I have the Solution to stop cheating in Live Chess!

Several problems:

1. The top engines like Rybka will beat most other engines as well as most humans below Grandmaster.  If the cheat squad beats everyone, then you haven't accomplished anything.  Alternatively, if the cheat squad uses a weaker engine like Crafty or an older Fritz, then more legitimate players will beat it.

2. Many ISPs give you a new IP every time you log in.  AOL is the worst at this.  There is not always a 1-1 correlation between IP and people, between IP and a single computer or even between IP and one location.

3. I'm sure that many Chess.com members don't have a home computer / internet connection and instead use a public site like a cybercafe, library or computer lab at school.  If you ban the IP, then you're banning everyone, including many innocents.  Perhaps the cheater will find a new place to cheat from while others cannot.

Nice idea, but I see flaws both in determining who is cheating and in preventing collateral damage to innocent users of this site.

History and Proof.

Well you clearly won't be convinced otherwise, and I guess the rest of us will simply have to be thankful that it's not your call.  It would be a shame to have to find a new chess site because this one undermined its credibility with an anti-cheating program that involved sanctioned cheating.

Good post...but I do think there is something to this.  Whether I've fleshed the whole thing out flawlessly (perhaps not), there is still something viable about it.

You are hopeless.  You completly not understand how important it is to keep cheaters out of a chess site.  You would like yahoo chess.

I fully apprecaite the need to stop cheating, but doing it by introducing sanctioned cheating accomplishes nothing.  As I said before, you're rearranging the semantics and bringing the offenders in house.  I don't want to play engines period -- sanctioned or otherwise.

 You can't call your own idea fantastic;  that's self-refuting.  It's up to others to decide that.

And it's not.  What about good chess players who just join, face an engine and beat it?  You can't use ranking to help determine whether someone is cheating or not.  As of now the only real way to detect cheating beside somehow checking for an engine is to monitor suspected accounts.

 Sorry for the double post, but do you even know remotely what you're talking about?  Do you know how EASY it is to change your I.P. address?  Anyone who has Mozilla Firefox or Comcast internet can change it in an instant, plus there are tons of websites around you can use to change it.

inside knowledge for anyone who follows chess.  E.G.  KASP vs. Deep Blue, Kramnik vs. Deep Fritz, Adams vs. Hydra....the list goes on.

NOT REALLY. IT TOOK ME A MINUTE BECAUSE OF YOUR POOR SPELLING AND MIXED TENSES.

You are making a false assumption that everybody is more concerned about their rating than playing against live people. (Note the proper usage of the word 'their'). 

You haven't given a good answer to the people who are saying "We don't like cheating because we'd rather play against real people.  We don't like your idea because it means we will play against more engines."

There are two possibilities of cheating. I don't think this can be detected en route

A. The perp hooks up  the engine to the game.

but it can be tracked with another engine. No human can play a game without one

inaccuracy. That is why Deep Blue wins. If a powerful engine does not find an inaccuracy in the opponents moves the probability is overwhelming it is an engine. The perp can be challenged in letters and the community notified that

very likely this person used an engine.

B. The perp puts a position on the engine and copies the move.

For B. I have done this to compare engiines and it is difficult to do this withut losing track of the game.  If the opponent checks a move with an engine before placing it, and the engine says he/she is correct there is little one can do to find out. However, if the engine changes the move, especially if the player's move is an error, most likely the player has a wrong theory of the game and the engine can't help him much because the past moves led to the position in which

the bad moves are in great excess of the good moves.

I will say that it is difficult  to distinguish between a good memory of the named openings and playing openings with an engine. But It is most likely a somewhat mediocre player is the most likely to cheat because such may not value the intrinsic or spiritual value of the game but just want to put it over somebody else.

This is actually a great idea -- just a red flag, meaning that if it's really, really consistent (loss of application focus between each and every move) or in conjunction with complaints that further investigation is warranted.  It's too bad it wouldn't also work for turn-based.

Have we considered $$$   ?

Surely a team of moderators must be paid... unless Erik chooses to use volunteers.

why does it matter who cheats or not? the only one losing is the cheater, by cheating they are not experiencing the real thing. and even if you are really just playing an engine, you are still learning, just at a more difficult and faster pace.

we are here for chess, no more no less. i think we should just forget about this all.

What if someone here has a rating 2100+ , it's not hard to get there.

I actually think that there should be a chess engine to be played against on your first couple of games which will give you an approximate rating.And then when you play live chess you will be playing against same rated opponants + or - 200 points.when u reach the boundry from a class B player to a class A player for example you will have to play a chess engine again so that u get promoted.if u play way better then the engine it means your using an engine.

I hope this works.

 yea, i agree with this idea. this way if u lose your first couple games it wont be impossible to climb back up.

I just want you guys to know that I already use a version of this technique to make sure that the staff are keeping up on their cheat detection obligations.  I have several fake acounts that I use in exactly the manner you describe.  I log in and play with an engine.  This way I can make sure that the cheat detection is working as it should.  Also if I catch a couple cheaters whose engines are just as good as mine while I'm at it then all the better!  I know that a lot of you will say that I'm just another cheater, but you must realize that it is for the greater good!  The ends justify the means!

The above is satire.  I don't cheat!

But really, we don't have any way of knowing how effective or ineffective the current cheat detection is.  The staff make a point of not discussing information about cheat detection with us.  Thats probably why they haven't commented on this thread.  It seems silly propose a system like this when we don't even know if it is needed...  If cheating is absolutly rampant in live chess, I wouldn't know.  I don't play there.

Also, this system won't work.  Someone said that if someone was cheating and their engine wasn't making any progress then they would know they were up against another engine and throw the match, thus avoiding detection.  In response hey were accused of being a cheater themselves.  (She's a witch!  Burn her!)  I think he was right and it makes perfect sense.  It would just be to obvious and easy to avoid.

The most absolute way to avoid cheats in chess would be to force players to download a client app that would monitor their computer (AKA "spyware")while the play.  Sure it might be a slight invasion of privacy.  But the ends justify the means!

(OK, that time I was just being sarcastic...)

the idea is good in itself i agree. but still, the details....

there are just too many flaws! many of the players dont even experience cheaters, and the problems this could cause and the complications.

I say if the cheaters want to cheat, let them. because they aren't gaining anything out of it.

But spyware wouldn't stop them from using a chess program on another computer, or perhaps a standalone chess computer.  I don't think you can ever totally stop cheating on an internet chess site (no offense staff) all you can do is try to monitor, have people report suspicious behavior, and hope most people who play chess are honest.  I am at a rating level where I don't worry about it, though there have been times I wondered.

yes yes, cheating is bad. ok. but still, WHY does it matter? like i said, they aren't benefiting from this so just leave it off, and bruiser is right. you cant really completly stop it. if you stop it one way, they'll find another, and another....