Rampant Cheating on Chess.com — My Experience Playing Chess Against Cheaters on the World’s Most Popular Chess Website.
As a lifelong chess player, I’m fascinating with chess and its complexity and dynamics. It offers a rush of adrenaline, especially when I have seconds left on my clock to find a winning combination and deliver the final crushing checkmate.
It’s for this reason that I login every day to the world’s most popular chess website: Chess.com. With over 70 million members, it’s one of the few chess websites (besides Lichess.org) to find a quick match in a matter of seconds, while I sip my daily coffee.
The Recent Explosion of Chess Popularity
With the hit miniseries The Queen’s Gambit, the popularity and number of fans playing chess absolutely skyrocketed. The majority of these new users searching for a game end up on Chess.com. They reported 1.5 million new subscribers in April 2020, compared to 670,000 the previous month. Truly astronomical growth.
Unfortunately, many of these people signed up and got beaten by someone more experienced before their rating was established. No one likes to lose, and many decide the benefits of cheating on a free, anonymous site far outweigh the penalty of a banned account. Especially since banned users immediately sign up again and continue their cheating under a new screen name without any penalty or detection.
Online Chess Cheating is Nothing New
None of this should be surprising since online chess cheating has been part of the game since the founding of the Internet Chess Club in 1992.
Various methods have been developed to detect cheating, and legitimate users rely on these “fair play” cheat detection measures to ensure they aren’t playing against someone who is using computer assistance.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a steady increase in chess cheating. Primarily because I analyze each game I play with a computer after it’s finished, and I can see if my opponent is playing a long series of computer moves, which is often a good indication something fishy is going on.
However, over the last few months, the cheating on Chess.com has gotten completely out of control. Over the last 20 games I’ve played, 8 of my opponents were obviously cheating. They play 3–6 computer moves in a row, followed by a few human moves, then 3–10 more computer moves.
What does the CEO of Chess.com Have to Say About These Accusations?
Completely frustrated by this experience, I emailed Erik Allebest, Founder and CEO of Chess.com, to try to understand the issue. He replied politely, “We aren’t perfect, and there is always room to improve.”
After many emails to Erik and the “fair play” team with various statistics, reports, and suggestions, I only received generic responses like “We are preparing a review.”
I’m posting some of my recent games against cheaters to provide the extreme level of cheating I’m discussing. I’m not analyzing ALL the cheaters I’ve played recently, just a few of them:
Computer moves: 6) dxc5 7) e5 8) Be2 9) Nxd1 10) exf6 11) Nxe2 12) c3 13) 0–0 14) Ng3 15) Ne4 16) Ng5 17) Nxh7 18) Ng5 19) Ne3 20) Ng4 21) Ne5 22) fxd5 23) Nxf7 24) Rxe1 25) Rxe6 26) Rxg6
27) Bg5 (human move)
Computer moves: 28)Rd1 29) Re6 30) h3 31) Rd8 32) Be3 33) gxh3 34) Bxc5 35) Bd4 36) b3 37) Rxb6 38) b4
So in this game my opponent plays 20 computer moves in a row, followed by 1 human move, followed by 11 computer moves.
Computer moves: 5) e4 6) Bg2 7) Nge2 8) 0–0 9) d5 10) a4 11) Be3 12) f3 13) Qd2 14) Nb5 15) g5 16) h4 17) exf5 18) Bh3 19) Be6+ 20) Bf2 21) Nxf4 22) Qxf4 23) Bd4 24) dxe6 25) Kh1 26) gxf6 27) Bxf6 28) axb5 29) Bxd8
Human Move: 30) Bxc7
So he played 24 computer moves in a row followed by 1 human move.
Computer moves: 7) Bxc3 8) 0–0 9) Re8 10) exd5 11) a5 12) Nc6
Human move: 13) Qf6
Computer moves: 14) Qe6 15) Nxd2 16) Bh3 17) Bxg2 18) Nxd4 19) Nc6 20) Rad8 21) Qe4 22) dxe4 23) Rd2 24) Red8
Human move: 25) Rxc2 26) Rd7
Computer moves: 27) f5 28) g6 29) Kf7 30) Ke6 31) Kd6 32) b6 33) Ne7 34) c5
Human move: 35) b5 36) B4 37) Ra7
Computer moves: 38) Rxa2 39) Rxb2 40) Kxe5 41) Nc6 42) Na5 43) Nxb3 44) Kd5 45) Kc4 46) Kd3 47) c4+ 48) c3+ 49) b3 etc
This cheater was a bit different. He would often play the 2nd and 3rd computer recommended move and had clusters of cheating and human moves.
He played 10 computer moves, a few human moves, then 7 computer moves, a few human moves, then 11 computer moves.
Computer moves: 14) Nxd5 15) Bc4 16) d5 17) Ne5 18) Bb5 19) Qf3 20) Nxg6 21) b4 22) Bd3 23) bxa5 24) Be4 25) Bc3. (12 computer moves in a row). I also analyzed many of his other games. Fair play team also concluded he was cheating and banned his account.
Computer moves: 14) Ng4 15) Nxe3 16) f5 17) exd5
Human Move: 18) Qa5
Computer moves: 19) Qxc3 20) Nb4 21) Kg7 22) Nxd5 23) Qb4 24) Nc3 25) Qxc3 26) Rad8 27) Qb4 28) Rxd7 29) Bf6 30) b5 31) Qc3 32) Rxd4 33) Rxd2 34) hxg6 35) Ree2 36) Qc6 37) Rxd5 38) Red2
So 4 computer moves, 1 human move followed by 19 computer moves.
Why am I playing against so many cheaters?
From September 16th — 19th I only played 5 games.. and 3 turned out to be cheaters (later banned by chess.com as shown by the red crossed out circle next to their username):
Many of these cheaters played over 500+ games. This means the “fair play” detection team at Chess.com is doing very little to catch these cheaters even after having a huge sample of games, when they are making 20+ computer moves in a row.
I asked Sean Arn, Manager of “Fair Play” at Chess.com about this, and he replied: “Each month we detect and close more than 20,000 cheaters of all rating levels.” Although this number sounds like they are actively engaged in this issue, I believe it only represents a tiny fraction of the total number of cheaters active on the website.
There are numerous ways to detect cheaters who play online — and it’s completely understandable that Chess.com does not have the resources to catch every single one.
But my issue is that Chess.com fails to catch even the most blatant and obvious cheaters who I’ve reported, and who makes 21+ computer moves in a row.
Chess Streamers Face an Onslaught of Chess Cheating
If you’re a fan of any of the top chess streamers, you’ll notice a constant recent theme in their videos played on Chess.com. Hikaru, arguably the most popular chess streamer, posted this video on September 26th, 2021 commenting “this guy doesn’t seem legit.” Streamers often receive special treatment from Chess.com, so it’s not surprising that the fair play team quickly shut down the cheaters account.
This cheating user played over 1,638 games, achieving a rating of 2710, before facing Hikaru and finally being banned. Why did it take so long to catch him?
Chess.com Turns a Blind Eye to Chess Cheating?
What is the incentive for Chess.com and their “fair play” team to not dedicate more resources to this issue?
Chess.com relies on revenue from Google Adsense ads, which are paid on a CPM, or per thousand impressions basis. Each time a cheater plays a game or refreshes the page, Chess.com makes a few cents. If they eliminated a significant percentage of their users due to cheating, their revenue from ads would plummet. They would also lose investor interest due to a declining number of MAU (Monthly Active Users), one of the main ways a free to play company is currently valuated.
How to Detect and Prevent Cheating on Chess.com?
I offered numerous suggestions to Erik, the CEO of Chess.com.
Here are some of my suggestions:
- Pool me against users who have played on the site for more than 1 year and have played over 500+ games. Erik claims this is already happening, but from reviewing my games, this is clearly not the case. Many of my games are against chess cheaters who started an account less than 3 months ago.
- Allow me an option to NOT play against people who have been flagged as a cheater by other Chess.com users. If there’s someone who is constantly being flagged for cheating, give me an option in my settings that would prevent me from being paired against them.
- Do active analysis on chess cheaters, don’t wait until a complaint is filed. Erik told me they are doing “active” detection, however I don’t believe this. Nearly all of the games I’ve played against cheaters have hundreds of games in which they have blatantly cheated and yet they are still actively playing.
- If someone reports a cheater, analyze their games within 24 hours. I notice many of the players I’ve flagged against cheaters still have active accounts. This means the cheater is wasting other people’s time, and playing possibly hundreds of additional games. This process should be AUTOMATIC. You don’t need a human to review if the cheater made 21 computer moves in a row across a series of 10 games.
- Use AI on your large datasets to find cheaters. With millions of games played on Chess.com, it should be easy to use their large data set to find cheaters. For example, “what is the likelihood that this player, rated 1200, would find this move?” and if they continue to find moves that are way above their rating, perhaps this is a good indication the player is cheating.
- Verify new accounts with a phone number or biometric / face identification to prevent them from opening new accounts. If a user is currently caught cheating and banned, they can easily just open a new account.
- Develop client-side cheat detection software. For users with high accuracy or suspected of cheating, use client/app side software to analyze their games. This would allow Chess.com to analyze 50,000+ games in parallel at no cost.
The Road Ahead — Is Less Cheating Possible on Chess.com?
I believe there are very clear ways to drastically reduce cheating on Chess.com as I described above. Unfortunately, Erik and the “fair play” team have to take this issue seriously and suffer a large decrease to their revenue and userbase. But long term, it is surely worth it. Right now, Chess.com is developing a reputation as the Mecca for chess cheaters. By actively detecting chess cheating, new and existing users will have a better experience, and this will ultimately help push Chess.com to new levels of growth and popularity.
No one likes to play against a cheater.
Are there alternatives to Chess.com?
Absolutely! I highly recommend LiChess.org, it’s a wonderful ad-free chess site with millions of users. I have not found nearly the same level of chess cheating on LiChess. I would be interested in chatting with the team at LiChess to see what methods they are using to detect cheating, as they seem to be a lot more successful at it!
Update: October 7, 2021
I’ve spent the last week playing on LiChess.org and I’m super impressed! I played 25 games at the similar 10 0 time control that I was playing on Chess.com, and only encountered 1 person I suspected of cheating. I reported the user and within 3 hours the account was banned! Thank you so much LiChess.org team for creating an awesome ad-free website that takes chess cheating seriously!
