Am I supposed to trust that my opponent in not using some sort of engine?

Yes.
Most players are honest. If you dont trust is because its something that you might do. Thats how it works.

Considering the 4 blunders, 5 mistakes, and 3 inaccuracies they made I would say so. Gotta love these mouse races in bullet.

hi ho silver (I call my mouse silver, i'm weird)

@pretzelattack1 said in #13:

hi ho silver (I call my mouse silver, i'm weird)

and its not like you would ever be facing each other, unless its round1 in a tourney.

Bruh

Oh Boy, @Ecnahc must be new here. This is a very touchy subject for chess and Poker sites.

As humans we tend to game the system if we can. If you have never cheated at online chess or considered it, I'd say you are a saint or at least a better person than me. I'd be a liar if I said I've never had assistance by an engine while playing chess...just not on Lichess, of course.

That said, I believe you should basically trust that everybody is honest and playing fair, but also analyze any games that seem a little odd or you get a gut feeling in real time that the opponents play is just not right somehow.

The reality is that sometimes it only takes one move to make all the difference and how do you ban anyone for 1 brilliant move? You can't. That said there are markers and red flags that suggest a cheater and I'm not going to encourage anyone by revealing them again.

I've actually reported many suspected cheaters but have only received 1 or 2 messages from moderators that the person was banned and received a thankyou from them for my help. It was very satisfying indeed.

If you are worried about rating points, play casual games or research your opponents before playing them might help with fear of loss anxiety.

If I was king, I would allow 3 incidents of cheating, just to get it out of peoples systems because it is kind of fun to dupe people on occasion. Whoops, I just used my inside voice, pay no attention to that last sentence.

I don't cheat. I don't see the point. I play this game for fun. If i win, its with some luck but also skill and effort on my part. If i cheated, then i could not take satisfaction for a game i won. I'd be cheating myself. I don't see that as saintly. Its just making the time i spend on this activity worthwhile.

I only report when it looks very suspicious (usually over many games). So far the cases i reported (a handful), the accounts were closed. I think Lichess makes a good effort to weed out the cheaters, but since you can always open a new account, the problem will never go away completely.

unpopular unqualified biased opinion from someone who mostly plays blitz 9LX:

no because i think less than 1% of 1% of opponents you'll face in chess or 9LX, even rapid or classical, are cheaters. this is contrary to FPS games like csgo or valorant without an intrusive anti-cheat. imho, cheating in chess or 9LX seems not only pretty easy to catch but also pretty pathetic in that there's actually no game.

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using csgo as an example:

if i cheat in csgo like say with an aim hack, then at least there's still some game in that i have to predict where my opponents are going to be...or well i suppose you wouldn't really have to. but still you get to move around, click stuff and (falsely) brag to all your friends or whatever (even to non-players!). there's also a social aspect here and a false sense of benevolence in getting your non-hacker friends a(n undeserved) win.

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back to chess or 9LX:

what's to brag about or do in some boring abstract strategy game like chess or 9LX (especially to non-players)? you're just copying what the computer tells you to do. well i suppose you could get a high rating and brag about it but your account would soon be closed anyway.

at least in csgo even though my account would close, i still have clips or whatever of the plays so that i can (falsely) brag about it and (disgustingly) relive the plays/kills 'i' made. here it's not purely the computer who does it because at least i still clicked the mouse or pushed the buttons on the keyboard so it's interactive hacking.

in chess or 9LX, what am i gonna do, relive the sacrifices the computer calculated?

above copied from: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/rcqz63/comment/hny7z60/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

There are lots of smart cheaters here in lichess. I am not calling myself smart but I cheated here in lichess but nothing banned me and won't ban me. You can really go and report me for cheating but it will never work because you won't just find any evidence that I cheated. Even If a openly admit to everyone that I am a cheater where's the validation in my claim? If you wanna get rid of cheaters quit playing online chess. Cheaters will always exist and there is a huge number of cheaters here. With that being no you aren't supposed to. Yes you can put many anti cheat systems but tackling them is a cup of tea for dedicated cheaters

I just hovered over your account name. It seems you demonstrated the 'smart cheater' concept.