A friend who is a titled player received a message from the owners at chess.com regarding cheating. I have not seen the message yet, but I’ve noticed many new players online at chess.com and other sites. I’ve also noticed much more suspect play. My national master friend has been losing many more games lately. After running the games through a chess engine, his opinion is that many of his losses were due to opponents using computer assistance. His experience is also that nearly all of the people he believes are cheating are non-paying members of the site.
My suggestion to all of the online chess sites is to suspend all rating of games until the end of the year. Let’s see what happens by removing one incentive for cheating. My friend said that his recollection was that this was done, suspending ratings, on Magic, The Gathering.
Did the message suspect your friend of cheating, or was it an alert that some of your friend’s opponents might be cheating?
Is he playing in chess.com tournaments, or just individual games? If the latter, is he himself a paying member? And if he is, can he request, in his individual games, that he be paired only against other paying members?
MY suggestion to chess.com would be that paying members be allowed to specify that, in individual games, they be paired only against other paying members.
As for tournaments, doesn’t chess.com already have some anti-cheating measures active, such as outside assistance detection? And does chess.com accept requests from tournament players that any given game be reviewed a little more thoroughly to better detect outside assistance?
Of course, I suppose it may be possible, also, that your friend’s claims could be just sour grapes.
I don’t know a lot about chess.com’s anti-cheating measures, but it does appear that they’re based on after-the-fact analysis of games using one or more chess engines. I don’t know if they check every game, just a sample of games, or if there are other factors involved in deciding which games they check.
As an aside, last night I complained to chess.com about a new player there whose handle was covid19_____. The player listed their country as China. I told them that I considered the handle totally inappropriate during the pandemic noting that three of my former teaching colleagues in New Orleans died from COVID-19 during the past three weeks.
Chess.com responded within an hour. The account was closed, all games voided. I don’t know whether the voiding of the games involved cheating or if it was simply because of the handle. Regardless, I applaud them for being so quickly responsive.
I play a lot on chess.com, all 5-0 blitz. I gave up on playchess because I didn’t feel they were doing enough to inhibit cheating. At one point, chess.com sent me what appeared to be an automated message saying my games were under review for cheating. I exchanged several emails with them and the issue went away never to return. The point I made was: investigate all you want, but don’t TELL people you are investigating until you are ready to make an actual accusation – all it does is upset honest players and warn the crooked ones. Periodically, I get awarded bonus points because a prior opponent’s account has been closed for unfair play. They are very tight-lipped about what goes into their investigations and I think this is reasonable. I was very frustrated by lag cheating on playchess and I must say, I have NEVER encountered this on chess.com. They use an automated tool called CAPS which considers various factors, and I think any investigation covers multiple games and human review. I have reported a number of players for abusive messages – one account (of a 2400 player) was closed almost immediately. Other times, it takes a while, and they never specify the action taken or to whom they applied it, although it’s possible to scroll through the archives of one’s games and see the opponents whose accounts have been closed for unfair play.
All in all, I am VERY satisfied with the way chess.com has addressed this. Naturally, some cheating probably goes undetected, but…
I am curious to know why players will play in an online environment when they know that there is cheating going on? If you are going to be beaten up anyway, why not play against a program like Fritz, Komodo, or Houdini, with any time setting you want, rather than be stuck playing quick chess or blitz because the rest of the herd is inclined to fast chess? At least you know that these programs are not trying to cheat you. They do not care about ratings.
It’s funny, but with the thousands of players on chess.com, you end up playing many of the same opponents repeatedly. I set my screen at 100 points below me to anywhere above, but most of my opponents have ratings within 50 points of mine. My rating is volatile and it’s like I’m meeting old friends as I go up and down the scale. You get to recognize opponents, sometimes you get to know them, sometimes you find you ALREADY know them from OTB play. There are guys I have played over 40 times. At blitz, I don’t think there’s THAT much cheating, but it does rankle. Playing computers doesn’t do it for me. Dumb 'em down and it’s like playing a GM who lets me win sometimes – it just feels wrong.
Chess.com accused me of cheating against my own coach in two simuls where I held him to a draw in both games. It took me nearly four years of lessons to be able to earn draws against him. He clarified the situation with chess.com and the situation went away. I also pointed out that a draw really isn’t truly a draw when he’s playing anywhere from 9 to 19 other opponents at the same time.
I think atypical results against higher rated players automatically triggers a software flag. That’s essentially what I complained to them about. It’s reasonable to investigate, but what’s the point in informing the suspect they are being investigated? If the investigation reaches the point of requiring an explanation from the suspect, THEN inform that player.
The problem at Chess.com is they will not tell the accused which games the cheating allegedly occurred in. They refuse to reveal anything about their proprietary algorithm in any manner, direct or indirect. They are effectively the prosecutor, judge and jury. The only appeal is to them to review their findings. Welcome to Soviet style justice, Comrade.
What it will take is one person to sue them in state or federal court for defamation. That will commence discovery and allow independent analysis of their algorithm. I’m hearing from quite a few people that they are being accused of cheating. These are people I know who I would not think would cheat. One never knows, but a system where the accused is not even told which games are alleged to have be played with assistance, is fundamentally unfair in this lawyer’s opinion.
Just to play devil’s advocate, how would knowing which game(s) the cheating allegedly occurred in actually help you in your defense? How would you explain, convincingly, why you were able so well during the games in question?
Chess.com made a public effort on Tuesday to address cheating. One component was an email distributed widely giving players amnesty if they admit to cheating by Friday (yesterday). I can understand how someone innocent would feel offended by such an email. From what I heard, many members did accept the terms of the amnesty.
Let’s see if the new awareness addresses the problem. I saw a sharp increase in cheating over the past month or two. Many accounts are being closed, including paid premium accounts.
I am not sure whether removing rating changes much. People cheat to beat stronger opponents and to score well in club tournaments. On the other hand, rating points flow and ebb, unless you consistently cheat in every game. If your rating is too high, then you need to cheat more and the faster they catch you. That’s why smart cheaters pick their moments.
Also keep in mind that rating points are the very reason honest people play online. That’s why you see so many questions of the form “How does my Chess.com rating compare to USCF?” And yes, I do agree that internet ratings are essentially meaningless, but that seems to be the minority view, especially among folks who don’t have an over the board rating.
When you put time and effort into an activity, why would you NOT care about a measure of your performance? Doesn’t mean lack of concern about other aspects of the experience: nice combinations, learning, tuning up the old mind, etc. Doesn’t mean the concern outweighs other concerns ranging from OTB ratings to the local club ladder to your bank account to the coronavirus to the meaning of life. But how many regular online players do you know who are simply unconcerned about ratings?
By knowing which games one is accused of cheating at, one then has the ability to examine the algorithm used by chess.com to make the accusation. I could be that it’s a great algorithm, but perhaps not. We have no way of knowing because chess.com is being 100% secretive.
The person “charged” with cheating has no need to explain anything because it is chess.com’s burden to prove the accusation. If the accused can demonstrate a flaw in the algorithm or the assumption(s) on which it is based or applied, that’s all an accused is required to do. If they were in a civil court the burden chess.com would need to meet to prove cheating would be by a preponderance of the evidence, not a very high standard compared to criminal cases, but the burden of proof is still chess.com’s.
The issue from chess.com’s perspective seems to be the desire to keep everything regarding its anti-cheating program’s substance totally secret. That’s fine until you start accusing people of cheating who may not have cheated. Is chess.com claiming that their system is 100% perfect at detecting cheating? Danny Rensch has come close to making that claim, but hasn’t, to my knowledge actually claimed that. All it’s going to take is one person to file a legal action and put chess.com to the test. The point I’m making is simply that in our democratic culture, if you make an accusation, you should be prepared to prove it by providing proof that is subject to critical evaluation. Otherwise, you have a Star Chamber situation that is abhorrent.