The cheapest of moves:  if you're black after opening King's pawns,bishop f6 for white, (any kind of move) queen h5 and if you don't want to be mated you have to cover with pawn at g7-g6, and he takes the pawn at e5 for a check-rook. How can you avoid that? The only almost-good solution is to cover the check with the queen and if he doesn't take it,you take his pawn for check-bishop,and then take the bishop but that creates lack of defence around the king, he can take the knight...very tough situation to come out on top

The solution to that is simple - develop the knight(s) pronto!!!!

Yeah, it makes me feel like there might be some sort of drawback to being a severe alcoholic, which would be very depressing. Just the thought of it makes me want another scotch.

Yes, to answer your question, there are not only cheap moves here on chess.com but there are also moves that act in bad faith. 

First, most people here seem to fail to realize that chess.com provides an environment that is different from that of mere chess. Chess in the real world does not depend on your internet connection speed. Since we can move very fast on the internet, chess.com has made bullet chess possible, and this changes how the game is played drastically enough that developing certain lines of play is considered cheating or acting in bad faith.

Take for example the opening. Most people don't need to think about certain openings in that they are classic, by-the-book openings. If one were playing a ten minute game, their approach to the opening would be very different because they would take a little more time to make sure that their opening is being developed proportionate to their opponent's play. In bullet chess, however, many openings occur in such a way that the first five or so moves are simply by-the-book. You try to secure the centure in a standard way and based on your level of play. That is, if you get a 2500 rated bullet player, you'll nearly never see that player reduce himself to 1200 rated moves just to win the game when the 1200 rated moves would otherwise lose him the game, hands down. However, in lower rated games, (say between 1500 and 2000), many players condescend to playing 1200-rated openings to throw their opponent off because they know that their opponent trusts that they are as good as their rating suggests and will thus play accordingly. Some players, knowing this, will use that window to try to steal their opponents queen.

A common response is, "yes but that's part of one minute chess, you shouldn't move so fast then." But this is simply illogical and misses the point. Even in longer games, if you compare the speed with which each move is executed in the opening, you see that relative to the middle and end game, those first moves are usually made much more quickly. The reasoning is simple: the opening is one of the easiest parts of the games after a certain level of experience. You learn to recognize certain openings, how to play others, what to identify, etc. You learn that basically, your opponent won't go for 3 move checkmates but will go for trying to control the center. That therefore necessitates a certain logic and by-the-book play. Period.

Hence, in longer games, suicidal moves of the sort would just end in your opponent's victory. Not yours. In bullet chess however, those moves often win one the game because the person executing such moves is playing in bad faith. They are exploiting the fact that their opponent trusts them to play their (actual) level of play. Again, I started out with a 2500-rated player for this point here, since it is here where people will try to argue that it is somehow not low of them to play in such a way when they see clearly that it is. That, it is somehow not cheating. Indeed, it is cheating and no other thing but cheating, it's simply that it's not cheating in official terms. And, again, such is exactly why 2500-rated players nearly never condescend to such play: they are the real deal and their ratings aren't based on "I'm angry so I'll go ahead and throw the game away because I know you trust me to play the level of play that my rating says I am capable of playing and yet I can't win any other way.. so, I'll try to take "shortcuts." In bike races, we all know who has taken "shortcuts" and what the name for such shortcuts is.  

Incidentally, many players who can't win against an opponent will after five or so losses just hurl themselves into their opponent out of anger, thinking all the while that "well, I've won..." when in reality they just cheated. Again, not officially, but practically. This is why they'll only do it a few times and then stop, since they know their opponent will realize that they can't be trusted to play logically and will no longer depend on the premove in the beginning when the moves are more or less standard developments. 

Another systematic way people inflate their ratings by cheating is by exploiting their connection speed. Again, such has nothing to do with how good they are at chess but more to do with where they are in the world and how good their broadband is. This is likely the clearest example of how a 1600 rated player can attain a 1900 rated game in bullet chess. In other words, they're not playing bullet chess but lightening chess, which incidentally isn't available here... 

Those are a few ways playing bullet chess can result in cheating even though the way in which the player cheated was not officially cheating.

Another way a person could cheat relative to this question is not based on the environment but is a tournament problem. People with a much higher rating than what their rating shows come to play tournaments and destroy everyone even though their rating is, say, 400 points lower than what it is in actuality. In real life, husslers do such to win money. I've met them! But here it might happen that people lose 200 points after a bad day and then play a player 200 points below their new rating who think (naturally) that they have a chance of winning. To the opponent that is some four hundred points below, his opponent should let them know how much higher they are so that they can put into perspective who they're really playing against. Believe it or not, but some of us taking winning and losing seriously. When we see a player with a rating relative to ours play a game that is more than 400 points higher than what it should be, it's more or less indistinguishable from a computer. That's cheap, at the very least. 

that was a book polis. 

but If I understood what you are saying- most of it was not that the Moves were "cheap" its that the person were dishonest.  I think a dishonest or unsporting person is a different issue than his moves.

his moves aren't the point.

I agree with many that no legal, valid move is by itself, "cheap" or unsporting.

if you do not know how to handle a trap, you lack education and will (if you play a lot) get an important lesson....

I heard that a "cheapo" is a known inferior move played in the hope that the opponent will fall for a fairly obvious trap.

Cheap moves to me is when an opponent is only concerned with exchanging pieces. Everything he does is to exchange, thereby taking any strategy out of the game

Cheapos? 3...Nd4 against the Italian.