Does the site keep bots playing against humans?

It would hurt the site's reputation to use bots in the random pools, pretending they are members, so it wouldn't be a good business decision to do it. Pretty sure there are at least a few topics out there where staff have also chimed in stating that doesn't happen.

There used to be bots in live that could be challenged and even those were removed. 

Of course, people are free to believe what they want

thanks, martin! you made my case for me! It's not like there aren't a couple million examples in the business world for me to fall back on where an organization did something because they were financially (or otherwise) incented to do, even though general knowledge of it would taint their reputation. and the fact that moderators may (or may not) express opinions that may (or may not) be factually correct on other topics is both true and immaterial to my point. So, do I think chess.com puts bots into live play against non-subscribing members? I don't know. (And this doesnt really affect me as I am not a non-subscribing member.) But my point is this--YOU and the other moderators don't know either. You are, of course welcome to express your opinion just like anyone else here. But opinions from moderators hold no more or less value than any other opinion expressed here. You dont know any more about the inner workings of chess.com than a 'candy striper' does of the inner workings of the local hospital.

I'll look around but I'm almost certain even staff have posted that site ran bots are not used in the random pools. Of course, for someone who wants to believe otherwise, no amount of documentation of those in the know will sway them, so probably isn't worth the effort anyway.

I'm pretty confident in my opinion

got it. so i guess we should just believe the 'staffs' of organizations all the time. i mean, hey, it's not like they are financially incented by getting a paycheck, right. let's believe h.r. haldeman when he said the republican party was not behind the watergate break-in. lets believe pacific gas and electric when they said they werent contaminating california groundwater. suffice it to say, martin, that a comment by a 'staff' member does not constitute 'documentation.' and just for the record, i dont believe 'otherwise.' in fact i clearly stated that i dont know. just like you. you dont know--all the "confidence" in the world not withstanding. 

Bots make moves instantly. Human players usually think a couple of seconds and are less likely to pre-click.

i would think even a low skilled programmer could provide a work-around on that issue.

I feel that day by day I am turning to be a bot. Jijo Bot!

As a Rapid player that doesn't pre-move makes it clear that my opponents are human players (most do not pre-move either).

I have noticed that from times to times they put you on bots opponents continuously, it is not only annoying playing against bots, these are so badly programmed that go from full attack mode to queen sacrifice, and most of the times they let their time expire. I dont understand the philosophy behind this, it is simply stupid. Maybe there are so few players that otherwise someone would wait alot for a human opponent?

https://www.chess.com/game/live/42658257233

This is my last game i realised early on that this was against a bot, made a question, got no answer, started making weird moves to see how it goes....

I dont need ridiculous games like this one the bot nonsense has to stop!

but how can this possibly be??? @Martin_Stahl has already said that "people in the know" (i.e. staffmembers) have "documented" the fact that chess.com does not use bots. and as we all know, Martin is a moderator!!!! and he is "pretty confident" in his opinion!!!!

ah the old days

Amazing this topic is still open ! But now it doesn't matter, today I already found the answer I was looking for in the FIDE chess arena itself (https://chessarena.com). You enter as anonymous, send a challenge, if the system does not find a human opponent in X seconds, a warning appears informing you that a bot from the site will be activated to play with you, if the user does not want to play against the machine, just cancel the challenge , congratulations FIDE. This is the honest way to deal with users whether they are paying or not. This also proves my theory that it is perfectly possible to program the site to keep bots active and activate them automatically as needed, whether due to a lack of humans or simply to punish non-payers. I feel sorry for the people who opined that using bots without the users' knowledge doesn't even pose a problem for online chess practice. It's simply inhumane to want to play a bullet game of one minute without increments, against a machine that calculates thousands of moves per second, that has no feelings, that will always move its piece at the same time, no matter how complex the position. The fact that such a machine is programmed to make silly mistakes in no way alters the difficulties on the human side. I also found the explanations about the calculation of ratings being different on chess.com very amusing, and therefore 1200 players have above average skill here . There is no formula able to make up or manipulate people's IQ, they can only delay or advance the inevitable. A player with an official FIDE rating of 2000 will reach his 2000 rating regardless of whatever formula is being used, what will change is the time to reach 2000, because this is his IQ in chess and period, that goes for all rating ranges. One might ask: But then why on chess.com do players with such low ratings play so far above their ratings? Precisely because of the indiscriminate use of bots! Bots atrophy the real human x human ratings, it ends up being a human x machine rating. That is, a player with 1800 FIDE is condemned to have 1200 precisely because he has to play (without being warned) against bots. Another completely laughable thing: It's those who think it's perfectly normal to send a challenge at any time of the day or night, and the system will always find a diversion in X seconds . Well, the FIDE arena took that doubt away from me!

Chess.com does not use bots in the player pools. You're facing other people that have created accounts. That's not to say that all members are playing fairly. If you suspect someone, report them.

https://support.chess.com/article/209-how-do-i-report-someone

Looks like FIDE Arena has to use bots because there aren't enough players on there to deliver a game within X seconds: Chess.com has a much larger membership with a lot more game seeks going on at any one time and doesn't have that problem, except maybe in the longer and custom time controls: those people just keep on waiting, though, rather than any sort of "silent bot activation" lol