Bots in random live play

Hi everyone, including staff members because honestly, I just wanted them to know that I, and apparently others as well, have noticed what is going on in live matches.

I have no hate towards this website and even started a premium account, before I noticed something I didn't like in quick match-ups. A first thing to note is that chess.com claim to have 30 millions + users, which I highly doubt are active users, considering the amount of people connected through out the day.

By playing regularly I realized how long it was to get paired with another player of my rank. Then I realized how many account are from India (Indian flag on the profile). There is a crazy proportion of Indian accounts on the platform which even led me to think it could have been an Indian company and thus very popular over there. But after a wiki search I realized chess.com isn't an Indian company in any way.

I also noticed how those Indian accounts very often have weird name with random digits and letters. It is not possible to organically have so many Indians on this platform in comparison to other large population who plays chess a lot a well, such as americans, russians, french and other countries.

Also, when you abort a game before it starts, you are supposedly paired with other player who also quits game before they start, as a sort of punishment. At first I liked it, until I realized why that rule was in use.

I aborted 2 or 3 games (before they start) in a row, because the profile were most likely bots. Computers posing as humans, just to fill the player pool, and make sure you can find an opponent at any time. Following this, I couldn't find any opponent for at least 5mn.  Cmon, 30millions+ users and you can't find me someone who also aborted games? After 5mn, I was again paired with a name that I previously saw. I aborted again, since then I can't find a match in any blitz game on chess.com.

To my opinion, the system of pairing you with other bad players is rather in place to make sure you don't refuse to play with those bots, and if you do you are most likely unable to quickly find players again.  For those who wonder why Indian bots, it is because India might be the country which hosts the most digital farms. They are inexpensive and thus, you can rent any sort of digital traffic for your website from india. Chess.com seems to have been too naive or stupid and they didn't request from the digital farm to change the default country flag on the profile when it's created. Thus, making it easy to identify those accounts who never chat with you, and most likely created automatically from India.

Following my feedback, they might change it to make the bots more stealthy but I don't play on chess.com anymore anyways. I think the same phenomenon happens on other sites, however they're free of use.

I have nothing against playing a computer but I am disappointed as I feel cheated, and playing against a human is of course a different experience, and that is what I was looking for coming here. I understands bots are all over match making games, and not only chess, but I think a minimum of transparency would have been appreciated, so one knows when he is playing a bot.

Thank you for reading.

There is also a delay between games imposed on people who abort too frequently. They really don't want you to do it.

While there aren't 40 million active users, there are certainly more here than anywhere else.

I don't see how your answer is related to my observation but anyway I doubt there more users here than on the free site. There is also a lot of bot there in my opinion, and I think it is widespread over all match-up type of chess platform. However, if I pay for a premium to learn and play against people, I feel cheated and scammed to play against bots. This bots injections within online match up type of games should be somewhat regulated.

in India even from school levels we used to play chess. almost more than 70% Indians knows how to play chess. you may aware of population in India. and also 40-50% Indians don't chat just because they don't know English well. am also poor in English. and some people want to concentrate on game. and even some don't know is there chat option present or not. even I don't chat in 10min games. another thing is about [another site -- VP]. it sounds like Chinese app. I don't know whether it's Chinese or not. but Indians don't want to install Chinese apps because controversial matters happening in border between India and China. and also I don't know are bots playing here or not. but I sincerely tried to answer your questions. by the way am not bot. my name is Nataraj Bhat (a hindu name. don't think it's wired). and my Nick name is Natu. for fun I write it as Na2. miginakallu is my village name and in short I wrote it as mig. hope it helps. sorry for poor English.

Thank you for the explanation. Still, India "only" has 560 millions of internet users compared to it's very large population. It is a lot, surely, but what if we count the amount of internet users in europe+us+russia+brazil...it's 627 millions people with an internet access. I could scroll over my past 1700 games, I am pretty sure I will find at least 80% of Indian opponents. It is still a very odd proportion compared to how many people are able to play online chess around the world.

Also, I very rarely see any americans or french although they have very large chess community. What I find very strange is the fact that even when aborting the game and being sent back in the loop, I sometimes ended up matching against the same guy 2 or 3 times following a game abort before it started.

If we were so many human players on the platform (vs bots), how could that happens?

Indian players over the past 5 pages of your archive, assuming I didn't miscount: 7, 7, 9, 13, 5 and some of these numbers are rematches as well. 50 games per page. So you had one string of high matches with self-identified players from India (some of them could be from other countries and be of Indian descent). So 16% of your matches.

Time of day you play will have an impact, but the site certainly is not using bots in the random pool. There are bot account available in the Play vs Computer section in Live.

In 2010 India had the 4th highest number of visitors. 

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/make-your-guess-about-chesscoms-visitor-statistics?page=3#comment-3592567

Not sure if any updated statistics have been posted but I would guess they likely are still in the top-5 for visitors and members, and may even be top-3 by now.

You are right that there aren't 30 million active members. I don't know the active count, just that were over 85,000 active members in Live when I just checked and at any given time, you're likely to see high counts. I can't say what that extrapolates to, on a unique active Live user though.

There's plenty of members willing to play in most rating ranges at any given time but that pool will be smaller than the overall pool and the subset that where you meet their match criteria and you meet theirs will be smaller still. The size of that pool will depend and at any give time some will be already in a game and some may not be seeking games. 

@VintagePawn : I didnd't understand a single argument you are trying to make. Can you go straight to the point?

1. The site does not have random bot players
2. Your percentage of games against players from India over the past 125 games is around 16%
3. Some pairing pools will be smaller based on time of day and rating ranges, as will player countries
4. In 2010, India was in the top-4 for visitors, so there are a lot of players from there.

1. The site does not have random bot players : Says who? The guy who played 12 games on chess.com live since 2016? Are you a staff member who knows exactly what is up with the match making algorithm?
2. Your percentage of games against players from India over the past 125 games is around 16% : So you established statistics over 10% of my games and that's relevant to you? Did you also included the games that I abort before start (I guess no because they're not visible)?
3. Some pairing pools will be smaller based on time of day and rating ranges, as will player countries: You claim 85k active members (where that number comes from btw?) and still there are issues to find quick match-ups? lol
4. In 2010, India was in the top-4 for visitors, so there are a lot of players from there. So if india is the 4th rank of visitors I should then see a much higher proportion of players from other countries right? Also, your statistics are 10 years old. Are you just trolling or you think any of that is relevant?

Also, why do you even reply to this topic when you don't even have a hundred live games to make an opinion?

@VintagePawn is a chess.com staff and has told you that there are no bots in the random live seek. Continuing to argue is just a waste of time at this point

This account isn't for playing. Most of the games are for testing purposes only. However, it doesn't matter how many games I have played, the facts are the same.

You are correct, the count doesn't include games where you abort. I would very surprised if the number you get matched with, where you abort, is more than a couple of percent. I could be wrong, maybe there are a ton of sub-500 players from India in the pool when you are on

Live shows the number of players on at any give session. Right now, almost 70,000

I don't know the current traffic stats, but I would be surprised if India went down in the list. However, the breakdown can be heavily influenced by time of day, so numbers will be heavily impacted by that.

That all said, you can of course believe whatever you want.

People argue this from time to time.

It'd be a pretty interesting psychological study I think, because, you know, people are hard wired to find patterns and causes even where there are none (see Pareidolia)

But when there is an obvious explanation (you're playing humans) and when so little of our lives is dealing with imposers and bots, it seems counter intuitive that a person would make these assumptions.

@VintagePawn  

Yes it matters how many games you played because apparently you don't know what you are talking about. I didn't pay attention to the fact that you were officially marked as a staff member, but now it explains the amount of bs and random mumbling that came from your first post. As if a staff member was expected to confess about his company's malpractices....

For the two other random dudes who came in here just to pat you in the back, it reminds me of the good old time, when people had the same discussions about online poker. There was always a bunch of chills coming from nowhere to argue that everyone is a conspirationist. A few decades and law suits later, it became official that indeed, there were bots in use, and I am among the few proud ones who can say he didn't bite the bait and didn't get scammed because I could see it happening.

What you don't understand is that I don't argue, I just give you my feedback to let you know why you don't get my money anymore. And of course I can believe whatever I want, but my believe is backed by numbers and stats and it made me move on to another platform.

Oh, so there were poker bots that were lied about, ok, it makes sense to me now, why some people (at least more people than I would have thought) would think this about chess too.

Troll detected.

Oh, also I guess new people are exposed to chess engines and maybe there's some... existential stuff going on there. Because you know, people like to believe things like intelligence, personality, emotion, etc are non-physical, and when a piece of hardware plays chess it's sort of dehumanizing, I mean on an unconscious level. So there's already that element to it, of importers I mean.

And sure maybe I assume too much, but this sort of thing is fun to think / speculate about.

Troll starving mode - engaged-

Some of my better "troll" posts

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/for-beginners/help-me-with-some-guidance

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/book-moves-are-they-important

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/the-longest-possible-chess-game

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/can-anyone-please-teach-me-the-technique-to-win-reserve-tempo-here

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/for-beginners/very-new-and-very-confused-please-help

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/for-beginners/playing-for-a-month-yet-seeing-no-progress-beginner

My staff indication has no bearing on the subject. I'm only marked as such since I do some support for a separate product the site is involved in.

Again, this account is not for playing games. Have fun believing the site is pairing you with bots.  Doesn't make it true, nor does it make my comments incorrect.

Oh ok. So you're not even a staff from chess.com itself, you're not a programmer, neither from the exec team, you don't even play online as I see only 12 games, but you know for a fact that they aren't using bots? Your angle of approach is laughable.

Your "staff" status isn't putting you in a position to know more than the average user, so what does your opinion worth then? And why did you came up with that claim "they aren't using bots", instead of just saying this was your opinion? You think you're going to get a raise just because you push back some "rogue customers" on the forum?