the ones that get caught are lazy cheater who use engine for pretty much every move ,for others who already have decent chess knowledge it's enough to cheat in one or two critical positions . Kramnik got a point after all !!
Yah Kramnik is unhinged but he is right about a lot. I didn’t talk about that but this is ONLY looking at the stupid cheaters - now consider how many people closet cheat and will never be caught
I'm around 1200 elo. (Yeah, I know. It's not like I'm a noob. I've been playing for years. Decades, in fact. I'm just not good 😂). Imagine I'm playing online, and hanging out with my 1800 friend. We don't play each other, cause, well, you know. He's just doing his own thing. He finished whatever he was doing, gets up, comes look at what I'm doing, and say _why don't you move here?_ He points at the screen. _Why?_ He points it out, explains in 5s. Once showed me, it's obvious. Clearly cheating. Not using an engine. And impossible to catch. The only reason I don't cheat is because I play for fun. If I cheat, my elo will go up. And I will lose every match I play for real. This eliminates the fun part.
I have experienced the exact same sensation infinite times. You instantly realize these moves are not human-like. When you watch grandmasters playing blitz or rapid they make tons of inaccuracies and mistakes. There is no way that a non professional player could play so solidly under time pressure.
It’s a good question, honestly I don’t know but I would guess in the majority of cases it would have the opposite effect. Or players just become disillusioned. I have already heard of players stopping online and going OTB because of it.
No. There would be a small percentage of people that do but people are not that weak-minded generally speaking. And there is plenty of ways to explain my stand on this objectively and do not take offense but I don't feel like doing so in a youtube comment.
I was on a huge losing streak, when I was about 1000 rating, and used stockfish for one game on a guest account. I could see how people could get frustrated with losing, assume their opponents were cheating, and just adopt the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude.
I'm an 1800 and record chess videos too...and i am soooo fed up with online cheating. It occurs 10x more often than the website claims. As awful as this sounds, i report 99% of accounts just out of principle now. If they aren't cheating, they will never know and have nothing to worry about
@@sporegazm Yeah that will help, flood them with 'fake' reports, imagine everybody did that! Plus they will not take your reports serious anymore, as they should imo.
@@sporegazm Yeah I don't think it's necessary to do that and part of the reason Chess.com isn't better at banning is because there's too many reports and they don't have the resources to examine every single one. The best is to have accurate reports and it would be better if they examined the specific game you reported them for cheating (such is not currently the case sadly).
@longtom they don't prioritize reports like lichess does. And so what? You make a crappy system, then this is the result. I'm.personally so fed up i don't care anymore. I have a friend who peaked at 2250 online. I've beat him in person and online. He beats me more often obviously but I can give him a good game and have had some.beautiful wins against him. He faces cheaters a ton too. But the general trend I have seen is that I can beat or match MANY 2000+ players...ones that aren't cheaters. But then I get steamrolled by 1500s online....regularly. my.personally opinion is that the cheating frequency is more like 30-50% of players. Not 2 or 3% like claimed. And I'm.sure many will.disagree but their opinion means nothing to me. I've seen enough and played enough to come to my own conclusions. Unfortunately, there is no great and easy fix to the epidemic of cheating. If you crack down more your false positive rate will go way up. is it worth banning more innocent people to ban more cheaters? I don't necessarily think so...as frustrated as I may be
Just here to say that many popular cheating tools either default to 1500 ELO for speed, or are capable of dynamically adjusting their difficulty based on their opponents apparent rating, so I think cheating at ALL levels is actually extremely common if not more so than at higher levels because a lot of beginners, youngsters and general egotists will simply get tilted after a losing streak and instead of analyzing their losses they go get ACAS or chessbot to make themselves feel better. You can then analyze their games and see their rating graph make like a hockey stick
Im sorry if this is “racist” even though it isn’t. But as an American, every time I get drawn an Indian player (especially late at night or on weekends) I’m already aware of what could be the situation. Sometimes I win sometimes I lose. But my losses get refunded as yes, most of the time those guys are cheating
That's not racist lol. It's not like all Indians are cheaters, hell that country is on fire right now with their young super GM's. But yes, I have noticed the countries in which most of the accounts I played against were banned and notice some trends
I like the comment about how playing someone much better can make your moves look like they are a lower level than they are. Grandmaster games are much more tactic rich than everyone elses games, and it scales. Almost every move is creating some kind of threat or adding pressure, they CREATE tactical situations instead of just chancing into them.
I paused at 15:41 and played Nb4 which looks obvious to make promote to a queen, I could play Ra1+ as well, but forcing a queen is nice, and black is winning anyway (1600 lichess rapid)
There is without a doubt a higher percentage of subtle cheaters at the higher ratings, which is really insidious, but I have encountered cheaters at even below 1500 rating. They are not subtle and are always new accounts.
I stopped playing at Lichess, when I reached 2100 due to cheating. It's awful it tilts you and then got to work hard to get all your points back... The frustration is beyond description.
Playing against an engine (or a cheater) is so brutal. It feels like you are being strangled. You take time and find what you think is a good move, but then they play some crazy tactic that you never saw and your heart sinks. It's funny that that guy's last loss was against another cheater.
Yep. I was so upset when I watched Jack Sark's video on cheating and went and looked at the last 10-15 of my rapid games, spotted several very suspicious or downright obvious accounts and then it all just made sense - why with some players it felt like a good fight, and others as if there was never a chance.
Cheaters are wild. I just won a game because my opponent got banned mid game. And I was still like -2.5 with black. I was winning anyways. Worst cheater ever.
Maybe he was waiting to turn the engine on lol. I mean try doing the "advantage capitalization" on Chess.com vs a 3000 computer. All of your pieces developed and none of black's and if you don't really think, Stockfish will annihilate you all the same. So yah even a 2-3 point advantage might not be anything against an engine when they start using it.
Agree with everything said in your vid, Just a heads up they do refund your rating it just doesn’t show on your profile for some reason. If you start game it will show your refunded rating at the start and then you can abort and it will refresh.
Look. This is real simple. 1. Online chess involves cheating. It never will not have cheating. There are several different kinds of cheating. A lot of people cheat via sandbagging and aren't even aware it's a form of cheating. Say a well-established strong intermediate ends up going through tough times and blows up their account. So they decide to open a new one for a fresh start. They think they're entitled to start that new account at beginner-level elo and speed run their way back up. Wrong. That's a violation of TOS...because it's cheating. Or maybe they just want an ancillary (2nd, 3rd, 4th...) account to try out a new approach (under an alias/unknown name)...and all of them fail to have their elo properly adjusted. There's as much of that going on as there are people making use of engine assistance. So cheating is here to stay. And that sucks. But no amount of complaining will ever change it. 2. Because of cheating, forget about your online elo rating. Online ratings are meaningless. All of your online play should be about learning rather than building/protecting a (supposed) rating. In order to not drive one's self crazy worrying about the cheating, envision every game you play as nothing but a game against a bot. And the strength of that bot is unknown at the start. Occasionally you'll get a GM level bot. But a lot of times it will mirror your strength fairly. But nothing is guaranteed. You may get 5 master level games in a row. Oh well. Nonetheless, after those games are over you can be happy knowing there will be loads of opportunity to learn new insights. 3. Simply accept that if you want a real Elo rating you will need to play OTB.
I agree with a lot of your points. Although I would say the point of this video is less to complain and point out that there is a lot you can do to face fewer cheaters online by simply checking their account first and aborting. The chances your opponent is cheating when their account was made in the last year is way way higher. But I do agree with everything else and I think online chess is more accessible to many people - some might not have any local chess clubs or tournaments within an hour or more. However, if anyone has the opportunity to go join a club and start playing OTB tournaments, I will always recommend that.
@@WesleyPlaysChess Appreciate the reply. And excellent bit of info about incorporating a new habit of checking the opponent's profile before making an opening move. Take care.
Look the overall mindset proposed here is solid, however, imagining every game as a game against a bot really defeats the purpose of being on a website for me and takes away any of the fun of human competition. For me, I would recommend imagining anyone you believe to using an engine, as a sick individual who is incapable of true self improvement, the IQ of a gnat, basically playing a slot machine, while living in their parents basement in sweaty squalor. That is to say, I find it much more satisfying to pity them for the depraved individuals they are, than assuming im always playing against a 3200 every time.
Another idea occured to me. The chess websites could easily calculate the probability of cheating based on elo, past performance, and accuracy, etc. Then each player would have a ‘cheat’ evaluation visible to all opponents from say 1 to 10. France has a 12 point driving licence, any infraction costs points and you have to make an effort to regain your lost points or else risk losing your licence. A similar coefficient for online chess could be a good deterrent !
Right, those are all vectors that you can use to form a guess. But each one is a point where you may accuse a non-cheater of cheating, which is worse than missing a cheater -- this is the basis of civilized legal systems. Your solution is quite dystopic. Past performance: Someone who cheats long enough has now raised their past performance and you can no longer tell anything from it. Accuracy: Is a flawed metric prone to false positives. Which high-accuracy games are legit? Which are not? Simple lines score higher. Players of all ratings can score highly in some games. Elo: Only useful in extreme cases where there are already other tells. If someone is cheating, you mean to say they are using an engine or help from somebody else. For the sake of argument, let's keep it to engines. Then you are monitoring the array of top 5 engine moves across 50 different engines.... and on it goes. The best tell of a cheater is often their time-usage distribution across moves. But even then a good player can mask that. The top players don't even need explicit moves; just knowing the eval bar would guide a GM to better moves or fixing mistakes. In short, proving cheating is a *very* difficult problem to fix across the spectrum of chess players.
@@paulm6737 I dont think it’s that radical! Like the French driving system, if you pass the speed limit you lose a point. Not dystopian, just pragmatic!
@@SoulmateParis it's completely unconscionable to penalize someone for cheating if you are not certain. There is no equivalence to a driver's license. Driving fouls are measurable and objective, your anti-cheat mechanisms are not
@@paulm6737 good point. To compromise there could be another index, along with elo, which is move accuracy. The latter is not accusatory, but a good indicator for any challenger. If a player has 1100 elo and 97 % accuracy over the last 19 games the,,, up to you to judge. No accusing, just an indicator.
Yeah real players don't put their bishop in front of their central pawn in the opening and blunder that fork. Even at my level which is 1700 I haven't seen something that bad in years
Since no prize money is involved at this level, only rating points as you mention, cheating is not material. But I'll admit that as a 2100-rated OTB player, I've never played online. But if I did I would only play blitz since the fast time control makes it more difficult for a cheater to consult a source to cheat. Though your opponent won 75% of his games, it depends on the strength of his opponent. In rated tournaments I would always beat 1800-1900 players, but play evenly against 2000-2100 players. So 75% on its own isn't conclusive.
No of course the win % isn't conclusive, but if the sample size is great enough, then it hints at either them cheating, or they are simply not really that rating which is also sandbagging. And this isn't a witch hunt where we're defaming someone like what Kramnik is doing, this is just some other random player so I think it's better to be skeptical because no one will be banned without the algorithm finding enough evidence and if you're not skeptical enough well then you do what I did which is not look at ANY opponent's account and then find out you have played so many cheaters and never knew.
Like Last 2 months Ago I played against a 600 elo and I lost 5 games In a row :( and lost about 70 elo . He got Banned for cheating like last week but it was more than 30 days and I lost 70 elo for no reason 😭😭😭😭I HATE CHEATERSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
@@thomapple any proof of this? And if true, what/how does this change the playing experience? I'm matched up on purpose with more than usual suspected cheaters? Lol
@@thomapple What do you mean? I don't think anything happens. It's just if you abort way too much games or too many in a row they might slap you on the wrist but nothing more I imagine. They're also aware of the cheating problem so I don't think Chess.com would be up in flames if people are aborting games against an account made 2 months ago.
Yeah fair enough - there’s been so many other videos on it that I didn’t see the need. But it is known that the percentage of cheaters in rapid is quite alarming and chess.com themselves know it’s an issue. If you’re not sure, go look at the last 20 games you played (unless you abort any against new accounts).
this is why i don't play with increment or anything over 3 mins. at least that should deal with the casual analysis board open on lichess or other site cheater
Cheaters are increasing very much. There are many prodigy and genius in chess trending on social media and by that kind of videos others also try to gain some fame in chess but they can't and finally they decide to use bots I guess.👀
Yes it’s a lot. In OTB you can just abort a game. But you can online and you should if you see a suspicious account then you just don’t really need to worry about it
14:45 This probably isn't a blunder, I do this as well against cheaters when I'm lost. The idea is that they take some 5 - 10 seconds every move because they look at the engine, so you make some very obvious blunder where human would move instantly, to confirm they are cheating. Since the clown will often still check their stockfish 16 before taking the free piece
I think Ra6 is whatever, defo findable and in line with human understanding of activity in rook endgames but the knight moves really are telling. The extreme precision of the manoeuvres to win material while planting the knight as a rock and pushing passed pawns (aka calculating time accurately) is GM Level. These are hard to see. However, I do want to note Nb6/Nb4 are obvious for 2.1k+, I am about there rating wise +-100 points depending on my day and in my haydays 20 years ago I was about 2.1K FIDE. I feel that knight block is a very common endgame theme and well known. Depends on time situation and all, but esp if I want to punish opponent for not resigning I am guaranteed to play it. And again to my prior point, that is why Online chess moved from 5+2 as main control to 5+0 to 3+0, because cheating is very hard in 3+0. If you play Rapid I think 1/10 is low estimate imo its more like 2/3 out of 10.
2/3 would be very sad but honestly I agree. And as for the moves, yes they’re very findable but blundering a beginner level fork then plating flawlessly afterwards is also telling
@@WesleyPlaysChess Agreed on that point. I mean the game defo gave me cheater vibes after a certain point, was surprised the other guy held up so well.Granted when I say 3 out of 10 for Rapid I am including the people that would use the engine for a couple of moves in a critical position. I assume almost nobody above like 2.4/2.5k uses the engine for the full game. Statistically it will get flagged immediately. Btw, I really don't think there is ANY solution to this outside of quicker time controls OR planting gazillion cameras to play online, which who knows in the future might not be an impossibility. There is no anti-cheat you can put that will detect you using a second device for a critical position. And I will also include my prior point in the comments that got hidden, I assume due to mentioning a certain region that I think has a lot more cheaters per player capita, this wasn't that much different 20 years ago. ICC had this problem and they made a wall of shame of cheaters and made cheaters put a text that admits they cheater on their profile in order to be unbanned. I guess the difference is even I could at might strength occasionally draw Fritz 7 in a blitz game or win against a cheater on time.
I think you are wrong about the Nb6 move. I am ca. 1600 on this site and my first two candidate moves were Nb6 and Nb4 and it is kinda obivous Nb6 is better because there is no meaningful check afterwards.
We are at a similar level. I play off beat openings and it's crazy how random people can find concrete ideas against my own prep in bullet chess. So much cheating.
I'm a 200 elo and played a game the other day where I had a 99.8 percent open and a solid like 80 percent mid game with a resignation by my opponent. ended up I think like 92% accurate. I didn't cheat. I studied an opening and played sound chess. I gues I just don't get it at the higher level. So in chess good play after a mistake is cheating? maybe he wasn't taking you seriously because he has so much more elo than you. blundered a piece and then locked in? I'm a noob just looking for clarification.
High accuracy in and of itself isn't proof of cheating. And it's not just "good chess" after cheating, it was nothing but the top engine moves. There's a difference between good and stockfish good and the rest of his play was stockfish good. But I also think blundering such a basic fork and then playing like that is very telling although not conclusive evidence. It doesn't matter though because they were cheating and were banned so...
FM is likely unattainable for someone who started as late as I did. It would take some serious dedication and time but maybe CM would be possible some day. But who knows! I'm just going to start playing more OTB and tournaments and we'll see where I end up :D
I agree with the video. But I dont understand how a player connects to an engine while playing? Surely it takes time to enter moves on another board? Something im missing?
@@WesleyPlaysChess thanks for responding! I see… but it would be laborious to re enter the moves on another software, no? Or is there a way to automatically connect to an external engine?
@@SoulmateParis I have read that you can download software which will play directly. The thing is with the internet that there is no filter. You be playing serial killers and gangsters. There is no point in getting angry that there are terrible people out there.
In another video about cheating (I think with Fabiano but am not sure anymore) it was said that there are browser extensions that will show you the best moves almost in real time. Not sure how that works e.g. how the extension is getting the input for the moves played.
@@SoulmateParis Yah it looks like these guys know more than I do. I’m sure there’s software that makes it so you don’t have to put the moves in yourself each time
If you have general chess understanding and put some effort into cheating, they'll never catch you. I just doubt there are a lot of people who bother doing this but it's still disturbing.
The anti-cheating system is absolutely trash for anyone that isn't making it super obvious. I've tested it myself with multiple accounts (at multiple ELO's). Provided you aren't flat out cheating every move, and mix up how quickly you make your moves, you'll never get caught. I literally did it for 2 months straight, and all accounts are still unbanned. You can literally just get a winning position with a small material advantage, and then force liquidations to a simple end game where you no longer require the engine for top moves. Throw in a couple of games with only a few engine moves, and allow yourself to lose, and it becomes even more believable. There is absolutely no way to stop subtle cheating online, and there will never be... That's just part of online gaming... If there is a way to cheat, people will not only find ways to do it, but they'll find ways to do it without getting caught (like any crime).
A few things....While this guy may be cheating, you are way too paranoid. Ra6 is a natural move, also blocking with the knight to promote is something I would have done at around 1200 rating. I only mention this because a few of the things you felt like were suspicious, were moves I would have played.... and I don't cheat. Yes it sucks that cheaters do this, but you're making a huge mistake by looking at a move and feeling like it's suspicious just because you wouldn't play it that way. You're giving a game review like you're a GM pointing out obvious engine moves that no human would play, but you're doing it with incredibly natural moves that tons of people would play.
