hahah yeah its pretty insane. i think only a Chess.com fairplay analyst could answer the questions we have, and they never would give insights to how their anticheat works to prevent workarounds. it does make you wonder how much people are getting away with. glad you enjoyed though bro
@@Benjamin-1776- The thing is anyone can play a move quickly without thinking just like they can make any blunder, he says outright in the video that a sample size of one isn't enough yet claims he is 100% sure after that, very hypocritical
Whenever I suspect someone of cheating against me, I take a look at their account and then watch them play the next few games live. It becomes really obvious very quickly, if they are.
I think worse than the obvious cheaters are the smurf accounts. I wish they would stop banning the cheaters and just pair them up against other suspected cheaters. It seems like a problem that will never go away.
@@ToshinbenI define smurfing (aka sandbagging) as basically rigging the matching system so you play rated games or tournaments against opponents who are definitely weaker than you. Smurfs don’t necessarily have to use assistance to win. Instead they might tilt or lose on purpose so their rating is lower than their real strength. I’m not sure how common it is, but I think people who do it are cheating in a way because they are keeping their rating artificially low just so they can get feel good about winning I guess.
@@josueramirez7247am i technically a smurf? I recently created a speedrun account and beat lower rated players than me but i didnt purposely lose to make other people lose elo i just wanted to make a speedrun account. Im currently 1906 on that account.
@@Toshinben when someone has a new account or huge rating difference in time controls and play way above that level. We see how popular speed runs are for our favorite streamers. I have less of a problem with those because you get a rating refund but would love to see an option to not get paired up against them.
I was told by a cheater from a certain country that cheating was a method of learning and then I was shamed for criticizing them for trying to learn. Good grief.
same 😂 I never cared if opponent was cheating when i was 1200-1500 but now that I am 2070, I always think that opponent is cheating when they play good moves/ plays some random opening that clearly gives them disadvantage but its not always the case tho. I myself play cow's opening and similar stuff that are super bad but no one prepares for that so I get away with trash opening every single time, i save a lot of time and its easier to attack king if its castling short
I also often have win streaks of 7 to 8 games, I just don't have accuracy over 90% for all the games. My elo atm is about 1550 but my peak is 1710 about two months ago.
i'm not 100% sure on this but it would make sense if paid accounts on Chess.com had priority when it comes to in-game reports which might explain the anomaly. just a guess though & you'd need someone that works for Chess.com to know for sure but i'm fairly certain this exists for other games reporting systems. there are also many exceptions to the winstreak rule. for example, someone who has 2400 Blitz but is rated only 2100 Rapid will be far more likely to have large winstreaks as they're playing at a level lower than they should be. i wouldn't be surprised if you fall into that bracket also.
@@ResonantFrequency-sn9ud winstreaks on their own have exceptions. for example if someone is 2400 Blitz, but playing at 2100 Rapid they're more likely to have higher winstreaks than someone else their level. this is simply because they're playing below their skill level. you probably fit into that bracket considering your rating swings, if you go down 200 Elo, you'll have big winstreaks on your way back up to where you belong.
Last weekend I played 50 blitz games. I lost most of them (I'm not a good player anyway). When I entered the game this weekend, suddenly my rank was 100 elo higher. I checked wtf is going on, and of 50 opponents 27 (!!!) were banned (was there a mass banning happening last week?). That's OVER 50% of my opponents... Online chess currently make no sense.
54% of players weren't cheating. It's a garbage site that uses a garbage method. I'm a titled player and got "caught" for cheating only playing bullet. Obviously, that's not physically possible. I got asked to send them my driver's license and birth certificate and to use my real name. I won't let those effing nut cakes doxx me when they get mad. They will be gone within 6y.
@@Ididkdhdjjsjsjsjsbbdvdjdjn7373 might have meant "100 elo higher" (than before those 50 games). If he lost 33 games and won 17, with 8 points gain / loss and then was refunded for 27 games it would mean only 6 losses and 17 wins - 11 games "profit" = around 90 ELO higher. As those losses are "nulled out".
I player a cheater otb in a national tournament who was cheating. There was no checks or anything being done so he would just leave on my turn go the bathroom and come back but i still managed to draw the game because he got to 5 minutes while i still had over an hour left, I sacrificed my knight for his promoting pawn which complicated the game and i managed to draw him.
I once started playing a guy and I suddenly got diarrhea. It was a seriously painful experience! And I'm sure he got suspicious until I started making mistakes and lost the game. I was constantly going to the bathroom. I was much younger and much more embarrassed back then. It happens.
Man, you literally put every point ive wanted to say for years into one video and explain it perfectly. Thank you so much. This was seriously cathartic.
Rapid games always feel like a 50-50 with the player pool. Thanks for the video! Unfortunately, online chess will always have some cheaters, so for your own sanity, take it with a grain of salt and focus on improving yourself. And most importantly, always have fun!
Thought that this might be clickbait content but decided to look anyway. Glad I did, this was a much more in-depth and level-headed discussion video than I was anticipating. I guess this is one of the joys of being an actual strong player, you run into a lot more cheaters; it seems that other sites also have a similar issue when they hit this bracket.
Soemone might be 2200+ and blunder their queen just by being a mixed of tired (playing several games in a row) and drunk/high or just simply losing concentration due to other people in his room talking to him etc. It's not impossible imo
definitely not impossible but highly unlikely and as i said in the video, it cannot be your sole piece of evidence to prove they were cheating (unless you have some highly advanced and reliable AI generative learning anticheat that says otherwise). but clearly even though that sample size was too small, they were cheating in other games and were banned for it. the instance in this game simply backs up the fact that they were cheating and is useful in hindsight.
@@jacksarkisian Yeah I did realise your point. I was just picking on semantics I suppose where you had said "it's impossible to happen at this rank" or something. Not a big deal, I definitely didn't mean it as a criticism. You made a good point about "closet cheaters" that I hadn't really considered so much.
Online I'm 2500. I've got a few thousand games and have never blundered my queen to a 1 mover. Had my queen trapped a few times but that's a different story
Speedrunning cheating sagas have taught us that cheating arms races in online/video games are a losing proposition. Any forensic criteria is inevitably absorbed by cheating systems, and then the cheating becomes so subtle and complex that humans can no longer actually find unambiguous forensic criteria to out the cheating. You could probably implement something like this and improve things for about 6 months to 1 year before some subtler cheaters dominate the ecosystem while leaving none of the identifiable traces that skilled chess players can normally use against cheaters that were less sophisticated than that.
While I don't play online and only play in over-the-board tournaments (because I see 3-dimensional positions better than flat 2-D ones onscreen), I'm not too concerned about cheaters in these casual games where no money is involved. Cheaters in online tournaments with prize money, however, is entirely different.
100% agree that more priority should be given to prized events - but its the covering up of a real issue that concerns me. Chess.com insisting time and time again on the latest State of Play's that there isn't a big cheating problem in regular play and that they're doing "everything they can" to do their part. at the end of the day people pay good money for memberships, and invest hours of playtime on the platform and half of them don't even know a sizeable amount of their opponents are using engine assistance. if it were more publicly known i'm sure people would just switch platforms, however i think its been swept under the rug for far too long.
No man, some of us want to do a 20, 30 or an hour of competitive and fun time per day playing chess at home, and because it's not a pay tournament it does not mean that it's ok or it's not a big problem, it's the time of people that want to learn and improve. How many people maybe stop playing chess after a brutal loss against a cheater but they never knew it?
Chess players don't understand what 3D positions mean. When you play with real chess pieces and board, it's still 2D. Chess with 3D positions has multiple layers and pieces can move between the layers. In Star Trek, they play 3D chess. Although the rules are not explained.
@@lucianorodriguez7726 A serious player is not going to stop playing because of a single or even a series of crushing losses. It happens period. You learn from the experience. Yes it is not pleasant but you still learn from the experience.
what "expert" says they can catch smart cheaters? if someone is using an engine for 1 move each game, that's not detectable and obviously has a positive impact on elo over many games
@frottery none, most high level gms say that a gm that was cheating would be next to impossible to catch if they are naturally gm anyway then just knowing the eval is enough to give a significant boost
10% being cheaters (and only confirmed no less) is insane. I'm only a casual chess player, but I play other online competitive games and those have no where near as many cheaters from what I can tell. I guess its just the way chess works, it's so easy and accessible to cheat, and cheating is extremely powerful.
thankyou bro but i do still believe it'll be in vain until someone with a larger following covers the topic. i've built a great community of people over the years and i think my voice is heard a lot more than others but the issue is simply too big for someone like me.
my question is when should you be reporting people? I'd say I'm a trustworthy person so when accounts look suspicious, I usually give them the benefit of the doubt. I kind of tell myself it doesn't matter anyway because if I am as good as I think I am I'll just win back the elo anyway.
Amazing video, much of it was things ive thought but never took time to look over (closet cheaters, account time, etc) thanks for actually bringing these things to light
There’s also an issue of the Chess Admins just not banning people. I had undeniable proof of this 700 elo cheater who crushed me while I was almost 1700 who regularly cheats and admits to in DM’s and after sending proof and screenshots they said they would do something and yet he is still playing
Jack for your own rapid improvement and my gross curiosity I would love if you were to play rapid on lichess. I personally feel like I have faced way less cheaters in the lichess rapid pool vs chesscom pool. And once you settle in your fair lichess rating range I would love if you were then to play 100 games and do a similar analysis as done here. ------ I'll add some notes here: Way more higher rated and strong players play rapid regularly on lichess. Notably GrandmasterGauri on the streamer side and plenty of other strong FMs, IMs, and even GMs regularly play rapid on lichess. As you said it'd often take you at least 5 minutes to find a game in the cc rapid pool but on lichess when you are rated accurately I'd be willing to bet you'd always get paired within 30 seconds. I do believe chesscom's cheat detection and especially refund system is better than lichess. However, by design lichess entices a higher percentage of strong players (fair players) vs it's populous size.
yeah i'd definitely be interested in doing this, might try and play some lichess Rapid on stream soon and have some fun with it (bonus points for lichess not saying JACKSARK IS CURRENTLY STREAMING HERES A LINK WHERE YOU CAN SEE ALL OF HIS MOVES AND PLAN AHEAD BASED ON WHAT HES THINKING
@@jacksarkisian lmao, nice looking forward to it. Btw your analysis of these games really has shown how much stronger you've become. Congrats on the well deserved improvement ❤
@@Willeinhelm Yeah I wasn't expecting him to play on stream. As Jack practically only plays rated rapid off stream I'd assume it'd be fine for him to play lichess rapid off stream as well.
True the worst feeling for me is to know and almost know my opponent is cheating and report him and he still isn't banned then i have to convince myself maybe he wasn't cheating though i know he was 😢
I've always had this feeling. I've played too many new accounts that have 2000+ elo and when I look at their puzzles I find that they got thwarted by the below 500 elo puzzle. I recently played against a new account that lost three times to a cheater. In the third game, his accuracy was 93%. He plays horrible openings like 1. h4. He hasn't been banned; he never will.
i had a win streak of 9 wins in a row in rapid chess and went from low 1800s to 1925 until i played a player whose account is only 11 days old and his accuracy was 94% and he won the game and the way he won the game was insane , but after that lost i won 3 games in a row and now i am at 1935 , i do face cheaters but not to the point that it's effecting my elo gains which is fine by me
@@brainletsYTI saw a study that percentage of cheaters depends on the rating. People encountered the highest percentages of obvious cheaters (who got caught) in the 1800-2300 range in rapid. That was data from about a year or two ago (2022-2023)
im a 2100-2200 rapid player myself and I can only agree with you. When I play on one of my numerous secound accounts (rated anywhere between 1400-2000) I rarely, almost never) face a cheater. But once you hit the 2100 rapid barrier around 10% of the accounts I face look sus as hell and I abort alot. I imagine that at 2300 the issue is even worse :( sad stuff and that's also the reason why I stopped playing rapid chess as much (gone from 40 games a month to 15).
That's strange, because from my experience, there are plenty of cheaters in the 1700-2000 range. I use almost every abort I have because a third of my opponents created their account in 2024, and these people see tactics way beyond their supposed 2400 puzzle rating in less time than me. As someone with a 3200 puzzle rating, it's very obvious when people cheat.
@@nicolaslaine8058 well it could be that I dont take my games on my second account serious (just trying out new openings), and therefore not really paying much attention to my opponents accounts and movetimes
In my video, I showed an account that was many years old and had thousands of games. It played bullet, and every move was like 0.7 seconds. Even that was too hard for them to detect. Oh, and the same for the guy playing crazyhouse with every move made in 0.2 seconds.
actually saw your video the other day & made me get around to making this. super disappointing that there’s been virtually zero progress for the anti cheat in over a year now, great work on your video though 🔥
@jacksarkisian Oh wow, I'm glad to see an update, in that case! I was also wondering what the cheating rate would be if I played a lot of games now, and you did just that!
@@AyrtonTwigg hahaha yeah would love to see you make a follow up video in the bullet time control to see if theres been any change there. sadly i'm incredibly slow and only ~2050 bullet so i don't verse many cheaters but would love to see a comparison. i just got an email from some Chess.com representatives about this video so hopefully will be able to provide some more clarity to the situation over the next few days.
thankyou bro. i would love to see a GM like Danya play ~100 Rapid games at this level and do their own analysis. i can't say with 100% certainty but i'm very convinced i versed more than 29 cheaters in my last 100 games its just i'm not strong enough to know for sure if they were or not. glad you enjoyed bro
@@jacksarkisian yea i also think so. im also curious if a gm like danya does it. he sees alot of cheaters in his speederuns already so i think theres an intersting fact
@@jacksarkisian In one of his speedrun videos he talks about this and says the amount of cheaters is the reason he does not want to continue the rating climb beyond a certain level.
@@Shadow-7295 which video is this in? i heard someone mention this before but i couldn't find the video. wanted to mention it in this video but couldn't find the clip haha
Theres so many games where cheating makes so much more sense and can be a fun alternative way to play the game. But cheating in chess? Makes 0 sense. I just dont get these people.
I agree. I'm happy that Jack is passionate about Chess and wants to do his part in protecting fair play. The issue is that a lot of these metrics are arbitrary and, unfortunately, fallacious in their application. The statement he made about the "You don't just completely change your gameplan in 3 seconds" was predicated entirely on his assumption that his opponent was forming a different gameplan in the first place. Not to mention... yes, people do this all the time, even in OTB blitz games. It quite literally happens. lol There was another statement like "I was playing a cheater who was playing their own moves in their opening and then blundered their Queen on move 9. 2200 players do not make these mistakes" which, lol. People are allowed to blunder. We watched Ding, the world champion, walk into a blunder that the commentators thought was so obvious that they joked about how silly and impossible it would be for someone like Ding to make that mistake. Then to everyone's surprise... that was what happened. The argument about winstreaks and game accuracy is also completely fallacious anytime we talk about averages. I have had extremely complicated games full of tactics where my opponent and I found the best way to play the tactics and the engine gave us an accuracy of 95+ but estimated our level of play at 1200. I've also had closed-off positional games where the only pragmatic move was the obvious one, but since the engine "knew" the game should end in a draw it kept taking points off of the two of us because we weren't going for the draw. Our accuracy bottomed out at like 50% and ended around mid-60s and it claimed we played like 650s. Even when I first started learning the game in 2006 my elo was never below 1000, so this is laughable now that I play consistently at a 1700 level today. Then there is the "this is an engine-looking move" statement in regards to Qc7 even though Qc7 is the third best move according to the engine on screen, and Qa5, the move he plays, is conveniently the best move. The lines themselves show why, it's because Qc7 will end with Qa5 but white having far more activity and less liabilities because they can move their pieces with tempo on the Queen to get there. There is a form of irony in him describing the third-best move as an "engine" move but the reason it "could" work in some lines is the same premise that Qa5 works in some lines. I guess 2+2 is the only way to find 4 in the history of math, right?
You make some good points, but defending mouseslip cheater ruins some of your credibility. There is zero percent chance that was his plan and he had calculated deep into a move no one would intentionally make.
@@MrAustanian I can assure you it isn't a zero percent chance, lol. Play some of these people OTB and watch them do the same stuff. OTB chess is much harder to cheat, and people do this kind of thing all the time.
I know this is an example of ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ but how about when you recognize a cheater in your game you cheat as well? Yeah, I know, you have to be certain but it’s often unmistakable. Many times in my games a player blunders a piece then suddenly plays like a grandmaster.
A pleasure to watch this video. Its goal is Fairness and it was informative. Effective communication throughout. Clear, well organized, well reasoned, right degree of detail, right tone, and concise.
thankyou bro i appreciate it. planning to have a discussion with Chess.com's head fairplay analyst in the coming week & will make an update video on this
I once went a month without losing. going from 1800 rapid to 2000 rapid. I used to study a lot and play not more than a game per day. A winning streak is not proof of cheating. There would be lots of cheaters at 2300 elo or among kramnik opponents. but for vast majority of players it is just paranoia.
i did cheat once to see how easy it is. If you ever use engine assist you will know how easy it is. What if you use one move? 2? 3? 4? The thing is a clever player can never be caught online. However it is utterly useless since you don't gain skill and only egoboost for a number. pretty sad
This is one reason ive quit playing online chess except against stockfish itself. This is a political problem they are also not punishing cheats in other facets of life.
Also I’m about 1900 rapid, and I just went and looked at the last 10-15 games and there were at least 3 accounts opened in 2024. Only one did I suspect of cheating until I went and looked closer at the accounts. None have been banned and knowing I would only be refunded points within 30 days is so concerning. Thanks for the video, I’m definitely looking every single time and aborting any game vs an account made in 2024
That implies that being accuse of cheating when its true (After all, you specified a separation when it was false) its bad? Its bad to call out cheater an actual cheater??
@asdfghyter I feel like people who think this way don't get accused often. It doesn't feel good, people want to be respected for playing well, not called a fraud.
Appreciate the video. I'm doubtful that anything will happen. I read an article saying that we just have to accept that a considerable amount of opponents will be cheaters and just focus on what you CAN get better at, regardless of the result.
It's an almost unsolvable problem. Players can just cheat and use all kinds of smart tricks, ie think long when the software tells them it's a !! move, to hide it. There is just no way to separate a smart cheater from an inconsistent player. Just accept it and play more over the board. Or really go rigorous methods that you require videostreaming while playing, that's the only somewhat feasible way to make sure your opponent isn't cheating.
playing OTB is not a solution for this. if i want to play a FIDE rated classical tournament, there's essentially 2 per year in my city. if i travel interstate to play it'll set me back over $1000 in travel expenses, accommodation, entry fees & food. even if i only play nationally rated Chess games which are held more frequently, i'm limiting myself to a pool of around 50 players that i can ever play against (that are around my level anyway). also to play in any kind of OTB Chess event i'd need to take a 45 minute train ride into the center of the city, and the same 45 minute train ride back. even still these tournaments would still be infrequent, usually only on weekends and sometimes weeks go by without one being organized. its very easy to say "just go play OTB" if you're European or American, but in Australia at least its completely different.
I actually think as the neural nets continue to learn from human play they'll be able to tell the difference. Just like engines have a unique way they play, so do people.
Like other online games you can't have open servers, you have to have your own vetted private server. Games like GTA are totally a waste when played on the open online servers.
hey multi line posting redditor, streaming does nothing. just take a moment and use your puny brain to try and conjure up at least one (1) of the trillion possible ways for cheats to cheat via streaming. come on you can do it
People worry too much about cheaters , myself i dont play online but most of my games are vs stockfish and lc0 and other engines . The engines are strong but not god like .i only play people over the board .im sure i play 500 to 1 more computer games than vs human .i can predict the computer moves like 95 percent of the time does not mean i can stop what i know they are planning . My point is win lose or draw you should embrace every game you play as a learning experience in the his great game of chess . I can see getting mad if a guy cheats over there he board but online if i ever played there would assume the person i was playing was stockfish .
I got suspended for a week for losing too many games. They called me a sandbagger. Then after a week they banned my opponents for cheating. I already quit chess before i knew it. Better get something more fun to do that value your time.
i think this alongside with titled players make sense. of course i don't think they should be given more leniency, but in any case in which a streamer or titled player has suspicious play on their account they should be carefully reviewed by a human. even though i think Chess.com has a problem with letting too many cheaters off the hook, the opposite in banning players on very minimal evidence is also not the solution either.
@@jacksarkisian I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever to suggest that streamers and / or titled players are treated in a more generous way when it comes to cheating. Did you know how many tournaments require them to have multiple webcams and screensharing active? And that is for titled players too who have already proven their chess skills the last decade or so. It is probably an unfair suggestion to imply paid users are valued more too, as anyone cheating will get banned when detected.
@@jacksarkisianThis is flat wrong. They're misidentifying people and it's pretty easy to prove. I'm a titled player (NM doesn't count) and their 'cheat detection' is moves not in database combined with high accuracy "is cheating". It's very easy to get around this.
I’ve had situations where I’m winning & all of a sudden it shows I’ve lost by “abandonment “ when I’m still in the game with good a network connection. The craziest one was when it just showed I lost but my time was still counting down & if I tap on the menu Icon I was met with the resign button. Meaning the game was still running but I couldn’t play because it showed I had lost. The cheater wanted me to abandon the game & when I wouldn’t he returned the game when I had just 1 minute on my clock so I ended up losing by count out.( I literally have a screen recording of this cheating) Still no elo refunded
this might be a thing i'm not too sure. i know titled players & Chess.com partners/staff are reviewed by the anticheat and by a human but not sure about paid accounts - could have something to it.
I did an experiment once (using 5000 games) and found that between 30 to 52% of all shorter games (10 minutes or less except 1-min bullet) have cheaters. Unranked games have higher probability (between 42 to 52%) while ranked games have lower probability (between 30 to 45%) of encountering cheaters for all time controls. That's why I only play 1-min bullet at this point as it is much harder to cheat. I did the same for Lichess and found that lichess have slightly lower probability (27% to 46%).
Cheating is rampant in every online video game right now. There are AI anti cheats being developed and in a year or 2 cheating in video games will be almost impossible.
@RTAC_1234 online chess is a video game and it's cheats are provided on the same sites as other games. I would think with the simplicity of the program of digital chess that the cheats are some of the easiest to make and hide as opposed to call of duty that has layers and layers of code probably 1000x of that of online chess.
@@jameshebert1875 There are several problems, though. Firstly, cheats in video games are cheating all the time (as far as I understand it). In chess, you don't need to cheat all of the time, you might only need one move per game from a computer. This makes it hard to distinguish between fair and unfair play. That would be the case anyway, but then, secondly, all good players use computers to refine their play, and so a lot of human play is informed by computers, and, thus, similar to computers. I play long lines that go 20-moves deep that are all prepped with computers, and therefore 100% accurate. Even beyond this, a lot of middlegame ideas come from engine prep and analysis. When you get to the very top level, they are, at least in some games, playing extremely close to computer accuracy, having studied the game for thousands of hours with computers. This is why it is so difficult to definitively state whether or not someone is using an engine.
I think the 30 day limit might be based off the assumption your lost rating will revert just through play since if you are underrated your rating will self correct.
yeah this would make sense but i think due to the amount of cheaters in the Rapid pool its less effective. paired with the fact that Rapid is a longer time control and you're far less likely to gain it all back because the games are much longer. would still love to see a more dynamic solution to this. maybe if they found a game where the player cheated, games played 15 days before and after that game would be refunded? if this was applied for every game they cheated on this would seem optimal especially if there were numerous instances of cheating over long periods.
1 or 2 out of 10 is already too much for me. they failed us by not introducing a pay to play verified mode just so that people are less likely to bypass a ban
@@bruceelio1606 Which is really the reason they don't really care about banning the cheaters. Let's say you lose to 10 cheaters in a row(not realistic ,but whatever) and you drop 80-90 points. Eventually by facing the real players that are 80-90 points below you, you will climb back up. So you are less likely to complain about the losses, but it benefits the website, cause the playtime increses and you are more likely to buy a subscription.
Have to agree that after 2300 you will face loads of cheaters when playing rapid and that really affects your game. In every single game you wonder if the opponent is cheating or not. This affects your play and it is very hard to play the way you normally would. To put is shortly I very rarely play rapid games nowadays as it is almost 50/50 if you face a cheater. Ps. I would also like to add that I have 2500 blitz rating and 2600 bullet rating (records) but in almost every time it is me who gets low on time even if my opponent has blitz rating of 2100 etc. It is a really strange feeling.
I don't cheat but definitely think i could get away with it. If you're already decent and only check the engine when in key positions how would the fair play team catch you? I can't think of a way. The signal to noise ratio just isn't robust enough so it seems you can only really reliably catch obvious cheaters. Of course I don't see the point in cheating. Is winning a game where you had to check the engine satisfying in any way? I guess there's the shallow thrill of getting away with something but I dunno how thrilling is it really when there are literally no stakes? Maybe a former or current cheater can explain their motives?
If Kramnik put together this kind of visual/theoretical analysis instead of vaguely taking shots on Twitter, his points on online cheating would've been much better received. Well done
No, he doesn’t. He solely relies on statistics to form his conclusions. This video provides clearer explanations and more reasonable arguments than anything Kramnik has posted over the two years
@@yefer-gz5vu You don't know what you are talking about. Did you even see where Kramnik reviews games of these cheaters? Probably you just watch Nakamaru and that's where your opinion coming from.
I don’t think cheating only in certain moments is for higher rated players. I feel it a lot at my level. The moves don’t make sense. They can lose an exchange and 2 pawns in the opening and then somehow they methodically chip away and win or get back in the game. Then all of a sudden they’re bad again
If a lot is cheating in higher rank, there is a huge potential that even more are cheating in lower, but it might be less in percentage since just amount of ppl in lower.
It's worse with low elo players. Cheaters get their account banned and then just create a new one and start another rating climb. I can usually tell when I'm playing a cheater because it feels like I'm just playing the computer at some point. I never bothered to actually analyze the accuracy ratings of each opponent, but it's true... I usually get really discouraged after I encounter these cheaters, and it just makes me want to stop playing. Sad.
Idk about the streaks. I had a 9 game win streak yesterday where 6 of them were 93%+ accuracy. I play for endgames so my accuracy tends to be higher. It’s statistically probable as I played 900 games in 90 days to get a win streak like this
the only case this happens is when a Chess master is playing on a secret account. they play unbelievable moves and because they are quite literally comparable to a low depth engine they can be banned for it. aside from this it doesn’t happen ever with the current anti cheat.
i hear you bro, i just got fed up with this completely in rapid. I'm only 1300 elo so i don't think that this has to do anything with elo, rather it does with simply recently there are a lot more cheaters and more sophisticated ones than before. Almost all my games have an accuracy above 80% and this is almost not enough for anything. I was able to finally win a game after loosing 6 in a row against 1250-1300 elo guys who played above 90%. My accuracy was 93% in this game, and the only reason i was able to win was that my opponent got low on time and finally made a blunder with 10 seconds on the clock, but he played almost perfectly until then. Another guy also found some Hikaru/Alireza kind of fork tactic in 3 seconds, with apparently 1205 elo. I just can't believe these games at all.
How do you know some cheaters play badly in the opening to lower their overall accuracy and play perfectly in the other phases 2:18 ? The example you showed is just some dude blundering his Queen and resigning, where is the perfect play afterwards 2:35 ? Also, people can make all kinds of mistakes even blunder the Queen. On what do you base your suspicion of having win streaks 3:33 ? So you personally have a 6 game win streak and thus a person with 7 or 10 is suspicious? Why? On what do you base your description of "closet cheating" How do you know they typically cheat to 1-200 elo higher rated than they are 4:03 ? How do you know that they usually cheat in the game after they lost the previous one? So your entire argument that this guy is cheating is that he knew how to refute your opening, he didn't fall for your mate in 1 trap, he played Kh1 and not Kh2 8:50 ? And after realising the mistake went all in? And based on this they are "undoubtedly obvious cheating" 11:05 ? How do you know that chesscom in recent years made a public effort in recent years to reduce the amount of false bans they give to players 11:10 ? 11:20 what do you mean they are given full immunity and will never be banned 11:24 ? "The opponent clearly meant to play the best engine move, mouse slipped and then suddenly found the best way to force a draw 11:54 ". Such an interesting wording. Also, how do you know that he wanted to force a draw? How do you know the rook sack is not an attacking move, and you just happened to escape the attack? How do you know that are people that are cheating under our noses that will never be banned 11:23 ? How do you know that they are cheating in a way that is undetectable by chesscom 12:28? So chesscom banning someone is not the seal of approval but your cheating analysis is? 12:37? Every game should have looked at by a the anti-cheat, did you report every player you played for the last 100 games 14:48 ? How is it obvious that they were cheating against other people 16:05? So if you claim that they are all cheaters how are you beating 50% of them? If they were truly cheating you wouldn't score 50/50 with them like with average people right?
How do you know some cheaters play badly in the opening to lower their overall accuracy and play perfectly in the other phases 2:18 ? Because it's a common trend when versing cheaters. I play viewers on my livestreams all the time and you’ll constantly see players stumble out of the opening with low accuracies, then absolutely dominating the middlegame and endgames (this is also myself playing against players with Elo’s as low as 800). Those accounts are then subsequently banned and it becomes a pattern that users that play legitimately do not follow - only cheaters. The example you showed is just some dude blundering his Queen and resigning, where is the perfect play afterwards 2:35 ? The two statements were not connected for this example, if you blunder your entire queen in the opening with no compensation even an engine won’t save you against a 2300 rated player - hence the resignation. It was also against a proven cheater, there is no speculation they were cheating as their account was banned. Also, people can make all kinds of mistakes even blunder the Queen. On what do you base your suspicion of having win streaks 3:33 ? 2300s do make mistakes, but blundering the queen straight out of the opening is typically not one of them. 2300s can blunder their queen in complicated positions where they have lower times, but straight out of the opening is almost impossible. As I mentioned in the video though, this is NOT enough to determine whether or not someone is cheating as the sample size is too small, but if you quickly analyse their account you’ll see they were blatantly cheating against other users. So you personally have a 6 game win streak and thus a person with 7 or 10 is suspicious? Why? On what do you base your description of "closet cheating" How do you know they typically cheat to 1-200 elo higher rated than they are 4:03 ? My 6 game win streak should be considered suspicious. It's an extreme outlier in data and should be considered when determining whether or not someone was cheating. The opponent in question also had a staggering 14 game unbeaten streak in the pool where they scored 90%+ accuracy in every game they played. Additionally, closet cheating is typically when players, in response to losing a game decide they’re going to cheat to win the Elo back instead of fairly fighting for it. They mostly use their own moves, but if they think the position is getting away from them or the moment is critical they’ll use an engine. They’re typically higher rated than they should be because they lose Elo fairly without needing to gain it back fairly, making them inherently weaker than the people they verse. How do you know that they usually cheat in the game after they lost the previous one? So your entire argument that this guy is cheating is that he knew how to refute your opening, he didn't fall for your mate in 1 trap, he played Kh1 and not Kh2 8:50 ? Because that's the entire premise of a closet cheater, they won’t cheat unless they feel like they have to. If they’re legitimately winning games on their own they have no reason to cheat, but if they lose a few games and can’t win on their own - they use an engine to help them. I also explicitly said a player knowing deep Sicilian theory was not a sign of cheating, I also never insinuated him not blundering M1 was evidence of him cheating either. And as I stated in the video, my evidence of him cheating was him mouseslipping the top engine move, and then immediately finding an entirely new idea that was perfectly functional without even calculating it. And after realising the mistake went all in? And based on this they are "undoubtedly obvious cheating" 11:05 ? First of all he had no time to even process what he did might’ve been a mistake because he was playing so quickly. Second of all if any legitimate player thinks they made a mistake, they don’t dig a deeper hole by sacrificing their rook without calculating it - that's complete nonsense. How do you know that chesscom in recent years made a public effort in recent years to reduce the amount of false bans they give to players 11:10 ? The CEO of Chess.com IM Danny Rensch has stated it numerous times in recent Chess.com State of Plays. 11:20 what do you mean they are given full immunity and will never be banned 11:24 ? Due to the functionality of the anticheat on Chess.com, it is unable to detect anyone cheating in this fashion and therefore they cannot be banned. "The opponent clearly meant to play the best engine move, mouse slipped and then suddenly found the best way to force a draw 11:54 ". Such an interesting wording. Also, how do you know that he wanted to force a draw? How do you know the rook sack is not an attacking move, and you just happened to escape the attack? Because there is no way for either side to win in the line he chose to play. He forced me down a line where I would be down a rook if I didn’t repeat moves in the position. Even if I just “happened” to escape the attack, that's why you take more than 3 seconds to calculate a move in Chess - to make sure it actually works as you intended. How do you know that are people that are cheating under our noses that will never be banned 11:23 ? This is an assumption that a cheating software paired with common sense can be passed as legitimate play in online Chess. How do you know that they are cheating in a way that is undetectable by chesscom 12:28? So chesscom banning someone is not the seal of approval but your cheating analysis is? 12:37? Because Chess.com doesn’t ban them for what is obvious cheating. Also Chess.com is not the seal of approval because as I stated before, Chess.com largely prioritises preventing false bans which also allows others to slip through the cracks. Every game should have looked at by a the anti-cheat, did you report every player you played for the last 100 games 14:48 ? I mentioned this at 14:05. How is it obvious that they were cheating against other people 16:05? This was a general statement at players cheating across the board. I bothered to analyse their games against other players and found evidence of cheating in those. So if you claim that they are all cheaters how are you beating 50% of them? If they were truly cheating you wouldn't score 50/50 with them like with average people right? I mentioned in the video the reasons you might beat a cheater at 16:23.
@@jacksarkisian 1). You didn't show an example for that, and how playing poorly in the opening and dominating in the other phases affects the overall accuracy, and how do you know that's the goal of a cheater and if it actually works. 2). Just before you showed the example with the Queen you reminded us, that it is connected to that 2:36. And yes he is a proven cheater, but you are making it seem that the fact that he blundered his Queen is somehow connected to him being a cheater. 3). Here are the two recent Rapid games where you as a 2300 blundered your Queen with plenty time on the clock game/live/114925732439 game/live/116230227659. 4). On what basis do you believe your 6 win streak is an outlier? So in this sense how staggering 14 win streak is actually? Is this guy suspicious "MO2002ISMAIL" ? I understand now, so you say that their elo is inflated because they cheat in the next game after they lost and gain that unfair elo premium. So what do they do after they lost 2 games in a row, they cheat 2 games in a row in response? And also if they are inherently weaker doesn't it mean that won't be able to compete on that level and would need to use the engine more and more until they are solely using the engine? 5). So what did you say here, maybe I misunderstood 8:27. I don't belive that basing your accusation on move Kh1 is enough of the evidence. P.S I think your argument would be way stronger if you had mentioned the time the player in question used during all of his moves and not just during the rook sack. Because he was playing most of the moves with 0.2, 0.5, 1.0 time frame. 6). I would consider the rook sack to be the tactic with obvious threat of Rg1 Rg7 mate. Most of the Blitz players are really good at tactics and attacking, and blitz players don't really tend to calculate it all through, it's more about intuition (sensing it's dangerous enough). You think of it as he calculated 5 moves ahead that it was a draw and went for it all in 3 seconds, but it most probably is him trying to continue to attack you which has happened to be a draw. In a similar situation, his attack could have failed and you won, and you wouldn't even slightly suspect that game. 7). I don't see the reference. 8). How do you know that due to the functionality of the anticheat on Chesscom, it is unable to detect anyone cheating in this fashion and therefore they cannot be banned?. 9). Yes but you blow that assumption into a basis of your argument as if it's a factually proven situation. It's an idea that this can be possible, but for now, it's only a speculation of the community. Because all those who try to "test" it get banned. Of course, cheaters won't be banned for using an engine for 1 move, but how influential that move would be to the outcome of the game? When to know at which point to use the engine? 10). It is not clear what you claim to be obvious cheating that chesscom is refusing to pay attention to. I am quite certain that with the right game and with the right sample of data, the same argument can be made about your account, You already mentioned that your 6 game win streak is suspicious, so all that needs to be done is to find the game that would in some way illustrate that. Your account is way younger than mine "check", Your account has suspicious win streaks "check", You blundered your Queen in rapid two times recently "check", Find a suspicious game "most probably check". And now what is left is to report you to Chesscom. Oops they didn't ban you. Well, you must be one of those undetectable cheaters well. 11). Sorry I for some reason completely missed that. Thank you. 12). Would be nice to see some examples, and on what basis you actually figured out that they were cheating. 13). I understand how you can beat 1 or 2 cheaters, or maybe even beat them regularly, but how are you beating 50% of them. Maybe they aren't cheaters after all? If we assume that all of them are cheaters and you beat 50% of them it means that they didn't cheat in at least the 50%. Now if we take the other 50%, does it mean that all of the games you lost are to people who cheated in the game? Or we can use the same assumption that some of them cheated against other people and not you? Does it mean that more than 50% of the game let's say 60% or 70% of the games you played are against people who didn't cheat during that time?
I had this type of experience. I had a situation where I was pawn up and my rook is on 7th rank. And suddenly she sacrificed her pawn and attacked my king side. I lost that game. She was not even able to detect a small tactic but she suddenly played very good.
Online chess has its problems. While you do make some valid points that the number of cheating accounts has been growing, I do need to say that a player is innocent until proven guilty - that's the basic rule. Based on a single game, all you can do is to say this guy is "likely" a cheater- hell, even a random mover has a non zero probability to plays 100% perfect moves! Also, 100 games is not big enough as a sample.
i agree, 100 games is not a big enough sample size but if we increase it to 200 games, we go back to when i was ~2050 Elo and my Elo is not a constant anymore and the data becomes much less valuable. i'm also fine with you saying the best you can say he's "likely" a cheater - but in my opinion even if its not definitive, i don't want to be versing "likely" cheaters 33% of my games.
I’ve reported a premium member who is blatantly cheating in those daily leagues like 5x and he hasn’t been banned. Of course they’re not going to ban paying players.
Its really not clear whether some of the people you claim are cheating are actually cheating. One move isnt enough to convict anyone. The game you showed against that 2300 only had one suspicious move which is reasonable
Maybe it's reasonable, maybe it's not. It remains a story of he said she said... because there is no technology available to reliably know it. Statistics will become more reliable with the number of tests executed, but since there are no tests registering results that reliably say whether the person was or wasn't cheating in any position, the problem will remain unresolved.
@@renatozeru yes he did play it in a few seconds, but he could have seen the tactic in advance, thinking about it on his opponent's time. Not 100% sure either way whether he's cheating or not
Imagine the plot twist: Meanwhile, the Turk accused of cheating was thinking: "How is this guy in black is finding the best moves to defend himself? SUS."
There was an account I played around 1700 elo rapid that was about a month old. He had just got to my elo from 1000 elo and had lost a few games at that low rating, but handled me easily which I found suspicious. In the next few weeks the account was 2200 elo. Almost certainly a cheater and I was never refunded elo
I'm not positive the "closet cheater" was cheating. Kh1 could have been a nearsighted move to get the g rook active on that file. If it was a mouse slip, then I still don't see how they are moving the mouse and getting Stockfish best moves all within 1 second or so, sometimes less. By saying mouseslip you're implying they are manually moving the pieces and not using some advanced automove cheat, but they are still moving as fast as under 1 second? Doesn't seem possible... The move times do not feel suspicious. I'm 2000 bullet and could intuit the rook sac given the activity of the other pieces. It also just feels like a desperation move that luckily happens to maintain a draw.
people use browser extensions to cheat on Chess.com. it shows an overlay of your Chess board and draws an arrow from the piece to where it should be moved to. afaik automove isn’t really a thing anymore unless you set the times to random. if you’re automoving in 0.1s every move you’re obviously going to be caught, most people do it semi manually now. this kind of erratic decision making might be common in blitz or bullet but it’s nonexistent at high level rapid. no one plays risky moves like that in such short amounts of time, you at least think for 15-20 seconds otherwise you’ll end up throwing more games than not.
I helped organize a chess tournament at the library of the school where I teach (one day a week in recess, one rapid game per player, from new years till easter). There was one first-year student who did very well. He was in the lead until he lost a game the penultimate day, and didn't show the last day. I later caught him cheating on a test. Which of course made me question his chess results. We didn't log the games, so there was nothing to be done, but it did make me sad.
Well said. I don't think that anything was unreasonable within the video. Very balanced and reasonable points were made. There is definitely an issue within online chess, and in my opinion, this problem is not easily solved. A portion of the cheaters are doing so in a very difficult to detect manner. Cheating is definitely happening... the only reasonable debate is "how often is cheating happening?". I didn't know about rating refunds only being given to accounts that were cheated against within the last 30 days of a cheater being banned. If true, this explains A LOT. This point, if true, absolutely "blows me away". Just wild. If true, a cheater could be extracting rating from the community for 6 months (using a random time) and only a portion is refunded. Does this make sense?
Your claim that skilled players don’t blunder their queens is factually incorrect. I’ve seen blundered queens in Titled Tuesday games multiple times. Let’s be honest, your metrics are subjective, you have no data, you have no skills to process even the data that you have, and you’re saying that your excel exercise is worth more than a team of analysts and engineers who work around the clock. This cheating accusation madness should stop.
there wasn't enough context in my statement. i meant 2200 players don't ever blunder there queen LIKE this. by like, i mean straight out of the opening with literally 10 minutes to think about their moves. of course there are times where someone will be on some kind of ungodly tilt, or has come home drunk playing Chess but this is why i said the sample size was too small & they were clearly banned for other games. however this is still an important piece of evidence to put towards their account being illegitimate. queen blunders happen all the time, theres definitely games in my last 100 where i've fully blundered my queen but its much more reasonable to happen at latter stages in the game where you're running out of time - the same can be said about titled tuesday players as the time control is much shorter. and Chess.com do not have a massive team of analysts. according to their own website they have 2 and i don't think its unreasonable to think at some stage they've missed the mark with their work.
@@jacksarkisian Even tho I'm only 1950 rapid, I have blundered my queen, bc of my friends or when I was generally distracted. I understand, bc even at this low elo of mine there are still many cheaters. After the 99 precentile people become too competitive lol.
interesting video. Just thought I'd let you know in case you haven't noticed this -- you do a thing very often where you thump your mic probably like every 5 seconds on average. Probably your mic is on or attached to your desk and you're hitting your desk, even if lightly. Its super noticeable and a bit irritating, would highly recommend having your mic not attached to the desk while using, or just not touching the desk while talking into it
haha yeah this is from my hand sliding on my desk while i'm speaking - i use pretty bad headphones so i'm not surprised i've never noticed this whilst editing. will definitely see if i can elevate my microphone in future videos 🙌
That's the problem, isn't it? I think a three-second game plan overhaul and rook sacrifice looks very suspicious, but am I 100% sure, no. And and are you going to ban someone over a very high but not 100% probability? Hard to say. It's easy to say "yes" but of course people would hate to have a false ban happen to them.
Indeed. I'd play the same drawing line in less than 3 seconds with the same position on the board. It is an obvious probable draw or at least best chance for an attack. For an ultra aggressive player sometimes you want to move quickly sometimes for the mental impact it might have on an opponent and needing to save time for long end game situations later. Even though I've been playing for more than 10 years people have complained about my games before and find out I watch videos at the same time as playing chess with a toddler that interferes with my games sometimes. When I don't have this my rating is easily more than 200 elo higher and it throws people. You don't know what the opponent is doing when you play online unless you see them stream.
Very well put together video. However there is one critical flaw in your analysis in the result section at around 15:00. The sample size that you are taking is very small to follow a normal distribution hence inflating the statistics. If you are interested I can help you develop an extensive and robust Machine learning model which could run through your account and find those accounts which are likely to cheat.
hey! this was a thought i had, however i think the following issue would come up. i did consider increasing the sample size to something much larger, but if i go back lets say 250 games into my Chess.com history my Elo would be around ~2000. not only is that 300 Elo gap absolutely huge in comparison to lets say 1400-1700 Elo, but i would also assume the higher rated you are, the more cheaters you will verse. i feel like if i use games from my personal account this factor would deem the data much less valuable as the Elo level i played at was not a constant. i would also assume finding an account with a suitable dataset would be quite rare. not only are there only around 3000 active players in Rapid rated around 2300 Elo on Chess.com, but you would need to find someone who is completely stagnant in their Chess and has played 250+ games in the last 2 months (2 months is also a generous timeframe for various reasons (cheating program availability, real-world events, Chess.com site changes, etc)). i suppose you could take the same 100 games over a 2 month timeframe from other players similarly rated on the website, but i still don't know if there are enough people at this level to acquire a large enough sample size. i wouldn't imagine my findings are hugely reliable, but i think it at least outlines that there is a problem somewhere which is the main point - would love to see a more extensive dive into something like this though!
I think it's quietly understood amongst strong players that slow time controls online are pointless, hence giving you a dense pool of suspicious accounts at your level. Strong players are testing their 'calculation' over the board and so one has to ask what value add (at the higher levels) does online rapid really bring? Interesting video nonetheless and good luck.
The amount of times that my opponent blundered his queen and then Stockfish came back to destroy me was so beyond tilting to me that I just quit online chess. Now I just play bots of my choosing at lower ratings than Stockfish.
I know cheating is very common. The best solution I can think of is to give paid members the choice to play *only* other paid members. The likelihood of cheating by paid members is certainly far less. While it probably wouldn't lessen cheating at the titled player level, it certainly would at the non-titled/mid-level rating ranges. I'd be more willing to wait 3-5 minutes for a game with a paid member. Especially if I saw a "queue" of some sort that told me how long I had left to wait.
hahah there are of course exceptions to this. for example if you're a player that likes to trade pieces off the board early, your games will consistently have higher accuracies because there's less possibilities. but if you like to keep pieces on the board, your accuracy will be lower on average because of the increased amount of possibilities. openings also come into play with this but generally one single suspicious trait usually doesn't indicate foul play
![Eminem - Fuel (feat. JID) [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/t5H_CewqpKA/mqdefault.jpg)
This rook sac in 3 seconds is hilarious xD this made it 100% obvious. the account is still not banned . i wonder when this happens. great video!
hahah yeah its pretty insane. i think only a Chess.com fairplay analyst could answer the questions we have, and they never would give insights to how their anticheat works to prevent workarounds. it does make you wonder how much people are getting away with. glad you enjoyed though bro
Rxf5 is slightly beliveable, becouse the premis is to open the king and then go with Rg1, normal attacking moves
@@Wielkie-Ksiestwo-Slupskie in 3 seconds?
Yeah, I spend much more than 3 seconds just on tilting if i mouse slip...
@@Benjamin-1776- The thing is anyone can play a move quickly without thinking just like they can make any blunder, he says outright in the video that a sample size of one isn't enough yet claims he is 100% sure after that, very hypocritical
One time i thought my opponent was cheating and it turned out to be hikaru on a speedrun lmaooo
Lol
Badge of honour, that!
lucky!
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hikaru on a speedrun is cheating. But because he has a title, they promote it.
If it were an untitled player...cheating investigation/accusations.
it's time to join your local chess club
What if they use the bead strat?
@@bgill7475 Have a faster vibrating bead yourself hehe
@@bgill7475 you join the club.
Most couldn't be arsed.
Nice one @@ThortheMerciless
Whenever I suspect someone of cheating against me, I take a look at their account and then watch them play the next few games live. It becomes really obvious very quickly, if they are.
@@Rastoropny LOL
@@Rastoropnybro 🤣
@Rastoropny I get what you're going for here, lol. I just get a kick of them getting banned.
@@anday7421what did he say man I need to know!
I think worse than the obvious cheaters are the smurf accounts. I wish they would stop banning the cheaters and just pair them up against other suspected cheaters. It seems like a problem that will never go away.
How many smurf accounts are there? How do you distinguish cheating from smurfing?
@@ToshinbenI define smurfing (aka sandbagging) as basically rigging the matching system so you play rated games or tournaments against opponents who are definitely weaker than you. Smurfs don’t necessarily have to use assistance to win. Instead they might tilt or lose on purpose so their rating is lower than their real strength.
I’m not sure how common it is, but I think people who do it are cheating in a way because they are keeping their rating artificially low just so they can get feel good about winning I guess.
@@josueramirez7247am i technically a smurf? I recently created a speedrun account and beat lower rated players than me but i didnt purposely lose to make other people lose elo i just wanted to make a speedrun account. Im currently 1906 on that account.
@@Toshinben when someone has a new account or huge rating difference in time controls and play way above that level. We see how popular speed runs are for our favorite streamers. I have less of a problem with those because you get a rating refund but would love to see an option to not get paired up against them.
Chesscom encourages smurf accounts. That's why there are so many "Speedruns" on youtube.
I was told by a cheater from a certain country that cheating was a method of learning and then I was shamed for criticizing them for trying to learn. Good grief.
I can already tell you mean India hahah.
Ngl I thought it would be Indonesia
@Circa1989 that was just a lucky guess
@@euge2175Indonesia is kinda weird, I played decently and I got accused by Indonesian bcos I took too long to move, i just made a damn coffee
LOL, we all know these countries. It is even worse on weekends
If i lose i say my opponent is cheating. If i win i say nothing
gg
same 😂 I never cared if opponent was cheating when i was 1200-1500 but now that I am 2070, I always think that opponent is cheating when they play good moves/ plays some random opening that clearly gives them disadvantage but its not always the case tho. I myself play cow's opening and similar stuff that are super bad but no one prepares for that so I get away with trash opening every single time, i save a lot of time and its easier to attack king if its castling short
Kramnik is that u
I had a paid account and would always get refunded elo for cheaters.
I started a new account (unpaid) and haven't been refunded elo in 898 games..
I also often have win streaks of 7 to 8 games, I just don't have accuracy over 90% for all the games. My elo atm is about 1550 but my peak is 1710 about two months ago.
i'm not 100% sure on this but it would make sense if paid accounts on Chess.com had priority when it comes to in-game reports which might explain the anomaly. just a guess though & you'd need someone that works for Chess.com to know for sure but i'm fairly certain this exists for other games reporting systems.
there are also many exceptions to the winstreak rule. for example, someone who has 2400 Blitz but is rated only 2100 Rapid will be far more likely to have large winstreaks as they're playing at a level lower than they should be. i wouldn't be surprised if you fall into that bracket also.
i have 4324 games on my account and my elo was refunded 5 times, all of them in 2021
@@ResonantFrequency-sn9ud winstreaks on their own have exceptions. for example if someone is 2400 Blitz, but playing at 2100 Rapid they're more likely to have higher winstreaks than someone else their level. this is simply because they're playing below their skill level.
you probably fit into that bracket considering your rating swings, if you go down 200 Elo, you'll have big winstreaks on your way back up to where you belong.
My rapid rating is about 1650 now. Peak was 1730. I've played 3400 games in 2,5 years, and had 5 (!!!) rating compensations.
Last weekend I played 50 blitz games. I lost most of them (I'm not a good player anyway). When I entered the game this weekend, suddenly my rank was 100 elo higher.
I checked wtf is going on, and of 50 opponents 27 (!!!) were banned (was there a mass banning happening last week?). That's OVER 50% of my opponents... Online chess currently make no sense.
54% of players weren't cheating. It's a garbage site that uses a garbage method. I'm a titled player and got "caught" for cheating only playing bullet. Obviously, that's not physically possible. I got asked to send them my driver's license and birth certificate and to use my real name. I won't let those effing nut cakes doxx me when they get mad. They will be gone within 6y.
that doesnt make sense, because the rating loss average is 8 you would have gained around 200-240 points
@@Ididkdhdjjsjsjsjsbbdvdjdjn7373 might have meant "100 elo higher" (than before those 50 games).
If he lost 33 games and won 17, with 8 points gain / loss
and then was refunded for 27 games
it would mean only 6 losses and 17 wins - 11 games "profit" = around 90 ELO higher.
As those losses are "nulled out".
@@BeSk9991 Super obvious, but you still had to explain it to this guy; props to you
I player a cheater otb in a national tournament who was cheating. There was no checks or anything being done so he would just leave on my turn go the bathroom and come back but i still managed to draw the game because he got to 5 minutes while i still had over an hour left, I sacrificed my knight for his promoting pawn which complicated the game and i managed to draw him.
bro played the guy with a phone in his sock 😭😭
I once started playing a guy and I suddenly got diarrhea. It was a seriously painful experience! And I'm sure he got suspicious until I started making mistakes and lost the game. I was constantly going to the bathroom. I was much younger and much more embarrassed back then. It happens.
post his name or your comment means nothing
Not everyone wants to dox themselves@@brainletsYT
@@brainletsYT You want him to be messy just to prove his point. Gtfoh being gaslighting.
As a low-level player, it is really common to find opponents who play really badly, and then suddenly become wizards in the middle and end games.
Man, you literally put every point ive wanted to say for years into one video and explain it perfectly. Thank you so much. This was seriously cathartic.
Rapid games always feel like a 50-50 with the player pool. Thanks for the video! Unfortunately, online chess will always have some cheaters, so for your own sanity, take it with a grain of salt and focus on improving yourself. And most importantly, always have fun!
Thought that this might be clickbait content but decided to look anyway.
Glad I did, this was a much more in-depth and level-headed discussion video than I was anticipating.
I guess this is one of the joys of being an actual strong player, you run into a lot more cheaters; it seems that other sites also have a similar issue when they hit this bracket.
Soemone might be 2200+ and blunder their queen just by being a mixed of tired (playing several games in a row) and drunk/high or just simply losing concentration due to other people in his room talking to him etc. It's not impossible imo
definitely not impossible but highly unlikely and as i said in the video, it cannot be your sole piece of evidence to prove they were cheating (unless you have some highly advanced and reliable AI generative learning anticheat that says otherwise). but clearly even though that sample size was too small, they were cheating in other games and were banned for it.
the instance in this game simply backs up the fact that they were cheating and is useful in hindsight.
@@jacksarkisian Yeah I did realise your point. I was just picking on semantics I suppose where you had said "it's impossible to happen at this rank" or something. Not a big deal, I definitely didn't mean it as a criticism. You made a good point about "closet cheaters" that I hadn't really considered so much.
At least twice my finger slipped on the screen and I moved a piece to the next square of the one I intended.
@@sunway1374 true that. Happened to me lots that
Online I'm 2500. I've got a few thousand games and have never blundered my queen to a 1 mover. Had my queen trapped a few times but that's a different story
Speedrunning cheating sagas have taught us that cheating arms races in online/video games are a losing proposition. Any forensic criteria is inevitably absorbed by cheating systems, and then the cheating becomes so subtle and complex that humans can no longer actually find unambiguous forensic criteria to out the cheating. You could probably implement something like this and improve things for about 6 months to 1 year before some subtler cheaters dominate the ecosystem while leaving none of the identifiable traces that skilled chess players can normally use against cheaters that were less sophisticated than that.
While I don't play online and only play in over-the-board tournaments (because I see 3-dimensional positions better than flat 2-D ones onscreen), I'm not too concerned about cheaters in these casual games where no money is involved. Cheaters in online tournaments with prize money, however, is entirely different.
100% agree that more priority should be given to prized events - but its the covering up of a real issue that concerns me. Chess.com insisting time and time again on the latest State of Play's that there isn't a big cheating problem in regular play and that they're doing "everything they can" to do their part.
at the end of the day people pay good money for memberships, and invest hours of playtime on the platform and half of them don't even know a sizeable amount of their opponents are using engine assistance. if it were more publicly known i'm sure people would just switch platforms, however i think its been swept under the rug for far too long.
No man, some of us want to do a 20, 30 or an hour of competitive and fun time per day playing chess at home, and because it's not a pay tournament it does not mean that it's ok or it's not a big problem, it's the time of people that want to learn and improve. How many people maybe stop playing chess after a brutal loss against a cheater but they never knew it?
Chess players don't understand what 3D positions mean. When you play with real chess pieces and board, it's still 2D. Chess with 3D positions has multiple layers and pieces can move between the layers.
In Star Trek, they play 3D chess. Although the rules are not explained.
OTB is still 2 dimensional, its not like u can lower ur pawn into the ground
@@lucianorodriguez7726 A serious player is not going to stop playing because of a single or even a series of crushing losses. It happens period. You learn from the experience. Yes it is not pleasant but you still learn from the experience.
Despite what the various experts say, they simply cannot catch a smart cheater.
what "expert" says they can catch smart cheaters? if someone is using an engine for 1 move each game, that's not detectable and obviously has a positive impact on elo over many games
@frottery none, most high level gms say that a gm that was cheating would be next to impossible to catch if they are naturally gm anyway then just knowing the eval is enough to give a significant boost
10% being cheaters (and only confirmed no less) is insane. I'm only a casual chess player, but I play other online competitive games and those have no where near as many cheaters from what I can tell.
I guess its just the way chess works, it's so easy and accessible to cheat, and cheating is extremely powerful.
Those games you play online are flooded with cheaters don’t kid yourself
Very well documented, thanks for bringing awareness to this issues
thankyou bro but i do still believe it'll be in vain until someone with a larger following covers the topic. i've built a great community of people over the years and i think my voice is heard a lot more than others but the issue is simply too big for someone like me.
my question is when should you be reporting people? I'd say I'm a trustworthy person so when accounts look suspicious, I usually give them the benefit of the doubt. I kind of tell myself it doesn't matter anyway because if I am as good as I think I am I'll just win back the elo anyway.
Amazing video, much of it was things ive thought but never took time to look over (closet cheaters, account time, etc) thanks for actually bringing these things to light
There’s also an issue of the Chess Admins just not banning people. I had undeniable proof of this 700 elo cheater who crushed me while I was almost 1700 who regularly cheats and admits to in DM’s and after sending proof and screenshots they said they would do something and yet he is still playing
Give the account name, we'll report too.
I’ve done this and followed up and the second time they banned them
@@hulki-orra mewtwo444 go look at their best win and then some of their recent games, TaeJota another account around 1500 also lost to this cheater
Jack for your own rapid improvement and my gross curiosity I would love if you were to play rapid on lichess. I personally feel like I have faced way less cheaters in the lichess rapid pool vs chesscom pool. And once you settle in your fair lichess rating range I would love if you were then to play 100 games and do a similar analysis as done here. ------ I'll add some notes here: Way more higher rated and strong players play rapid regularly on lichess. Notably GrandmasterGauri on the streamer side and plenty of other strong FMs, IMs, and even GMs regularly play rapid on lichess. As you said it'd often take you at least 5 minutes to find a game in the cc rapid pool but on lichess when you are rated accurately I'd be willing to bet you'd always get paired within 30 seconds. I do believe chesscom's cheat detection and especially refund system is better than lichess. However, by design lichess entices a higher percentage of strong players (fair players) vs it's populous size.
yeah i'd definitely be interested in doing this, might try and play some lichess Rapid on stream soon and have some fun with it (bonus points for lichess not saying JACKSARK IS CURRENTLY STREAMING HERES A LINK WHERE YOU CAN SEE ALL OF HIS MOVES AND PLAN AHEAD BASED ON WHAT HES THINKING
@@jacksarkisian lmao, nice looking forward to it. Btw your analysis of these games really has shown how much stronger you've become. Congrats on the well deserved improvement ❤
this is not that easy because we as a chesscom partner are not allowed to do content on other chess platforms usually
@@Willeinhelm Yeah I wasn't expecting him to play on stream. As Jack practically only plays rated rapid off stream I'd assume it'd be fine for him to play lichess rapid off stream as well.
@@jacksarkisian actually you can link your profiles and Lichess will say exactly that
True the worst feeling for me is to know and almost know my opponent is cheating and report him and he still isn't banned then i have to convince myself maybe he wasn't cheating though i know he was 😢
They aren't cheating you are just bad
@@gredax nah I eliminate the candidates that I'm salty against they don't make the cut
I've always had this feeling. I've played too many new accounts that have 2000+ elo and when I look at their puzzles I find that they got thwarted by the below 500 elo puzzle. I recently played against a new account that lost three times to a cheater. In the third game, his accuracy was 93%. He plays horrible openings like 1. h4. He hasn't been banned; he never will.
Should have a built it tilt function. Where it won't let you play if it feels you're playing too fast and with little accuracy
this wouldnt work out well. You should just be responsible for your own playing. When I lose 2 games in a row, I take some time off and that helps
Just play unrated. I'm beating people 1k above my elo on unrated.. That says something as it is
2:50 Literally grandmasters do stupid blunders and ,,at this level'' of 2300 elo its absolutely possible.
Did you miss the part where he mentioned these games are in the rapid format? What GM is blundering a queen in the opening of a rapid game
i had a win streak of 9 wins in a row in rapid chess and went from low 1800s to 1925 until i played a player whose account is only 11 days old and his accuracy was 94% and he won the game and the way he won the game was insane , but after that lost i won 3 games in a row and now i am at 1935 , i do face cheaters but not to the point that it's effecting my elo gains which is fine by me
Both cheaters by this posters standards
I started playing a year ago, 2500 games, i have been refunded 8 times, but i feel like i have played against many more cheaters
of course you have, they go undetected. you've probably played closer to around 100 - 150 give or take
@@brainletsYTI saw a study that percentage of cheaters depends on the rating. People encountered the highest percentages of obvious cheaters (who got caught) in the 1800-2300 range in rapid. That was data from about a year or two ago (2022-2023)
im a 2100-2200 rapid player myself and I can only agree with you.
When I play on one of my numerous secound accounts (rated anywhere between 1400-2000) I rarely, almost never) face a cheater.
But once you hit the 2100 rapid barrier around 10% of the accounts I face look sus as hell and I abort alot.
I imagine that at 2300 the issue is even worse :(
sad stuff and that's also the reason why I stopped playing rapid chess as much (gone from 40 games a month to 15).
That's strange, because from my experience, there are plenty of cheaters in the 1700-2000 range. I use almost every abort I have because a third of my opponents created their account in 2024, and these people see tactics way beyond their supposed 2400 puzzle rating in less time than me. As someone with a 3200 puzzle rating, it's very obvious when people cheat.
@@nicolaslaine8058 well it could be that I dont take my games on my second account serious (just trying out new openings), and therefore not really paying much attention to my opponents accounts and movetimes
You definitely DOESN'T sound like Kramnik. You're analyzing the actual games and actual moves. That's a good argumentation.
Kramnik has asked several GMs about a specific move in Danya's game and showed it onscreen.
Its a lost cause, even just the access to an evaluation bar(without move suggestions) is significant enough
In my video, I showed an account that was many years old and had thousands of games. It played bullet, and every move was like 0.7 seconds. Even that was too hard for them to detect. Oh, and the same for the guy playing crazyhouse with every move made in 0.2 seconds.
actually saw your video the other day & made me get around to making this. super disappointing that there’s been virtually zero progress for the anti cheat in over a year now, great work on your video though 🔥
@jacksarkisian Oh wow, I'm glad to see an update, in that case! I was also wondering what the cheating rate would be if I played a lot of games now, and you did just that!
@@AyrtonTwigg hahaha yeah would love to see you make a follow up video in the bullet time control to see if theres been any change there. sadly i'm incredibly slow and only ~2050 bullet so i don't verse many cheaters but would love to see a comparison.
i just got an email from some Chess.com representatives about this video so hopefully will be able to provide some more clarity to the situation over the next few days.
A very intersting video. You were not biased. Thank you for this interesting insight!
thankyou bro. i would love to see a GM like Danya play ~100 Rapid games at this level and do their own analysis. i can't say with 100% certainty but i'm very convinced i versed more than 29 cheaters in my last 100 games its just i'm not strong enough to know for sure if they were or not. glad you enjoyed bro
@@jacksarkisian yea i also think so. im also curious if a gm like danya does it. he sees alot of cheaters in his speederuns already so i think theres an intersting fact
@@jacksarkisian In one of his speedrun videos he talks about this and says the amount of cheaters is the reason he does not want to continue the rating climb beyond a certain level.
@@Shadow-7295 which video is this in? i heard someone mention this before but i couldn't find the video. wanted to mention it in this video but couldn't find the clip haha
Theres so many games where cheating makes so much more sense and can be a fun alternative way to play the game. But cheating in chess? Makes 0 sense. I just dont get these people.
I found this video misguided on many levels, including the game analysis. I plan to make a response video soon
please do!
i'll literally sub and bell you because im so interested
I agree.
I'm happy that Jack is passionate about Chess and wants to do his part in protecting fair play. The issue is that a lot of these metrics are arbitrary and, unfortunately, fallacious in their application.
The statement he made about the "You don't just completely change your gameplan in 3 seconds" was predicated entirely on his assumption that his opponent was forming a different gameplan in the first place. Not to mention... yes, people do this all the time, even in OTB blitz games. It quite literally happens. lol
There was another statement like "I was playing a cheater who was playing their own moves in their opening and then blundered their Queen on move 9. 2200 players do not make these mistakes" which, lol. People are allowed to blunder. We watched Ding, the world champion, walk into a blunder that the commentators thought was so obvious that they joked about how silly and impossible it would be for someone like Ding to make that mistake. Then to everyone's surprise... that was what happened.
The argument about winstreaks and game accuracy is also completely fallacious anytime we talk about averages. I have had extremely complicated games full of tactics where my opponent and I found the best way to play the tactics and the engine gave us an accuracy of 95+ but estimated our level of play at 1200. I've also had closed-off positional games where the only pragmatic move was the obvious one, but since the engine "knew" the game should end in a draw it kept taking points off of the two of us because we weren't going for the draw. Our accuracy bottomed out at like 50% and ended around mid-60s and it claimed we played like 650s. Even when I first started learning the game in 2006 my elo was never below 1000, so this is laughable now that I play consistently at a 1700 level today.
Then there is the "this is an engine-looking move" statement in regards to Qc7 even though Qc7 is the third best move according to the engine on screen, and Qa5, the move he plays, is conveniently the best move. The lines themselves show why, it's because Qc7 will end with Qa5 but white having far more activity and less liabilities because they can move their pieces with tempo on the Queen to get there. There is a form of irony in him describing the third-best move as an "engine" move but the reason it "could" work in some lines is the same premise that Qa5 works in some lines. I guess 2+2 is the only way to find 4 in the history of math, right?
You make some good points, but defending mouseslip cheater ruins some of your credibility. There is zero percent chance that was his plan and he had calculated deep into a move no one would intentionally make.
@@MrAustanian I can assure you it isn't a zero percent chance, lol.
Play some of these people OTB and watch them do the same stuff. OTB chess is much harder to cheat, and people do this kind of thing all the time.
at this point i dont see any point of playing online, if i want to play an engine ill just play an engine.
I know this is an example of ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ but how about when you recognize a cheater in your game you cheat as well? Yeah, I know, you have to be certain but it’s often unmistakable. Many times in my games a player blunders a piece then suddenly plays like a grandmaster.
A pleasure to watch this video. Its goal is Fairness and it was informative. Effective communication throughout. Clear, well organized, well reasoned, right degree of detail, right tone, and concise.
thankyou bro i appreciate it. planning to have a discussion with Chess.com's head fairplay analyst in the coming week & will make an update video on this
I once went a month without losing. going from 1800 rapid to 2000 rapid. I used to study a lot and play not more than a game per day. A winning streak is not proof of cheating. There would be lots of cheaters at 2300 elo or among kramnik opponents. but for vast majority of players it is just paranoia.
i did cheat once to see how easy it is. If you ever use engine assist you will know how easy it is. What if you use one move? 2? 3? 4? The thing is a clever player can never be caught online. However it is utterly useless since you don't gain skill and only egoboost for a number.
pretty sad
This is one reason ive quit playing online chess except against stockfish itself. This is a political problem they are also not punishing cheats in other facets of life.
Also I’m about 1900 rapid, and I just went and looked at the last 10-15 games and there were at least 3 accounts opened in 2024. Only one did I suspect of cheating until I went and looked closer at the accounts. None have been banned and knowing I would only be refunded points within 30 days is so concerning. Thanks for the video, I’m definitely looking every single time and aborting any game vs an account made in 2024
I feel like the only thing worse than being accused of cheating is being falsely accused of cheating.
Being accused of cheating is a compliment
@@platinumfactorFor a cheater
@@elakstein i mean, there is an argument that someone thought you played too well, so it could be a compliment in that way
That implies that being accuse of cheating when its true (After all, you specified a separation when it was false) its bad?
Its bad to call out cheater an actual cheater??
@asdfghyter I feel like people who think this way don't get accused often. It doesn't feel good, people want to be respected for playing well, not called a fraud.
Appreciate the video. I'm doubtful that anything will happen. I read an article saying that we just have to accept that a considerable amount of opponents will be cheaters and just focus on what you CAN get better at, regardless of the result.
It's an almost unsolvable problem. Players can just cheat and use all kinds of smart tricks, ie think long when the software tells them it's a !! move, to hide it. There is just no way to separate a smart cheater from an inconsistent player.
Just accept it and play more over the board.
Or really go rigorous methods that you require videostreaming while playing, that's the only somewhat feasible way to make sure your opponent isn't cheating.
playing OTB is not a solution for this. if i want to play a FIDE rated classical tournament, there's essentially 2 per year in my city. if i travel interstate to play it'll set me back over $1000 in travel expenses, accommodation, entry fees & food. even if i only play nationally rated Chess games which are held more frequently, i'm limiting myself to a pool of around 50 players that i can ever play against (that are around my level anyway). also to play in any kind of OTB Chess event i'd need to take a 45 minute train ride into the center of the city, and the same 45 minute train ride back. even still these tournaments would still be infrequent, usually only on weekends and sometimes weeks go by without one being organized.
its very easy to say "just go play OTB" if you're European or American, but in Australia at least its completely different.
We need better ways of explaining to cheaters why it's wrong
I actually think as the neural nets continue to learn from human play they'll be able to tell the difference. Just like engines have a unique way they play, so do people.
Like other online games you can't have open servers, you have to have your own vetted private server. Games like GTA are totally a waste when played on the open online servers.
hey multi line posting redditor, streaming does nothing. just take a moment and use your puny brain to try and conjure up at least one (1) of the trillion possible ways for cheats to cheat via streaming. come on you can do it
People worry too much about cheaters , myself i dont play online but most of my games are vs stockfish and lc0 and other engines . The engines are strong but not god like .i only play people over the board .im sure i play 500 to 1 more computer games than vs human .i can predict the computer moves like 95 percent of the time does not mean i can stop what i know they are planning . My point is win lose or draw you should embrace every game you play as a learning experience in the his great game of chess . I can see getting mad if a guy cheats over there he board but online if i ever played there would assume the person i was playing was stockfish .
I got accused of cheating yesterday. Took it as a compliment.😂
MEE TOO
I was accusing someone than i check our precision and it was 40 for both than i was quiet :D
I got suspended for a week for losing too many games. They called me a sandbagger. Then after a week they banned my opponents for cheating. I already quit chess before i knew it. Better get something more fun to do that value your time.
What's your ELO?
me too😂 because i played with 100 accuracy my opponent reported me… (100 accuracy in 12 moves)
At around 1500 rapid I feel like I never face cheaters
Paid members might not get extra anticheating protection, yet, but its undoubted that streamers do get extra protection.
Which makes sense to me.
i think this alongside with titled players make sense. of course i don't think they should be given more leniency, but in any case in which a streamer or titled player has suspicious play on their account they should be carefully reviewed by a human. even though i think Chess.com has a problem with letting too many cheaters off the hook, the opposite in banning players on very minimal evidence is also not the solution either.
@@jacksarkisian I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever to suggest that streamers and / or titled players are treated in a more generous way when it comes to cheating. Did you know how many tournaments require them to have multiple webcams and screensharing active? And that is for titled players too who have already proven their chess skills the last decade or so. It is probably an unfair suggestion to imply paid users are valued more too, as anyone cheating will get banned when detected.
@@jacksarkisianThis is flat wrong. They're misidentifying people and it's pretty easy to prove. I'm a titled player (NM doesn't count) and their 'cheat detection' is moves not in database combined with high accuracy "is cheating". It's very easy to get around this.
Youre probably right as jacksarkisian is making money. But I dont know if he is cheating - but as money maker his account will stay probably.
@@fitnesstoffer2703 huh?
I’ve had situations where I’m winning & all of a sudden it shows I’ve lost by “abandonment “ when I’m still in the game with good a network connection.
The craziest one was when it just showed I lost but my time was still counting down & if I tap on the menu Icon I was met with the resign button. Meaning the game was still running but I couldn’t play because it showed I had lost. The cheater wanted me to abandon the game & when I wouldn’t he returned the game when I had just 1 minute on my clock so I ended up losing by count out.( I literally have a screen recording of this cheating)
Still no elo refunded
I believe paid members require a human review, which delays the process, since CC is understaffed
this might be a thing i'm not too sure. i know titled players & Chess.com partners/staff are reviewed by the anticheat and by a human but not sure about paid accounts - could have something to it.
h doesnt start with an "h"
It does tho
Depends on accent/regional differences.
@simonkim8646 nah H both starts with h and ends with h. Universally
@@SwagnusCarlton spelling-wise, yes, but not always pronunciation-wise
I thought he was saying "hate"-ch on purpose. Like I "hate" when people play h4, or I'm "hate"ching on your king.
I did an experiment once (using 5000 games) and found that between 30 to 52% of all shorter games (10 minutes or less except 1-min bullet) have cheaters. Unranked games have higher probability (between 42 to 52%) while ranked games have lower probability (between 30 to 45%) of encountering cheaters for all time controls. That's why I only play 1-min bullet at this point as it is much harder to cheat.
I did the same for Lichess and found that lichess have slightly lower probability (27% to 46%).
Cheating is rampant in every online video game right now. There are AI anti cheats being developed and in a year or 2 cheating in video games will be almost impossible.
it isn't but all the low elo players think it is because they are bad + gapped and can;t handle it
That may be possible in video games, but cheating in chess is considerably harder to detect for numerous reasons.
Yeah but there's also going to be AI cheats to get around the AI anti cheats. It's a cycle that can't be fixed with more tech.
@RTAC_1234 online chess is a video game and it's cheats are provided on the same sites as other games. I would think with the simplicity of the program of digital chess that the cheats are some of the easiest to make and hide as opposed to call of duty that has layers and layers of code probably 1000x of that of online chess.
@@jameshebert1875 There are several problems, though.
Firstly, cheats in video games are cheating all the time (as far as I understand it). In chess, you don't need to cheat all of the time, you might only need one move per game from a computer.
This makes it hard to distinguish between fair and unfair play. That would be the case anyway, but then, secondly, all good players use computers to refine their play, and so a lot of human play is informed by computers, and, thus, similar to computers. I play long lines that go 20-moves deep that are all prepped with computers, and therefore 100% accurate. Even beyond this, a lot of middlegame ideas come from engine prep and analysis.
When you get to the very top level, they are, at least in some games, playing extremely close to computer accuracy, having studied the game for thousands of hours with computers.
This is why it is so difficult to definitively state whether or not someone is using an engine.
WOW! VERY INFORMATIVE VIDEO! BEAUTIFUL CHARTS, UNDER APPRECIATED IMO, DESERVED MORE SCREENTIME!
THANKYOU QUEEN SORRY ABOUT THE LACK OF CHART SCREENTIME WILL DO BETTER NEXT TIME
I think the 30 day limit might be based off the assumption your lost rating will revert just through play since if you are underrated your rating will self correct.
yeah this would make sense but i think due to the amount of cheaters in the Rapid pool its less effective. paired with the fact that Rapid is a longer time control and you're far less likely to gain it all back because the games are much longer. would still love to see a more dynamic solution to this.
maybe if they found a game where the player cheated, games played 15 days before and after that game would be refunded? if this was applied for every game they cheated on this would seem optimal especially if there were numerous instances of cheating over long periods.
1 or 2 out of 10 is already too much for me. they failed us by not introducing a pay to play verified mode just so that people are less likely to bypass a ban
Stupid to refund old games, as ratings converge to their appropriate level in the next games anyway.
Agreed. And probably after about 20-30 games you are back to where you belong. No reason to credit people rating once they've surpassed this.
@@bruceelio1606 Which is really the reason they don't really care about banning the cheaters. Let's say you lose to 10 cheaters in a row(not realistic ,but whatever) and you drop 80-90 points. Eventually by facing the real players that are 80-90 points below you, you will climb back up. So you are less likely to complain about the losses, but it benefits the website, cause the playtime increses and you are more likely to buy a subscription.
Well, you made it to my recommended vids so clearly this is gaining momentum. Thanks for putting this together. Commenting for the algo for you 👍
23:04 That's crazy. I nearly 2000 and it only takes me a few seconds. Crazy that 300 rating points makes that big a difference.
it does
Have to agree that after 2300 you will face loads of cheaters when playing rapid and that really affects your game. In every single game you wonder if the opponent is cheating or not. This affects your play and it is very hard to play the way you normally would.
To put is shortly I very rarely play rapid games nowadays as it is almost 50/50 if you face a cheater.
Ps. I would also like to add that I have 2500 blitz rating and 2600 bullet rating (records) but in almost every time it is me who gets low on time even if my opponent has blitz rating of 2100 etc. It is a really strange feeling.
I don't cheat but definitely think i could get away with it. If you're already decent and only check the engine when in key positions how would the fair play team catch you? I can't think of a way. The signal to noise ratio just isn't robust enough so it seems you can only really reliably catch obvious cheaters. Of course I don't see the point in cheating. Is winning a game where you had to check the engine satisfying in any way? I guess there's the shallow thrill of getting away with something but I dunno how thrilling is it really when there are literally no stakes? Maybe a former or current cheater can explain their motives?
If Kramnik put together this kind of visual/theoretical analysis instead of vaguely taking shots on Twitter, his points on online cheating would've been much better received. Well done
Kramnik was right all along
a broken clock is right twice a day 😭😭
I wouldn’t go that far 😂
@@jacksarkisian we can all joke about Kramnik, But he knows this games better than all of us combined.
No, he doesn’t. He solely relies on statistics to form his conclusions. This video provides clearer explanations and more reasonable arguments than anything Kramnik has posted over the two years
@@yefer-gz5vu You don't know what you are talking about. Did you even see where Kramnik reviews games of these cheaters? Probably you just watch Nakamaru and that's where your opinion coming from.
I don’t think cheating only in certain moments is for higher rated players. I feel it a lot at my level. The moves don’t make sense. They can lose an exchange and 2 pawns in the opening and then somehow they methodically chip away and win or get back in the game. Then all of a sudden they’re bad again
If a lot is cheating in higher rank, there is a huge potential that even more are cheating in lower, but it might be less in percentage since just amount of ppl in lower.
It's worse with low elo players. Cheaters get their account banned and then just create a new one and start another rating climb. I can usually tell when I'm playing a cheater because it feels like I'm just playing the computer at some point. I never bothered to actually analyze the accuracy ratings of each opponent, but it's true... I usually get really discouraged after I encounter these cheaters, and it just makes me want to stop playing. Sad.
Yep I posted about this in the forums and got banned for it lol
Same man in the past 2-3 days i already played like 3-4 cheaters
New accounts start at 1500 so if by low you mean that then yes
There’s a lot of blitz cheating between 1800-2100. Once I got beyond 22, everything seems normal
Idk about the streaks. I had a 9 game win streak yesterday where 6 of them were 93%+ accuracy. I play for endgames so my accuracy tends to be higher. It’s statistically probable as I played 900 games in 90 days to get a win streak like this
One problem is that high-profile player like Hikaru or Levy never play rapid, the time format in which cheating is likely most rampant.
Do you believe that somes players get banned for cheating even though they are not ?
the only case this happens is when a Chess master is playing on a secret account. they play unbelievable moves and because they are quite literally comparable to a low depth engine they can be banned for it. aside from this it doesn’t happen ever with the current anti cheat.
i hear you bro, i just got fed up with this completely in rapid. I'm only 1300 elo so i don't think that this has to do anything with elo, rather it does with simply recently there are a lot more cheaters and more sophisticated ones than before. Almost all my games have an accuracy above 80% and this is almost not enough for anything. I was able to finally win a game after loosing 6 in a row against 1250-1300 elo guys who played above 90%. My accuracy was 93% in this game, and the only reason i was able to win was that my opponent got low on time and finally made a blunder with 10 seconds on the clock, but he played almost perfectly until then. Another guy also found some Hikaru/Alireza kind of fork tactic in 3 seconds, with apparently 1205 elo. I just can't believe these games at all.
How do you know some cheaters play badly in the opening to lower their overall accuracy and play perfectly in the other phases 2:18 ? The example you showed is just some dude blundering his Queen and resigning, where is the perfect play afterwards 2:35 ? Also, people can make all kinds of mistakes even blunder the Queen. On what do you base your suspicion of having win streaks 3:33 ? So you personally have a 6 game win streak and thus a person with 7 or 10 is suspicious? Why? On what do you base your description of "closet cheating" How do you know they typically cheat to 1-200 elo higher rated than they are 4:03 ? How do you know that they usually cheat in the game after they lost the previous one? So your entire argument that this guy is cheating is that he knew how to refute your opening, he didn't fall for your mate in 1 trap, he played Kh1 and not Kh2 8:50 ? And after realising the mistake went all in? And based on this they are "undoubtedly obvious cheating" 11:05 ? How do you know that chesscom in recent years made a public effort in recent years to reduce the amount of false bans they give to players 11:10 ? 11:20 what do you mean they are given full immunity and will never be banned 11:24 ? "The opponent clearly meant to play the best engine move, mouse slipped and then suddenly found the best way to force a draw 11:54 ". Such an interesting wording. Also, how do you know that he wanted to force a draw? How do you know the rook sack is not an attacking move, and you just happened to escape the attack? How do you know that are people that are cheating under our noses that will never be banned 11:23 ? How do you know that they are cheating in a way that is undetectable by chesscom 12:28? So chesscom banning someone is not the seal of approval but your cheating analysis is? 12:37? Every game should have looked at by a the anti-cheat, did you report every player you played for the last 100 games 14:48 ? How is it obvious that they were cheating against other people 16:05? So if you claim that they are all cheaters how are you beating 50% of them? If they were truly cheating you wouldn't score 50/50 with them like with average people right?
Found Danny Rensch's alt account
Bro what is this an academic peer review
How do you know some cheaters play badly in the opening to lower their overall accuracy and play perfectly in the other phases 2:18 ?
Because it's a common trend when versing cheaters. I play viewers on my livestreams all the time and you’ll constantly see players stumble out of the opening with low accuracies, then absolutely dominating the middlegame and endgames (this is also myself playing against players with Elo’s as low as 800). Those accounts are then subsequently banned and it becomes a pattern that users that play legitimately do not follow - only cheaters.
The example you showed is just some dude blundering his Queen and resigning, where is the perfect play afterwards 2:35 ?
The two statements were not connected for this example, if you blunder your entire queen in the opening with no compensation even an engine won’t save you against a 2300 rated player - hence the resignation. It was also against a proven cheater, there is no speculation they were cheating as their account was banned.
Also, people can make all kinds of mistakes even blunder the Queen. On what do you base your suspicion of having win streaks 3:33 ?
2300s do make mistakes, but blundering the queen straight out of the opening is typically not one of them. 2300s can blunder their queen in complicated positions where they have lower times, but straight out of the opening is almost impossible. As I mentioned in the video though, this is NOT enough to determine whether or not someone is cheating as the sample size is too small, but if you quickly analyse their account you’ll see they were blatantly cheating against other users.
So you personally have a 6 game win streak and thus a person with 7 or 10 is suspicious? Why? On what do you base your description of "closet cheating" How do you know they typically cheat to 1-200 elo higher rated than they are 4:03 ?
My 6 game win streak should be considered suspicious. It's an extreme outlier in data and should be considered when determining whether or not someone was cheating. The opponent in question also had a staggering 14 game unbeaten streak in the pool where they scored 90%+ accuracy in every game they played. Additionally, closet cheating is typically when players, in response to losing a game decide they’re going to cheat to win the Elo back instead of fairly fighting for it. They mostly use their own moves, but if they think the position is getting away from them or the moment is critical they’ll use an engine. They’re typically higher rated than they should be because they lose Elo fairly without needing to gain it back fairly, making them inherently weaker than the people they verse.
How do you know that they usually cheat in the game after they lost the previous one? So your entire argument that this guy is cheating is that he knew how to refute your opening, he didn't fall for your mate in 1 trap, he played Kh1 and not Kh2 8:50 ?
Because that's the entire premise of a closet cheater, they won’t cheat unless they feel like they have to. If they’re legitimately winning games on their own they have no reason to cheat, but if they lose a few games and can’t win on their own - they use an engine to help them. I also explicitly said a player knowing deep Sicilian theory was not a sign of cheating, I also never insinuated him not blundering M1 was evidence of him cheating either. And as I stated in the video, my evidence of him cheating was him mouseslipping the top engine move, and then immediately finding an entirely new idea that was perfectly functional without even calculating it.
And after realising the mistake went all in? And based on this they are "undoubtedly obvious cheating" 11:05 ?
First of all he had no time to even process what he did might’ve been a mistake because he was playing so quickly. Second of all if any legitimate player thinks they made a mistake, they don’t dig a deeper hole by sacrificing their rook without calculating it - that's complete nonsense.
How do you know that chesscom in recent years made a public effort in recent years to reduce the amount of false bans they give to players 11:10 ?
The CEO of Chess.com IM Danny Rensch has stated it numerous times in recent Chess.com State of Plays.
11:20 what do you mean they are given full immunity and will never be banned 11:24 ?
Due to the functionality of the anticheat on Chess.com, it is unable to detect anyone cheating in this fashion and therefore they cannot be banned.
"The opponent clearly meant to play the best engine move, mouse slipped and then suddenly found the best way to force a draw 11:54 ". Such an interesting wording. Also, how do you know that he wanted to force a draw? How do you know the rook sack is not an attacking move, and you just happened to escape the attack?
Because there is no way for either side to win in the line he chose to play. He forced me down a line where I would be down a rook if I didn’t repeat moves in the position. Even if I just “happened” to escape the attack, that's why you take more than 3 seconds to calculate a move in Chess - to make sure it actually works as you intended.
How do you know that are people that are cheating under our noses that will never be banned 11:23 ?
This is an assumption that a cheating software paired with common sense can be passed as legitimate play in online Chess.
How do you know that they are cheating in a way that is undetectable by chesscom 12:28? So chesscom banning someone is not the seal of approval but your cheating analysis is? 12:37?
Because Chess.com doesn’t ban them for what is obvious cheating. Also Chess.com is not the seal of approval because as I stated before, Chess.com largely prioritises preventing false bans which also allows others to slip through the cracks.
Every game should have looked at by a the anti-cheat, did you report every player you played for the last 100 games 14:48 ?
I mentioned this at 14:05.
How is it obvious that they were cheating against other people 16:05?
This was a general statement at players cheating across the board. I bothered to analyse their games against other players and found evidence of cheating in those.
So if you claim that they are all cheaters how are you beating 50% of them? If they were truly cheating you wouldn't score 50/50 with them like with average people right?
I mentioned in the video the reasons you might beat a cheater at 16:23.
@@jacksarkisian
1). You didn't show an example for that, and how playing poorly in the opening and dominating in the other phases affects the overall accuracy, and how do you know that's the goal of a cheater and if it actually works.
2). Just before you showed the example with the Queen you reminded us, that it is connected to that 2:36. And yes he is a proven cheater, but you are making it seem that the fact that he blundered his Queen is somehow connected to him being a cheater.
3). Here are the two recent Rapid games where you as a 2300 blundered your Queen with plenty time on the clock game/live/114925732439 game/live/116230227659.
4). On what basis do you believe your 6 win streak is an outlier? So in this sense how staggering 14 win streak is actually? Is this guy suspicious "MO2002ISMAIL" ? I understand now, so you say that their elo is inflated because they cheat in the next game after they lost and gain that unfair elo premium. So what do they do after they lost 2 games in a row, they cheat 2 games in a row in response? And also if they are inherently weaker doesn't it mean that won't be able to compete on that level and would need to use the engine more and more until they are solely using the engine?
5). So what did you say here, maybe I misunderstood 8:27. I don't belive that basing your accusation on move Kh1 is enough of the evidence. P.S I think your argument would be way stronger if you had mentioned the time the player in question used during all of his moves and not just during the rook sack. Because he was playing most of the moves with 0.2, 0.5, 1.0 time frame.
6). I would consider the rook sack to be the tactic with obvious threat of Rg1 Rg7 mate. Most of the Blitz players are really good at tactics and attacking, and blitz players don't really tend to calculate it all through, it's more about intuition (sensing it's dangerous enough). You think of it as he calculated 5 moves ahead that it was a draw and went for it all in 3 seconds, but it most probably is him trying to continue to attack you which has happened to be a draw. In a similar situation, his attack could have failed and you won, and you wouldn't even slightly suspect that game.
7). I don't see the reference.
8). How do you know that due to the functionality of the anticheat on Chesscom, it is unable to detect anyone cheating in this fashion and therefore they cannot be banned?.
9). Yes but you blow that assumption into a basis of your argument as if it's a factually proven situation. It's an idea that this can be possible, but for now, it's only a speculation of the community. Because all those who try to "test" it get banned. Of course, cheaters won't be banned for using an engine for 1 move, but how influential that move would be to the outcome of the game? When to know at which point to use the engine?
10). It is not clear what you claim to be obvious cheating that chesscom is refusing to pay attention to. I am quite certain that with the right game and with the right sample of data, the same argument can be made about your account, You already mentioned that your 6 game win streak is suspicious, so all that needs to be done is to find the game that would in some way illustrate that. Your account is way younger than mine "check", Your account has suspicious win streaks "check", You blundered your Queen in rapid two times recently "check", Find a suspicious game "most probably check". And now what is left is to report you to Chesscom. Oops they didn't ban you. Well, you must be one of those undetectable cheaters well.
11). Sorry I for some reason completely missed that. Thank you.
12). Would be nice to see some examples, and on what basis you actually figured out that they were cheating.
13). I understand how you can beat 1 or 2 cheaters, or maybe even beat them regularly, but how are you beating 50% of them. Maybe they aren't cheaters after all? If we assume that all of them are cheaters and you beat 50% of them it means that they didn't cheat in at least the 50%. Now if we take the other 50%, does it mean that all of the games you lost are to people who cheated in the game? Or we can use the same assumption that some of them cheated against other people and not you? Does it mean that more than 50% of the game let's say 60% or 70% of the games you played are against people who didn't cheat during that time?
@@RomanWegera nobody: this guy when presented with facts and logic: BuT hOw Do YoU kNoW?
I had this type of experience. I had a situation where I was pawn up and my rook is on 7th rank. And suddenly she sacrificed her pawn and attacked my king side. I lost that game. She was not even able to detect a small tactic but she suddenly played very good.
Online chess has its problems. While you do make some valid points that the number of cheating accounts has been growing, I do need to say that a player is innocent until proven guilty - that's the basic rule. Based on a single game, all you can do is to say this guy is "likely" a cheater- hell, even a random mover has a non zero probability to plays 100% perfect moves! Also, 100 games is not big enough as a sample.
i agree, 100 games is not a big enough sample size but if we increase it to 200 games, we go back to when i was ~2050 Elo and my Elo is not a constant anymore and the data becomes much less valuable. i'm also fine with you saying the best you can say he's "likely" a cheater - but in my opinion even if its not definitive, i don't want to be versing "likely" cheaters 33% of my games.
I’ve reported a premium member who is blatantly cheating in those daily leagues like 5x and he hasn’t been banned. Of course they’re not going to ban paying players.
Its really not clear whether some of the people you claim are cheating are actually cheating. One move isnt enough to convict anyone. The game you showed against that 2300 only had one suspicious move which is reasonable
Maybe it's reasonable, maybe it's not. It remains a story of he said she said... because there is no technology available to reliably know it. Statistics will become more reliable with the number of tests executed, but since there are no tests registering results that reliably say whether the person was or wasn't cheating in any position, the problem will remain unresolved.
This guy just wants attention lol . Although its true the number of cheaters are growing
It's reasonable after you see it. Without seeing it, that's a pretty damm hard move to find with seconds on the clock.
@@renatozeru yes he did play it in a few seconds, but he could have seen the tactic in advance, thinking about it on his opponent's time. Not 100% sure either way whether he's cheating or not
Imagine the plot twist: Meanwhile, the Turk accused of cheating was thinking: "How is this guy in black is finding the best moves to defend himself? SUS."
There was an account I played around 1700 elo rapid that was about a month old. He had just got to my elo from 1000 elo and had lost a few games at that low rating, but handled me easily which I found suspicious. In the next few weeks the account was 2200 elo. Almost certainly a cheater and I was never refunded elo
OR he was not a cheater and just far far stronger than you.
Unlikely. Any decent player doesn't start at 1000.
i stopped chess because of cheaters, it's sad but i have no other alternative, i'm working and i don't have time to play real tournaments
Online chess is almost dead...
It has been for years but chess cucks were in denial
thankyou for saying this. online chess has become unplayable
Most cheaters are indian
I'm not positive the "closet cheater" was cheating. Kh1 could have been a nearsighted move to get the g rook active on that file. If it was a mouse slip, then I still don't see how they are moving the mouse and getting Stockfish best moves all within 1 second or so, sometimes less. By saying mouseslip you're implying they are manually moving the pieces and not using some advanced automove cheat, but they are still moving as fast as under 1 second? Doesn't seem possible... The move times do not feel suspicious. I'm 2000 bullet and could intuit the rook sac given the activity of the other pieces. It also just feels like a desperation move that luckily happens to maintain a draw.
people use browser extensions to cheat on Chess.com. it shows an overlay of your Chess board and draws an arrow from the piece to where it should be moved to.
afaik automove isn’t really a thing anymore unless you set the times to random. if you’re automoving in 0.1s every move you’re obviously going to be caught, most people do it semi manually now.
this kind of erratic decision making might be common in blitz or bullet but it’s nonexistent at high level rapid. no one plays risky moves like that in such short amounts of time, you at least think for 15-20 seconds otherwise you’ll end up throwing more games than not.
There's no point bulletting whole rook sac when you have 7 minutes on the clock!
The moves seem inhumanly quick. JMHO
😂 nah he was obviously cheating, im telling you im 2000 blitz fide he was 100% clearly cheating
This is only valid if the time on opponent clock was very low, which it was not.
I helped organize a chess tournament at the library of the school where I teach (one day a week in recess, one rapid game per player, from new years till easter). There was one first-year student who did very well. He was in the lead until he lost a game the penultimate day, and didn't show the last day.
I later caught him cheating on a test. Which of course made me question his chess results. We didn't log the games, so there was nothing to be done, but it did make me sad.
The video cuts make me sick
Well said. I don't think that anything was unreasonable within the video. Very balanced and reasonable points were made. There is definitely an issue within online chess, and in my opinion, this problem is not easily solved. A portion of the cheaters are doing so in a very difficult to detect manner. Cheating is definitely happening... the only reasonable debate is "how often is cheating happening?". I didn't know about rating refunds only being given to accounts that were cheated against within the last 30 days of a cheater being banned. If true, this explains A LOT. This point, if true, absolutely "blows me away". Just wild. If true, a cheater could be extracting rating from the community for 6 months (using a random time) and only a portion is refunded. Does this make sense?
Your claim that skilled players don’t blunder their queens is factually incorrect. I’ve seen blundered queens in Titled Tuesday games multiple times. Let’s be honest, your metrics are subjective, you have no data, you have no skills to process even the data that you have, and you’re saying that your excel exercise is worth more than a team of analysts and engineers who work around the clock. This cheating accusation madness should stop.
there wasn't enough context in my statement. i meant 2200 players don't ever blunder there queen LIKE this. by like, i mean straight out of the opening with literally 10 minutes to think about their moves. of course there are times where someone will be on some kind of ungodly tilt, or has come home drunk playing Chess but this is why i said the sample size was too small & they were clearly banned for other games. however this is still an important piece of evidence to put towards their account being illegitimate.
queen blunders happen all the time, theres definitely games in my last 100 where i've fully blundered my queen but its much more reasonable to happen at latter stages in the game where you're running out of time - the same can be said about titled tuesday players as the time control is much shorter.
and Chess.com do not have a massive team of analysts. according to their own website they have 2 and i don't think its unreasonable to think at some stage they've missed the mark with their work.
A kramnik minion
I am 2430 blitz and i have blundered my queen like thatx@@jacksarkisian
@@LyndsieDances said Niemann minion...lol
@@jacksarkisian Even tho I'm only 1950 rapid, I have blundered my queen, bc of my friends or when I was generally distracted. I understand, bc even at this low elo of mine there are still many cheaters. After the 99 precentile people become too competitive lol.
Really great video man. Thank you. There is so much hysteria about cheating and this video is very calm and reasoned in comparison.
Bro has his name more than any others in the thumbnail
they’re my games against cheaters 😭😭
interesting video. Just thought I'd let you know in case you haven't noticed this -- you do a thing very often where you thump your mic probably like every 5 seconds on average. Probably your mic is on or attached to your desk and you're hitting your desk, even if lightly. Its super noticeable and a bit irritating, would highly recommend having your mic not attached to the desk while using, or just not touching the desk while talking into it
haha yeah this is from my hand sliding on my desk while i'm speaking - i use pretty bad headphones so i'm not surprised i've never noticed this whilst editing. will definitely see if i can elevate my microphone in future videos 🙌
I'm not convinced that guy was "100% cheating"
That's the problem, isn't it? I think a three-second game plan overhaul and rook sacrifice looks very suspicious, but am I 100% sure, no. And and are you going to ban someone over a very high but not 100% probability? Hard to say. It's easy to say "yes" but of course people would hate to have a false ban happen to them.
Indeed. I'd play the same drawing line in less than 3 seconds with the same position on the board. It is an obvious probable draw or at least best chance for an attack. For an ultra aggressive player sometimes you want to move quickly sometimes for the mental impact it might have on an opponent and needing to save time for long end game situations later.
Even though I've been playing for more than 10 years people have complained about my games before and find out I watch videos at the same time as playing chess with a toddler that interferes with my games sometimes. When I don't have this my rating is easily more than 200 elo higher and it throws people. You don't know what the opponent is doing when you play online unless you see them stream.
Yeah Aman went for top 50 Rapid recently, and he passed through the 2300 rapid pool to get there, it was bad.
You have a strong accent :) "heitch four"
Otherwise cool video. Although I have little experience in rapid.
hahahah apparently i've just been pronouncing H wrong my whole life, its not even an Australian thing 😭😭
His accent is really fine, and he expresses himself in a very clear and articulate way.
@@jacksarkisianit may be correct in certain countries, but i think it is incorrect in Australia lol, greatings from the gold coast 🇦🇺
Doesn't sound strong to me
@@reversetops im pretty sure he's the only person in the entire world saying it this way.... if you can say the word eight you can say H properly.
would be so interesting to interview a cheater.
I can't comprehend why anyone would cheat in games, much less in online chess games.
Very well put together video. However there is one critical flaw in your analysis in the result section at around 15:00. The sample size that you are taking is very small to follow a normal distribution hence inflating the statistics. If you are interested I can help you develop an extensive and robust Machine learning model which could run through your account and find those accounts which are likely to cheat.
hey! this was a thought i had, however i think the following issue would come up.
i did consider increasing the sample size to something much larger, but if i go back lets say 250 games into my Chess.com history my Elo would be around ~2000. not only is that 300 Elo gap absolutely huge in comparison to lets say 1400-1700 Elo, but i would also assume the higher rated you are, the more cheaters you will verse.
i feel like if i use games from my personal account this factor would deem the data much less valuable as the Elo level i played at was not a constant. i would also assume finding an account with a suitable dataset would be quite rare. not only are there only around 3000 active players in Rapid rated around 2300 Elo on Chess.com, but you would need to find someone who is completely stagnant in their Chess and has played 250+ games in the last 2 months (2 months is also a generous timeframe for various reasons (cheating program availability, real-world events, Chess.com site changes, etc)).
i suppose you could take the same 100 games over a 2 month timeframe from other players similarly rated on the website, but i still don't know if there are enough people at this level to acquire a large enough sample size.
i wouldn't imagine my findings are hugely reliable, but i think it at least outlines that there is a problem somewhere which is the main point - would love to see a more extensive dive into something like this though!
I think it's quietly understood amongst strong players that slow time controls online are pointless, hence giving you a dense pool of suspicious accounts at your level. Strong players are testing their 'calculation' over the board and so one has to ask what value add (at the higher levels) does online rapid really bring? Interesting video nonetheless and good luck.
The amount of times that my opponent blundered his queen and then Stockfish came back to destroy me was so beyond tilting to me that I just quit online chess. Now I just play bots of my choosing at lower ratings than Stockfish.
I know cheating is very common. The best solution I can think of is to give paid members the choice to play *only* other paid members. The likelihood of cheating by paid members is certainly far less. While it probably wouldn't lessen cheating at the titled player level, it certainly would at the non-titled/mid-level rating ranges. I'd be more willing to wait 3-5 minutes for a game with a paid member. Especially if I saw a "queue" of some sort that told me how long I had left to wait.
1:55 😟me looking at my last 9 rapid games all having 75+
hahah there are of course exceptions to this. for example if you're a player that likes to trade pieces off the board early, your games will consistently have higher accuracies because there's less possibilities. but if you like to keep pieces on the board, your accuracy will be lower on average because of the increased amount of possibilities. openings also come into play with this but generally one single suspicious trait usually doesn't indicate foul play
@@jacksarkisian i'm just messing. I enjoyed the video and the analysis of the mouseslip cheater. I definitely wouldn't have clocked that one.
@@ChaeDoc haha no worries man glad you enjoyed!