It has happened once before when the entire rating system was overhauled and updated.
Unless that happens again, I do not think it is on the agenda in the foreseeable future. There is, of course, a butterfly effect that cheaters cause. I do not think it is a simple process to do, it is not as simple as giving every player who lost points those points back.
I think the simple fact of the matter is that you have to suck it up, and respect that cheaters are on every chess site - it is a necessary evil to playing chess online.
Alternately, do not become so attached to an online figure which does not adequately rank you in the world, only on this website.
"What's not so great is the permanent loss of rating points."
It's not permanent. The lower your rating, the more points you win and the less you lose. So just keep playing and your rating will get back to normal naturally.
@thibaultAh, but what is normal? If someone is playing a 1600 who is performing like a 2400 say 1 in n games, then their 'normal rating' would be artificially low, no?
The lower the value of n, the lower the 'normal rating' would appear. For example (an extreme to demonstrate the point), if someone's 'real strength' is 2400 and n=1, then their 'normal rating' would appear to be 1600.
Or am I missing something? (I'll be happy to acknowledge it once I've understood that I am! :)
Just giving points back would result in a player possibly getting over his best rating ever despite not necessarily having performed at that rating, and ofcourse after having played at a lower score the player would recieve more points for the same win with the assumably correct rating and therefore actually gain rating trough playing cheats and then getting points in compensation. The calculating of unfairly lost rating to all affected players would be near impossible in some cases because the number of affected players would be growing exponentially until the cheater is cought and the calculation is done.
The rating serves as a refference point to compare yourself with other players and with your past performance, and since cheaters dont selectively cheat gainst you and were as present today as they were earlier it would make no sense to change the system now. Altough i suggest monitoring the rating system and checking for deflation since the points removed from cheaters need to be brought back into the system to maintain the value of the rating and therby not distorting the comparison with your past performance.
Peace Bros
I have suffered with cheaters on another place so that I play only bullet there. If things get worse here, that's what I'll have to do. Anyway, i'd like to quote Cynosure, with whose wise words I agree 100%:
"I think the simple fact of the matter is that you have to suck it up, and respect that cheaters are on every chess site - it is a necessary evil to playing chess online.
Alternately, do not become so attached to an online figure which does not adequately rank you in the world, only on this website."
I disagree with points being awarded back simply because that's not realistic and would do more harm to the rating system than good. Cheaters are unfortunately an integral part of the rating system - those who cheat only certain games can be looked at like a player who sometimes play many times his average strength (which while is not so, is also met in real life) - they affect ratings of everyone, and the points you lost to cheater you would have taken from someone who plays fairly etc. etc. - so any attempts to return points would just introduce more randomness to the rating system.
I think there are far worse things that are being done to the rating system - the random pairing tournaments themselves while might be entertaining are making too many games between lower rated players and much higher rated and since points are not awarded in fractions so generally the higher the rating gap the more inaccurate ratings will be produced when those players play, also those lower rated players will be more inclined to cheat when facing someone they can't win naturally. Additionally I believe there are some inaccuracies as to which time control is considered blitz and witch bullet, and so far unsolved problem in that generally players who play like 3+2 are far stronger relative to their rating than those who mostly play 3+0 (which is not that far from bullet and thus bullet skills like speed are more important).
Ways I avoid cheaters:
anything minutes+increment higher than 5+0 is too easy to cheat - 3+2 or 5+0 is actually the last time control were you can still win many cheaters on clock. I personally play 2+2, and have won many cheaters on clock (actually I mostly win them on clock when they try to cheat, unless they are too fast at it). It is rather easy to identify cheater - he typically has few losses (it can be checked within seconds), hasn't played too many games (also can be checked fast). He takes considerable time for the first move (which in case he is white can even give you a way out of the game by aborting) while he sets up position etc. Generally when a high rated players takes more than 3-5 seconds for first few moves you can assume cheater, then try to exchange actively and avoid tactical lines and thus still retain some hope for a draw or win on clock.
I forgot to add that cheaters typically don't play bullet or have like 2000+ blitz and like 1300 bullet rating (and while this does not prove anything it is a good enough indicator if you definitely wish to avoid them) - it takes like 3 seconds to check it out by hovering mouse over nick.
My friend opperwezen's last two losses in classical were against chess computer-assisted players, costing 89 hard-earned points. Anything that can be done about this?
#18 Your friend could win some games. It would severely damage the rating ecosystem if manual rating adjustments were made.
Keep in mind the number shown on your friend's profile is only an estimate, whose 95% confidence interval is r ± 2*RD. So assuming a rating of 2000 and an RD of 100, we could estimate with 95% confidence that your friend's true strength is between [1800, 2200]. So if somehow you know your friend's true strength is actually 2100, the 95% CI estimate already shows that...
Perhaps there wouldn't be so many requests to "give me my points back" if people understood Glicko-2 or could at least see their 95% CI estimate.
