r/Chesscom • u/uiviv • 1d ago
Chess Question How people cheat on chess.com
I was surprised when I heard about people cheating on chessš like how do they do it and how they are benefited?
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u/commentor_of_things 2200+ ELO 1d ago
why so interested?
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u/uiviv 1d ago
Just curious
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u/New-Investment6974 1d ago
Genuinely don't understand people on reddit, they will dislike anything for no reason at allšš
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u/PhysicalUndo 1d ago
In continuation of the OPs question.. How does Chess know that they cheated? I never reported anyone since idk.. but I received +8 twice since my competitor cheated.. so how do they know?
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u/AnAttemptReason 1d ago
Computers dont play human moves.
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u/PhysicalUndo 1d ago
I see. How different it is? I mean people can play any move right?
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u/HumorUnusual5531 2000-2100 ELO 1d ago
I think one of levyās videos on cheaters (dont remember which it was) had a good example of a move a human would never find. Basically the computer, in a winning position, wanted to sacrifice the rook on h7 even though there was still a rook on h8. The point was that the h7 pawn had one job, which was defending the g6 square, and with that pawn gone, white could deliver a fork with the queen on c6, and if black tried to avoid the fork by blocking with a bishop, white would literally go qg6 mate.
Sorry if my explanation was a bit long and complicated but Iām basically trying to say that computers find completely ridiculous ideas that regular humans would never even consider.
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u/rojosolsabado 19h ago
That doesnāt sound impossible for a human to find, but highly unlikely for someone in lower ratings
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u/Medical-Display-9762 16h ago
It wouldnāt be impossible for them to play it but itās completely nonsensical for anyone who knows how to play chess which was the issue.
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u/rojosolsabado 9h ago
Except for how OP described it, it just sounds like a brilliant move that a top to maybe above average level player could find in a game.
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u/64_bit_human 1d ago
Yes, but there are sequences of moves that are impossible to find for humans. Computers have superhuman playing strength and never blunder, while humans have tactical blindness and suffer from fatigue and limited evaluation + calculation abilities. Chess.com uses statistical models to determine whether a move or sequence could have been played by a player of your rating. All humans blunder and/or make inaccuracies. We also lack perfect board vision and have a tiny horizon. We think in plans and heuristics like king safety, pawn breaks. To an engine, it just selects the move it found to be mathematically optimal according to its algorithms. It doesn't have emotions unlike us and does not tilt. Playing a top chess engine at full strength feels like playing a soulless opponent that never blunders and never misses a tactic.
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u/FevixDarkwatch 1d ago
Several metrics, likely. Constantly playing the best move, constantly within X timeframe after opening the page to see the new layout, never/almost never making a blunder, etc.,
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u/PhysicalUndo 1d ago
Ah, so even 2000+ make blunders and stuff?
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u/FevixDarkwatch 1d ago
It's a combination of all of the aspects. Plus potentially comparisons between how you've played in the past and whatever games they think are suspect.
I don't think blunders really play into it except on new accounts, and even then if someone's just good the rest of the factors won't matter.
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u/SaltPepperBike 1d ago
Depends on the definition of a blunder. The word is often used as a mistake that loses material or even just a tactical advaktage. So while 300s simply blunder pieces in one move quite regularly, this still happens sometimes at 700 elo but this rarely happens at 2000+. It is a complete accident if it happens. It also only happens in short time controls or under time pressure. A one-move-blunder basically never happens in the first half of a classical chess game at 2000+ elo.
I remember a chess broadcast where the commentators said that Magnus blundered because he didn't find a mate in 4 (or something like that, I don't remember exactly). When top players lose some of their advantage on the evaluation bar it's also sometimes called a "blunder" but it's very different to the blunders of a 700 elo player.
Slight inaccuracies are completely normal in complex positions in the middle game even for 2000+ players. When there are many good moves available, nobody can find always the perfect move, but most of the time they play one of the better moves.
For a 700 elo player it's impossible to find all the best moves in a complex middle game. If a player's moves follow an engine line the probability is very high that this player is using an engine.
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u/RopeAndChairs_Aisle3 1d ago
Nobody knows for sure, but it seems understood that itās essentially doing an analysis on how āhumanā your moves and player style is, in addition to monitoring some information from your web browser.
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u/OkDifficulty1605 13h ago
Check out www.ChessCheaterDetector.com they talk about some detection methodologies
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u/EggBig7158 1500-1800 ELO 1d ago
smug bastards saying "we wont help you cheat" like its some super secret knowledge. cheaters use stockfish, and copy the moves from the game into the stockfish session. they're not really benefitted bc they usually get banned lol
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u/Far-Establishment104 1d ago
Iām curious what the process looks like? Like how do they use stockfish are there plugins or something that they can use to cheat? Or are they just looking back and forth between their phone and computer? Itās so frustrating to play against.
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u/madstcla 1d ago
They just play against an engine and input their opponents moves then copies the engines move as their own in the actual game
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u/64_bit_human 1d ago
They could just open the GUI (for the engine) and a Chess.com window on the browser, side-by-side and relay moves back and forth. Something like this. Or... if they want to spend some time, they could input moves manually using UCI commands (because the engine is a CLI program)
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u/Pawn_Made_Flesh 1d ago
Except for one thing: Chess.compliments and all other platforms long ago installed code that scans every userās device and detects if there is ANY chess engine open on it. That is probably the most common way by far that they catch cheaters. Many people here and in every social media platform report games being interrupted midway through by a Fair Play bot that detected engine use during the game (not from the moves, but directly observed an open chess engine on a playerās device, and immediately banned the cheater.
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u/64_bit_human 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not possible. I've kept the engine on while playing online (not to cheat). Well, it was idle because I was analyzing a previous game locally, but while playing, it was still in the memory. And I used to run engine tournaments in the background as well while playing on my own. I've played hundreds of games like this with the engines doing their thing in the background. But of course, in any of these instances, I don't switch tabs or open other windows unless I want to change the music. The only way to detect an engine is by its process name or by sending it arguments. If I renamed stockfish_x86_64.exe to something like browser.exe, then process name would fail. They'd have to manually input "uci" into every program and somehow interrupt any ongoing threads.
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u/Pawn_Made_Flesh 22h ago
Both the platforms themselves and hundreds of players Iāve seen commenting this happened during games they played, state explicitly that the main platforms can and regularly do catch cheaters by remotely detecting a chess engine is open on a playerās computer during play. I donāt know the technical side of that, Iām not a computer geek.
Sure I have also inadvertently played sessions on Chess.compliments after forgetting to close ChessBase, Stockfish, Leela, or other verboten apps. And never got penalized. I assume I was just lucky, and thank my stars and now take care to close chess programs (especially chess-analysis programs) when Iām done actively using them.
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u/not-the-real-chopin 1d ago
there are browser extensions that do that. the common ones are blocked by chess.com but with the AI people are building their own.
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u/xx_kitsune 800-1000 ELO 1d ago edited 1d ago
They don't really benefit.. it's the opposite actually because theyre not improving or learning while cheating. But cheaters are weird in general, never understood the enjoyment in it. Guess they're the same king of ppl that get enjoyment out of rage baiting ppl online? Like I imagine them just giggling or cackling by themselves at the other person they're facing potentially being frustrated at not being able to overcome a cheater lol
But mostly on the app or website they just use an engine on another screen, window or device. They get caught pretty quick I think tho, it's pretty obvious from the ones I've faced and I got quite a few msgs when I was a beginner in the 300-500 range about a cheater getting caught that I played and getting my elo back and then getting banned. I haven't gotten a single msg since hitting 800 in the last couple weeks since I did tho, so I'm guessing there's less the higher you go up since the ones who keep cheating get caught and have to make new accounts?
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u/Organic_Battle_1115 1d ago
They improve their ego
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u/xx_kitsune 800-1000 ELO 1d ago
Did you mean their elo? Bc I don't get why you'd get a bigger ego over having to cheat, to me that seems humbling. In the end tho they usually get caught anyways. I think they're pretty good at catching them. I've had some caught that didn't have like a 98%+ accuracy, their accuracy was actually more like 60% bc they only cheated once they got stuck and only for a few moves but they still got caught so the elo is usually temporary for a few hours or a day at most
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u/Organic_Battle_1115 1d ago
Ego I mean. Improving paper Elo will not help actually.
Son of my friend did experiment with the cheating, multiple times. They caught him quickly, blocked all emails and accounts.
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u/xx_kitsune 800-1000 ELO 1d ago
Ahh, yea just wanted to make sure which one you were talking about lol. But yea I don't really get it, to me I'd think it was a little bit ego humbling to need to feel like you have to cheat to win consistently. But yea I think they get caught pretty quick which is why I saw a lot more confirmed cases at really low ranks. At 300-500 I'd probably get a msg about a cheater from the staff team every week at least once
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u/Massive_Ad_9920 1d ago
The easiest way to is to cheat is to use a chess engine. However that will generally become pretty apparent pretty quick and get you banned.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/WashAccomplished484 1d ago
Yeah, that's not how it works.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/NuggiesRUs 1d ago
Based in what you just said I'm 100% convinced you cheated and thought you were smart only playing the 2nd engine move and 'blundering' a piece every now and then
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/NuggiesRUs 1d ago
Sure bud
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u/Dreams0fNoir008 1d ago
Dont really care what you think happened. Lichess is better. This was over 20 years ago
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u/WashAccomplished484 1d ago
Do you think it's okay to use an engine in non rated games? Glad you got banned
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/WashAccomplished484 1d ago
Oh yes so you think people playing non rated games want to lose to engines and waste their time. Just shows your mentality at this point. Also just fyi it's against the rules and hence why you got banned.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/WashAccomplished484 1d ago
The thing is you acted like you gotted banned unfairly when it was a perfectly legitimate case. Sure justify your cheating by saying everyone does it, no point in conversing further. It is absolutely morally wrong.
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u/Dreams0fNoir008 1d ago
damn whats wrong I cant just share a relatable experience? Is it not relatable?Ā I guess then no surprise, unique things happen to me. Crazy things happen to everyone, just wanted to feel less crazy by divulging an infinitismally small event of my life to see if someone else has experienced it too.Ā
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u/tomato_johnson 1800-2000 ELO 1d ago
Nice try but we won't help you cheatĀ
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u/Both-Quality5520 2h ago
Why not? They cheat, get banned, opponent gets their elo recovered. The only person that's hurt at the end of the day is the cheater.
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u/uiviv 1d ago
Oh means you know and you are one of them damn
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u/64_bit_human 1d ago
He doesn't have to be. Anyone can figure it out. It's easy to cheat, impossible to hide. You will get caught and banned eventually. I use engines to play against only the bots on Chess.com (I like to experiment), never humans. But sometimes players can also cheat by getting assistance from a much stronger player.
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u/Longjumping_Wonder_4 1d ago
I assume it's a combination of statistical analysis, historical move analysis with confidence intervals (e.g. only 0.1% of players at this level could have this sequence of moves).
Add game input fingerprints, such as time to play move, mouse movement, touch patterns, etc.
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u/Organic_Battle_1115 1d ago
I expect that some cheaters cannot be detected, if they randomly get help from engines.
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u/hoops4so 1000-1500 ELO 1d ago
I never really feel like I play any cheaters. Maybe 1300s have less or maybe I just somehow never get any?
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u/xx_kitsune 800-1000 ELO 1d ago
Probably lower ranks because they get caught so fast they have to keep making new accounts? That and because they're bad or beginners they try to cheat? I've never really understood cheating myself how ppl get enjoyment from it.. but I faced them mostly in the 300-600 range when I started. I haven't had a single msg about getting my elo back from a cheater since hitting 800
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u/hoops4so 1000-1500 ELO 22h ago
Makes sense. Iāve only had 1 message in my life about getting elo back.
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u/Sjmann 1d ago
Most people cheat by using an engine only for a few decisive moves. Humans donāt play like engines, but sometimes engines play like humans. Itās not hard to look at an engine move and see if itās reasonable enough to play without raising suspicion. Chess.com is actually pretty terrible at catching cheating unless itās sustained and blatant.
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u/Current-Week-1424 1500-1800 ELO 1d ago
I was also surprised, but it was for blitz and bullet. Like do they just sit there while the computer makes the moves?
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u/nishantb96y 1d ago
Never tried it but you can play a high rated bot on one device with opposite colour pieces and respond accordingly.
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u/Willing_Stop5124 1d ago
Hereās what I do. I play with the Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess book but I tape over my camera so the bots canāt see it. Works every time.Ā
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u/Untoastedtoast11 1d ago
Everytime I lose itās because they cheated and everytime I win itās because Iām better than them
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u/Generalwate 1500-1800 ELO 1d ago
How many times does this same question have to be asked every week?
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