cheater

Oh my god! you lost. Must be a cheater. I totally agree with you, sir. I said so in this thread quite fluently, please post your thoughts!

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/stockfish-uses-a-engine-and-chess-com-doesnt-care

Chess.com has been doing a lot lately to improve the quality of the site, and detection of cheating is up there as a targeted priority. Just recently chess.com came up with a new concept of reimbursement of rating points to players who the site deems may have been victims of cheating; earlier this week I got back 8 rating points for this reason! Sure my next game I lost them, but you know how it is - easy come, easy go.

Of course, there are many ways that you can reduce your chance of being cheated out of a game: 

1) one of these is the time. Pay attention to how long your opponent normally spends on a move. Humans vary a ton with maybe a regular "pace" with some long pauses thrown in. A cheater however, will often spend the same amount of time regardless of the position, taking even up to five seconds for the most obvious recaptures a human does in a blink (because a cheater needs to wait for the computer to assess the position). 

2) Cheaters usually have relatively new accounts. Rarely does someone play honestly for years only to decide tomorrow is engine day - furthermore Cheaters often get caught, hence restarting their account. Someone on chess.com for a longer period of time (at least a year) are less likely to be engine users.

3) Cheaters usually use obscure openings; maybe they are solid, but complicated/seldomly played. Cheaters tend to avoid mainlines, because strong players would be well versed here - whereas a computer calculates ruthlessly in any setup.

4) Take note of rating differences in time controls. Some are better by a hundred or two points from daily to blitz or something - but several hundred point differences are at the very least red flags. A human has an ability. If my daily is 2000, 1800 blitz is fairly normal. But sometimes I come across some one's daily of like 500, but 2000 blitz. Maybe they do not play daily often - but this is at least a red flag if nothing else. A computer has no problem with fast calculation.

5) Also, some moves just "look" computer-generated. GMs come up with creative solutions, but the "plan" can often be followed. However, a computer can calculate and deliver mate/tactics from any direction or pattern/motif. Sometimes computers make great moves that are difficult for a human to find - like defending by dropping a piece back to its starting square or defending tactically with some "quiet" move. Of course, humans could find this - but it is tougher to regularly see.

All of these "tips" are clues to detect cheating. It does not tell you your opponent cheated, but they are things to look for as at least warning signs. For example, my first one indicates that engine users often spend the same amount of time for moves. However, the cheater could try to disguise this by intentionally waiting simply to vary the intervals. None of these will give certainty of cheating, but if anyone meets several of these criterion - they may be cheating.

If you suspect this what can you do? Well for one, don't play a rematch versus a suspected cheater. Secondly, as always, you can report them to chess.com - you do not need to have a hostile, accusing tone; you can report people to chess.com, and still be polite - chess.com help/support is great, they are there to help YOU through this situation.

Before I move in my games, I at least click their username. If I see the huge gaps (I mentioned earlier, in point number 4, that may indicate cheating) among time controls, I simply do not risk my rating by playing that game. Small steps can go a long way.

There is no need to whine about online cheating (although it has been pretty bad lately on many sites), simply acknowledge cheating as a potential factor and minimize your chance of being a victim of cheating via these simple checks (and others). Chess.com has been improving their efforts to fight engine users, but we have to do our parts too.

One of the old-time masters, Bird... or was it Burn?... used to remark that he had never beaten a healthy opponent.

 im pretty sure everyone who win me is because he is a cheater

 That's DuckedUP!

Bird.

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/excuses.html

Whatever our real level is, except if we are in the top 100 players here, the very system is that we are supposed to meet people from around the same level and loose half of the time (a little more if we tend to often pair with players of much higher level and beat 'em sometimes, a little less if we tend to loose sometimes to much lower players than us). At the end what is the problem if we loose against machine or humans as we WILL loose anyway? Cheaters are not even decreasing our rating as the number of players just inflates the ratings scores. So for a recreational player here it shoudn't be a big problem. Playing against a machine 10% of the time doesn't hurt, really, except if we play money (some tournaments). And we probably NEVER will reach a level where we win more often than loose because of the very pairing system that is pairing us according to our level.

So people please stop whining, just play, whoever cheater or not is opponent is not relevant.

Now about the "Chess.com has done a lot for a cheat-free platform" let me laugh. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate they do more effort to find cheaters, give back the points etc. But they still -and it's the same shaming absurd mistake every last online plying company is doing- they do not punish for cheating. So what? Cheating is not punished so people have no reason to not cheat. The worse can happen is that you lose a small part of what you got from cheating. And have to recreate a new account.

Probably chess.com is cheating himself. If I were Chess.com I would DO cheat. As there are some TOO interesting things to learn from cheating a little bit. Like if you want to really know the level of an engine, you just play it under some false account. Etc. Maybe that's why they started to give back the rating points. Feeling guilty ! And then banning the false account to make the user feel happy he was recognised as victim Brilliant. "They do a lot against cheating".

Seriously they don't do that much. Not enough for sure. but they do, it's nice. Those who pay premium may feel it's not enough. those playing for free should not complain. I'm playing for free (even if considering to pay soon when having more time to spend on chess). So I just have many nice things to say about chess.com. Basically they don't own me anything, I don't even watch nor even see their ads. All is just perfect to me, absolutely no complain at all.

Oh and spamming the thread won't stop cheaters you know. Basically if they don't do more it's mainly because they can't. Spamming here would just be useless ad very ennoying

This site is a hackers dream. I just watched a film titled "Code 2600". It stars a bunch of geeks from Silicon Valley who try to give the art of hacking legitimacy. The world today has lowered the bar on integrity. Having played online for 20 years at many different sites, I can tell you this is by far the best. I have played 12 thousand games here in the past couple years and only suspected cheaters a handful of times. However I only play 1 minute 90% of the time.

 Chess.com is aware of your concerns but they are training you for death,...letting go of life.........you know....the whole  "flow of the game is so fluid that you just get swept without being able to do anything.....and where is the fairness in that".

Chess itself is such a training Ronald, it's not Chess.COM the problem. Chess is a game where you whether loose a lot or match your opponents badly choosing only weak opponents to fill your ego instead of matching some higher levels to learn (and loose sometime is necessary to learn).

By the way, the very fact that cheaters (the number they are now) are not a problem for users (except in pay-in tournaments again) is NOT a correct argue to keep lazy at fighting them. It always will be the website duty to fight them the best he can and that's far from being done by Chess.com. Not complaining, just saying the obvious.

Discussions about cheating should be had in private clubs such as the cheating discussion forum at https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum, not in the public forums.

See also https://www.chess.com/blog/News/new-tools-for-fair-play-on-chess-com and https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection

I am now locking this thread.

Thanks,

David, moderator