Excellent Article: Chess.com versus the Cheats

Did you see the article by Danny Rensch in January's Chess  Life, Chess.com versus the Cheats? It is excellent and quite heartening.

It begins by describing the dilemma Chess.com faced back in 2011 when its founders took the high road to find ways to stop cheating by players. Danny explains that at the time computers had become strong enough to beat any human, and unfortunately lots of people had begun using them to unfairly win games.

He goes on to explain how Chess.com developed an algorithm to ferret out cheaters.This is a great accomplishment and I believe one reason why playing here is so much fun. Who wants to play against some moron who believes it's OK to use a computer? I think that online chess can provide great mental training if you play fairly just like you were playing an OTB game.

Bravo to Chess.com for getting rid of the cheats!

The article was quite interesting and informative. I was surprised to read that this site has even closed the accounts of several titled players for using engines. 

I'm not too sure how to explain an algorithm, but ferret out means to find them and ban them. 

I find chess.com's cheating detection system fairly poor, average at best. There are tons of cheaters, and it takes an overwhelming amount of evidence to get rid of them.

Yeah, there have been cases like that, but there are also people banned quickly all the time.

You're an idiot.

High profile assholes losing their jobs / going to jail has been in the news, prominently, the last few months. You don't call this weeding out? One of them was even pardoned by Trump.

And what do you think BLM does? Raise awareness so these people can be brought to justice, and people like you deride it as complaining. It's not complaining to demand basic human rights.

As for cheating on chess.com, there's the cheating forum, where people can learn about detection methods and how to submit a credible report to chess.com. Unfortunately, as hictenunec points out, sometimes chess.com ignores these reports, even when it's ridiculously obvious a person is cheating. I think sometimes the accounts are friends of staff (or alt accounts). Of course sometimes it's just there is a lot to process, and things take time. Other cases where users aren't banned are pretty suspicious. Maybe some of the people who process these are unpaid volunteers who are frankly ignorant about all things chess and make poor decisions... I remember plenty of chess-ignorant fools defending B.Ivanov e.g. in chessbase comments.

Keep up the good work, Danny and the rest of you running this site. I've noticed that a few (and very few, at that) of my opponents have had accounts closed for abuse and other reasons. It's nice to know you are on top of things.

   It begins by describing the dilemma Chess.com faced back in 2011 when its founders took the high road to find ways to stop cheating by players.   High road? The better they are at stopping cheaters, the more money they stand to make. It has nothing to do with virtue, just a cost benefit analysis.                    Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds.?  Heaven forbid good people like Erik and the team should do long hard work to ensure that the many can enjoy the best site possible......oh yes, and make some money for their efforts.  All those mom & pop stores that America grew up on for yrs. We wouldn't want any virtue involved now would we?.....especially for members who have been here before--godsofhell--and are now DEFENDING cheaters..

To discuss the matter of cheating further, or to learn more about cheat detection, please join the Cheating Forum: https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum

Chess.com takes cheating very seriously: see https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection,https://support.chess.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1444879-fair-play-on-chess-com-what-you-need-to-know and https://www.chess.com/blog/DanielRensch/cheating-on-chesscom.

Cheaters are banned when they are detected.  There are various tools that are used to keep them from returning without permission; these tools are familiar to anyone who has run an online forum.

However, discussions of cheating in the main forum is not permitted, as it tends to become very heated and result in lots of public accusations, many of which are completely unfounded; you might be surprised how many cheating reports we get about low-rated players after a game that was a complete blunderfest. If all these reports were aired in public, it would just cause an ugly flame war. Therefore, I am locking this post.

To report a suspected cheater to the Support team, please select Report Abuse under the Help menu, or use this link: https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/emails/new. All reports are investigated, even if there is no immediate visible action.

Thanks,

MGleason - moderator