If you really believe that 95% of your sub 1000 rapid opponents are cheating then chess isn't the game for you. Maybe find a new hobby.
Chess.com is just a hoax
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And this topic is gonna get locked btw
Mar 24, 2026
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#4
@Erik8500 Like it or not but what I describe above is the untold truth. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's impossible to simply forget it again and to pretend it never happened or things simply aren't so. It took me a while to understand this but it's heartbreaking but yeah, I don't think there is ever a reliable way of detecting these methods.
I think the volatility in the ratings leads lower rated players to thinking they’ve been cheated. I play people all the time who are better than their ratings. They aren’t necessarily cheating. I didn’t see this volatility when I played over the board, though, where it was much harder to cheat. So maybe I’m wrong.
That is not correct, however, skill issues for you though. Chess is both simple and complex at once, and you're not learning, huh? Why can you reach 900 while you complain?
Let's coach such a instance: if you peaked around 800th elo and the enemy king is lone in row 8, the only thing you should consider is to mate fast with rooks rather than queens.
If you think everyone's cheating how many times you ever got a Fool's Mate instead of a regular mate?
Trialanderror111 wrote:
@Erik8500 Like it or not but what I describe above is the untold truth. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's impossible to simply forget it again and to pretend it never happened or things simply aren't so. It took me a while to understand this but it's heartbreaking but yeah, I don't think there is ever a reliable way of detecting these methods.
This means you might had the concern about having someone ever used an AI browser like Comet or using the Copilot AI bundled with Windows to play a online game (deferrence to Generative AI.) I have such a concern like that in a separate post, but asking ChatGPT to help you play chess is a brainrot. No one use LLMs to play games just yet.
The only way to cheat in a Chess.com game is sandbagging, and it's known issue across all websites, not a untold truth. Everyone knows that already, even Chess.com understands.
They could rel a desktop copy that runs inside a Chrome wrapper. That cannot stop the user from sandbagging.
Sure, it's soshipicated, but it requires you to run two tabs logging into two games at once, which can be easily spotted, or you might lose games anyways to a enemy who exploited a machine-produced mistake.
You're low-elo player. Perhaps you might having skill issues or you're not, because even if you see a GM sandbagging on a low-elo player, he'd be spotted easily and that GM get banned fast, or you always misses the chance to meet Magnus or Hikaru sandbagging with a fresh account.
In short, the chances of catching a sandbagger is very low or not, and calling fellow low-elo player like me a sandbagger is like a noob naming their fellows as a cheater simply because they'd all perform better.
Consider dedicating your game streak to playing with coach daily, or versus bot Engine to see how many Engine can you beat. If you'd beat Engine no.6, you could win a game and you could win the game against me.
Yes, it's really a shame but it's true. It's not really Chess.com's fault I believe but in fact it's it's player's fault. Too many young lads and girls who can't deal with defeat and there are also a couple grown ups who must compensate for their really sad daily lives by pretending to be better in chess than they are. Sandbagging (pretending to be lower rated than you actually are is also a form of cheating). The truth is most people on this site use additional help to win games. How do they do that? Well, they setup the position of the game in another program and use the evaluation bar to find proper (but not the best moves so the anti cheat software used by Chess.com and also Lichess can't detect them). I am absolutely opposed to these methods as playing chess becomes super boring by doing this. In fact, it becomes absolutely pointless playing at all since beating those engines is impossible and everyone with a halfway working brain knows this. On top of this there are plenty of people who have several chess.com accounts. Why? This is again something that encourages cheating and is simply unfair. I understand that particularly in regions where people with lower income try to avoid premium memberships by opening several accounts but it's still not acceptable and annoying to be honest. The worst is what I describe above. It's happening in about 95% of the games I play. This is actually why I stopped playing tons of games every day and my interest in chess has stalled. It's demotivating to know that even though I am improving I would never really see my true strengths by playing on this website as these methods simply can't be properly detected. I unfortunately don't have any friends or people with whom I could play against in a traditional OTB game but I think this is the best way of playing if possible.