I got banned from chess.com while I was playing Sunway Sitges Online.

I tend to be verbose so trying to be brief here. (After having written this I see I failed. My apologies).

Chess.com uses software that Harvard experts and IMs and GMs have helped perfect in order to detect cheaters. It’s funny that on this very site I’ve seen the site referred to as cheat.com and yet here is proof that they actively ban cheaters and yet the thread criticizes them for it. Interesting. Lichess bans cheaters as well and I’m assuming they use software to detect this. (Where would online chess be if we didn’t have software engineers and PHDs protecting the game from those who are actively trying to ruin it). Chess.com has tested their methods in OTB games and detected cheating even before FIDE knew about it. (But since its not their jurisdiction then I believe they only spent time on this to validate their own detection system).

Chess.com makes a case against someone and acts conservatively toward banning them until they have so much evidence that they know they will win any potential lawsuit if the user pursues action. I’m pretty certain they don’t immediately ban someone on the first time they suspect them if that one game is the only instance they suspect.

Here is a possibility: perhaps this one game raised a red flag. Perhaps you didn’t cheat every move but only key moves. (That would explain the inaccuracies. It’s over-simplistic to say that because there are inaccuracies that this shows no cheating occurred). Maybe they looked at this game and saw that there might have been cheating. Then they will have likely looked deeper at your other games to determine if there is a history of it. If they find a pattern or cases where there was undeniable cheating then they just ban even though in this particular game the evidence might not have been conclusive.

I had a game recently where the opponent blundered like I was doing until the end game. Then they play fast and perfectly in a drawn position until they won. (They might just be very good). It’s possible that they played their own game until they got to the endgame and only THEN pulled out the stockfish. I suspect this happens a lot.

This is an educated guess. But chess.com isn’t banning people who beat GMs. If you look at the leaderboard right now there is an untitled player in the top 20 in the world right now. (There are many untitled players at very high rating levels).

I’m stopping there. I’m not attacking you but only you and chess.com know the truth of this. If you are guilty in some degree, then learn from this and be honest with yourself and you’ll end up happier as a result.

I doubt many will understand my last point, but in trying to perfect a very good method of detecting cheaters from getting away from this they are actually helping everyone. Frankly I hope they keep doing this and get better at it. Cheating could potentially kill this game completely. Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating but if at some point anyone could use some advance method of cheating to win an online game and not be detected, then how many of you are going to stick around to continue playing? Someone has to defeat this. So personally I’m in favor of the efforts of every online chess site in this effort.

I only participated in informal games, but I was banned for no reason

Like here they have megatons of metadata. There is no point in discussing some moves, you will just see some stones of the mosaique.

lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/i-got-banned-from-chesscom-while-i-was-playing-sunway-sitges-online#8

I dunno, OP is 2300 in 1-minute blitz and 39 at 5-minute puzzle rush, those are not-cheater numbers.

Is that REALLY a message from the arbiter? That an arbiter would have such weak language skills is pretty unprofessional.

Anyway, can you post more of the conversation so we can see why you were banned? Were you flipping out of them, or what? Is there anywhere that they explicitly say they'd withdrawn the cheating accusation, though? Maybe the "abuse" ban just superseded the "fair play" one but they still think you cheated.

Chess.com is an inferior site. Just watching games fills up your computer's cache until the computer freezes. They'll ban you over nothing but spammers that find a way to create infinite numbers of accounts just run wild on the site without being banned. I basically quit chess.com for that and other reasons. Chess.com's moderators are usually nowhere to be found when idiots in chat rooms talk about penises or doo-doo or screwing your mother and sisters. Finally, chess.com ratings at the high end are vastly inflated. 2700 here means something but on chess.com many GMs are well over 3000. Hikaru is like 3250.

All in all, I don't miss chess.com and will never return until they clean up their technological problems and better monitor their chat rooms.

@adarshwick if you didnt cheat,file a law suit

Interesting facts about the Sitges Open, no few had been banned:

"I expected that most of the suspended players would complain and try to talk their way out. Only three of thirty tried."

Has our OP done so?

www.chesstech.org/2020/shall-we-move-our-tournament-online/

once I got banned from chess.com for beating a nm I am also 10 years old! chess.com thinks if u beat a strong player u cheat!