Is there a pool for cheaters?

Could a Lichess moderator please answer these two questions:

1. Is there a pool for suspected cheaters?
2. Have I been placed in that pool?

What I mean is: When a player is seeking rated games (by using the "Create a game" dialog or by clicking on a "Quick pairing" button) does Lichess automatically take into account, in its pairing algorithm, whether or not that player is suspected of cheating and is that player then automatically paired with other players who are also suspected of cheating? That is, is there effectively one pool of players for those players deemed to be honest and another pool for those suspected of cheating, or is that just an unfounded rumour and no such mechanism exists. I am seeking an official answer from a moderator here.

My apologies if I should not ask such a question because the answer may be confidential.

I am asking because I am trying to understand if my experience of playing chess at slower time controls (mostly 15+10) is typical of what everyone experiences or whether I may be having an especially bad experience because for some reason Lichess may have erroneously suspected me of cheating and therefore may have placed me in a pool of suspected cheaters.

I would really appreciate it if a moderator could inform me whether or not that is the case.

Fortunately there are millions of honest players of online chess. I am one of them. I have never cheated and will never cheat. Indeed, I understand that the vast majority of players reading this post are themselves honest players. So we are fortunate to have such a great community of chess friends. Any such players reading this now are welcome to add me to their friends list. Perhaps challenging followed friends is a good way to eliminate the occasional cheating found in online chess.

@Ether2023

1. Is there a pool for suspected cheaters?
   No
2. Have I been placed in that pool?
   No

I am not an official mod, but there is no TOS violation warning on your account

@Ether2023
there is a separate pool for known cheaters ( which you are not in ) , but not one for suspected cheaters ( probably ) . looking at your profile, you have lost 7 games in a row ( which I suspect is the reason you created this forum. ) which is completely normal, its not that your opponents are any better, you are just under-performing/ had over-performed earlier.

What is that "bad experience" that you are talking about?

Just play bullet and you don't have to worry about it.
The percentage of people cheating at bullet is close to zero.
But longer times -- it's a lot easier to cheat.

There's a pool for convicted cheaters (and rating manipulators). Moderation-wise there's no such thing as "suspected cheater". And even if there is in some sense, it has no impact on pairings until the banhammer comes.

In case you still want an official reply I confirm what has been said so far.

Thank you everyone for your very kind replies. What a great community!

Thank you 'A Lichess Moderator' for your official reply, it was very helpful.

Therefore I now know that I am playing in the normal pool along with millions of other honest players. That's great to know. It means that the experience that I am having playing 15+10 Rapid games on Lichess is the normal experience and not something extraordinary due to being placed in a different pool.

What I experienced was that the first 14 games I played (+8=2-4) felt very different to the next 8 (+0=1-7). I'll refer to these two groups of games here as Group A (the first 14 games) and Group B (the next 8 games) respectively. Thank you @Arkash_2010 for kindly explaining that the 7-game losing streak I experienced in Group B is completely normal and indeed it was largely due to me having underperformed. That is, it's normal to have losing streaks.

However, it is interesting to look into this a little deeper. To do so I used an online tool which estimates a player's rating from a single game: the "Game Review" feature of Chess_com. It produces an estimate of playing strength which here I will call the GRR ("Game Review Rating") for each player in a particular game. Please be aware that Chess_com ratings and Lichess ratings are completely different systems and cannot be directly compared; for example, a player whose Chess_com Rapid rating is 1200 might have a Lichess Rapid rating of 1500. However, what is meaningful is to make a relative comparison of one's average performance over a group of games. Thus, I used my average GRR to confirm what Arkash_2010 pointed out: that indeed I underperformed in Group B compared to my performance in Group A:

My average GRR in Group A: 1807
My average GRR in Group B: 1581
Difference: -226 points

At the end of Group A my Lichess Rapid rating was 1690.
At the end of Group B it was 1561.
Difference: -129 points.

So my Lichess rating dropped as would be expected since I underperformed.

Indeed I blundered badly in several Group B games! The lower GRR reflects my blundering.

Thank you for your kind question, @nadjarostowa. The bad experience was that some of my Group B opponents seemed at times to perform at a surprisingly strong level which seemed much stronger than their rating. Two of my opponents rated in the 1600s played almost perfect games (average centipawn losses of 18 and 11 respectively, both with a GRR of 2200); others played surprisingly strongly only for part of the game. This felt completely different to Group A.

To some extent this is to be expected since Group B were stronger players:

Average Lichess Rapid rating of my opponents in Group A: 1591
Average Lichess Rapid rating of my opponents in Group B: 1694
Difference: +103

However, their average quality of play was disproportionately strong:

Average GRR of my opponents in Group A: 1621
Average GRR of my opponents in Group B: 1887
Difference: +266

In summary:

• I certainly underperformed in Group B and that alone is why I lost all 7 games; and
• On average, my opponents perhaps overperformed in Group B.

I now understand that this is all completely normal.

Thanks for all the replies.

If you want to know if you have restrictions go to:
https://lichess.org/appeal

Ether2023:

One of the things I noticed on LiChess is that some opponents look at your previous games, in particular your last loss, then play into your losing game(s). It's totally fair to do this, but be warned it may not be a good idea to play a lot of consecutive games without game analysis in-between. I believe this applies mostly to the longer game formats.