Checkmate Cheating

I think Chess.com should institute a blue verification check mark, like Twitter has. If a player has a verification check mark, it means that his/her real name is known to Chess.com, as well as credit card number, phone number (verified), and Federation number. This person has explicitly agreed not to cheat, and will have cheating activity reported to his/her federation, as well as a sanction from chess.com.

More importantly, one could search for opponents who have the blue check mark only, so known players, not anonymous players. If players are worried about being scouted prior to tournaments (one reason for remaining anonymous), members should have the ability to make their games public/private.

I think this would go a long way to curtail cheating, or at least create sub-communities of players who want to play fairly.

Let me know what you think!

They tried something like that but it had very poor adoption and a lot of pushback. It was discontinued.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/announcing-chesscom-verified

Regarding your other suggestion, the site will likely never allow private archives

Why do you think they won't allow it?

Thanks for the link. I didn't know it had been tried. Surprised it failed. I guess too many want to cheat!

Love the idea Dan. If you read further, you find it was a pay-to-verify system and not enough people were interested in adding that cost onto their premium account memberships. I imagine there is a counter issue from chess.com, which is having the man-power verifying the millions of people interested in not only playing against those playing fairly (a huge problem I struggle with daily), but also those interested in playing small cash-prize events like non-Title Tuesday.

Games played on site are public information and I just can't see the site ever changing that

Ah yes of course cheaters who are banned spend a lot of time playing, much more than the competitive players. That makes a lot of sense.

The fact of the matter is, NO online platforms like cheaters because cheaters make people who would pay subscriptions quit.

I think the reason chess.com has a lot of cheaters is simply because this is the biggest chess site and it's really easy to cheat at chess, hm?

I also think the reason people cheat is because n they don’t want to learn the game of chess or have given up. But chess.com does not like them, they basically just ruin the game which like you said it might make people discouraged.

And I've seen people try to make authorized accounts in their bio which never work. Okay maybe sometimes but if you don’t get your rating refunded instantly unlike when they get banned they’re probably cheating. But idk how they works.

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Since this is turning into a regular cheating type discussion, locking.

If you would like to discuss, please join https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum