Can You Catch a Chess Cheat?
Take the survey to test your cheat-detection skills - and win prizes!Ever since the Hans Niemann/Magnus Carlsen cheating affair, amateur chess sleuths have claimed - rightly or wrongly - about their ability to guess if someone's cheating in a chess game. And all of us have had a game or two where we've felt suspicious about our opponent's moves. Most of us have even had Lichess points refunded - "You lost to a Cheater!" But how good are we at detecting chess cheating, really?
As a researcher in behavioural economics, I've launched a study to determine how effectively humans can spot cheating in chess. Take our survey where you can try your luck at guessing which games were played by players who cheated with engine assistance. For each of 7 games (played by real players, with real cheating!), you’ll be given the moves, the evaluations graph, and the move times, like in the figure below. (Yes, I know it uses ChessCom's interface - don't judge me!)
You’ll also have the chance to get your username on the results Leaderboard, which will be published on the Chessable blog. There are even some cash prizes for the top scorers.
The results of the study will be used to understand how (and how well) people detect cheating, as well as what sort of characteristics make for a good detector.