Ridiculous situation with engines in classic time control

So far played a lot of variants and a lot of time controls.
Majority of people I suspected in cheating appeared to be cheaters indeed, considered lichess quite flawless and advanced in this terms. In rapid there is no problem with them at all.

But as soon as got to classical, that "cheater opponent" feeling gets in around half of games.

Some of them got 100% match to PC (and not banned yet!),
others provide very strong feeling they checking moves with engine to avoid blunders.

My main question addressed to classical players around 2000:
is it just me or situation indeed went out of control recently?

Public shaming is a no no.

@hal9k

I think you're asking an interesting question.

The short answer is obvious and simple:

"Please make sure that you take the time to report any players whom you feel are suspected of cheating."

Ultimately, so long as we're reporting them, we don't really have to continue any discussion on the matter. As long as we're doing our share and reporting suspected cheaters, then what little cheating there is on this site is addressed, and most cheaters are banned in short order.

Lichess does an outstanding job and they're miles ahead of the rest.

Give them a few days to investigate, and if there is good cause to ban somebody then that's what will happen.

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With that said, it's not been my experience that Rapid +-2000 cheat a whole lot more than Classical +-2000. In fact, if anything, I'd say that I've noticed the exact opposite.

As being someone who played rapid for years, and only recently started playing Classical, I've noticed that my quality of play tends to increase with longer time controls.

I used to lose so many games playing Rapid time controls because I was forever being mitigated to choosing my 2nd/3rd best move. I simply didn't have the time to force winning lines.

Once I touched Classical, all of that came to a stop. My opponents were forced to deal with my best ideas.

This could definitely explain what you're sensing to be true.

Dimes to dollars, my bet is not that there are more cheaters at the classical time control.
Dimes to dollars, my bet is that now you're playing against chess players who have the time to find and implement vicious ideas.

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Even within your very own play, you know that you've had stretches where you can't believe how well you're playing...so why can't this also be true for others?

I know that on several instances I've been tempted to report somebody, but after looking at (censored for content) I realized that "Hey, why can't my opponents, every now and again, have an excellent and unbelievable game too?"

If every now and then I get to play on a level that makes people accuse me of cheating, then others at my same Glick rating bracket should be playing unbelievably well against me sometimes too.

And every now and again, once every blue moon, yes, there is just way too much luck going on for me to feel comfortable, and I have to go ahead and report my opponent.

But that is RARE, and it's especially rare in Classical as compared to Rapid where I felt more people were cheating.

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In all variations, the best that we can do is just report what we feel is outside of our comfort zones, and let the anti-cheat team investigate.

I would also highly recommend that you read through some of the comments on the other thread about "Cheating", because there are some key ideas in that thread as well.

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Regards.

lovlas usually comes up with the number of reports the original poster has

people abusing engines in classical are few and caught in a matter of hours/days.
but i'm also concerned about: ''others provide very strong feeling they checking moves with engine to avoid blunders''
because that's possible. nearly all such people will just find the right move tho. i mean, there not many players doing classical games compared to blitz and bullet and thus many players have a lower rating than expected given their strenght.
when i play a classical game against someone rated 2100+, i expect a strenght of roughly 2200/2300 elos if the opponent is in a good day.
also, classical games are way harder to play than faster game because there is actually the time to really think about a position. the quality of play is different.

Thanks for answers, a bit strange, but seems almost nobody have same opinion. That's pleasant summary, may be I was very unlucky lately.

@Onyx_Chess you really went to details, but it was much more specific, about tremendous difference classical vs other variants. Not about personal matters or speed of bans or etc.
Surprising that you meet them in rapid though.

@ezasucanget I'm curious in summary too :)

@VertSangBleu Thing is, "cheater feeling" is much less dubious than you write.
To summarize,
- no blunders in unsafe area in sharp positions (evaluation never goes to bad for cheater, only to neutral)
- extremely annoying luck after fast moves, it's very often visible if person deep analysed position or got unexplained advantage&luck after row of 5-10 sec moves.
- weird things, recent example: stable near perfect moves with less than 10 seconds, and almost before mating 50-second thinking ended without obvious and natural wining check
In fact, if your opponent thinks at propitiate points and combines this with very fast combinations&premoves, its best sign of fair player.

And you quite right about elo inconsistency. It's possible to get blitz 1600 with 2200 classical and 2100 blitz with 1700 classical. Surprising and frustrating, but not really a big deal until the "weird things".

@hal9k :
if that's actually what you met then there is a real possibility of cheating, yes, please report any such players;) the anti-cheat team is actually pretty good at seen through such things.

(exept the no blunder part in sharp positions which is easier to explain and harder to prove. i guess they still get them based on the player rating and frequency of near perfect games...and also with streaks of win.
such players need to be really strong even without cheat and are not many anyway.)

Report and let Irwin do the job.

github.com/clarkerubber/irwin

Longer games tend to mean fewer errors. As for matching an engine 100% I presume you mean a 0,0,0 on inaccuracy, mistake, blunder? Often times there are a number of reasonable moves in a position. Playing reasonable moves does not mean the user is using an engine.

Some engine users are out there. They probably won't get caught the first time they cheat, but eventually, they all get caught in the long run. I tend to give other players the benefit of the doubt. If they need to use a machine to beat me then that is their loss. I may think differently if perhaps I were after some prize money or a trophy or something, but it's just online for fun.

I have some wins, and some losses, and some draws. Maybe some of my losses are against cheaters, but all of my opponents are innocent until proven guilty.

I think having the mentality "There are a lot of cheaters out there" is self-destructive. It's a victim mentality. I earn my losses unless proven otherwise not the other way around. It's just making excuses for the inability to accept that others may outperform you. It's poor sportsmanship, and too arrogant, and prideful.

To update the context of this entire conversation:

-The OP came across an obvious cheater.
-There was no question or ambiguity about this person cheating.
-Within a day the anti-cheat division banned the offender.
-This is nothing but a SUCCESS story and a TESTAMENT to the efficacy and awesomeness of the Lichess community.

-This is *NOT* proof of OP's claim that "half of the people cheat".

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As for the original post...I think it's very careless to make believe that cheating is so rampant and out of control.

The idea that "half the people cheat" is an unfounded assertion that produces no kind of good at all.

We'll never know the answer to how many people cheat; however, we do know that the objective answer is "we have no idea", and we do know that the only pragmatic, practical, competent, and functional answer, is LESS THAN 1%.

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@lurarose

Agreed. When I'm playing my best, I suspect 1 out of 150 people of cheating.
When I'm playing my worst, I suspect 99 out of 100 to be cheating.