Detecting Cheaters

A few days ago LiChess might have been 70% or 90% sure he was a cheater.

They waited until they were 99.99999% sure before taking action. I don't blame them for that.

Good for you, for tracking this person down.

No 100% sure he is a cheater

this isnt suspicious at all! this is what my rating groh looked like in the spring. went zoom zoom

@eclipsR said in #13:
> this isnt suspicious at all! this is what my rating groh looked like in the spring. went zoom zoom

You also went up ~440 points within 2 weeks after no success for several weeks constantly playing?

The person has been flagged as a cheater btw :D

@broken_pawn_hell The rating graph that you show us is suspicious, but in that low level between Elo 1200 and 1640 such rating improvements are not extremely unusual, because you can easily reach Elo 1640 without computer help. It would be more suspicious when a player improved from Elo 2200 to Elo 2640 in a short time after spending several months around Elo 2200. In your last comment #10 you confirm that one player that you have reported has been banned. But they (from Lichess) don't tell you if it is the player of whom you showed us the graphs, did they?
All in all your thread is very informative. Thanks for that.

@philodendron68 said in #15:
> @broken_pawn_hell The rating graph that you show us is suspicious, but in that low level between Elo 1200 and 1640 such rating improvements are not extremely unusual, because you can easily reach Elo 1640 without computer help. It would be more suspicious when a player improved from Elo 2200 to Elo 2640 in a short time after spending several months around Elo 2200. In your last comment #10 you confirm that one player that you have reported has been banned. But they (from Lichess) don't tell you if it is the player of whom you showed us the graphs, did they?
> All in all your thread is very informative. Thanks for that.

It was the player - its the only one I reported and the pictures of the ban are from his profile. Also the rating improvement was within a very short time after a long time of trying and staying on the same level, which was suspicious to me - took me 2 months to reach a similar improvement rather than 2 weeks :D

Good to know it was helpful :), I tried to make it as clear as possible

can u paste that user here

@broken_pawn_hell Excellent job IMHO. It’s taken me two years to climb about 300 points to1400 (but I don’t play thousands of games) so why should genuine players be disadvantaged by damned cheaters? Good job!

@broken_pawn_hell said in #1:
> I have reported a user for suspected cheating twice now.
>
> Even though that person has not been punished yet, I want to know the opinion of people from this community, whether they agree or disagree with my suspicion.
>
> There are several key features / signs that can tell whether a player is cheating or not:
>
> * A user takes approximately the same time for every move (a clear indicator for a cheater in cases when the move is easy or forced) - the reason behind that is cheaters need to switch to the engine and enter the next move, which usually takes around 3-5 seconds
> * A user makes unnatural moves; a move that a human typically would not make - the reason behind that is that those moves avoid mistakes/inaccuracies according to the engine, calculating many moves ahead
> * A user has a very high success rate and thus the ELO progress jumps rapidly towards IM/GM level
>
> Now I present you a rapid progress of this user:
>
>
>
> And here are the move times of some of his games (left column: as black, right column: as white):
>
>
>
> In my opinion, the images clearly show the progress & games of a cheater:
>
> * a very rapid progress, after he chose to cheat because he just could not get above ~1200 score for several weeks - or maybe he learned how to play so much better within a very short time frame (lets say 1 week)?
> * very similar move times patterns: At first, very natural move times, but then he takes a very long time (1 minute or more at blitz) to set up the game in an engine, then uses the same amount of time for every move. It does not matter what type of moves they are: very complex or very easy/forced moves: all of them take the same amount of time.
>
> So, am I correct to assume this guy is a cheater, or are you of different opinion?
>
> Note that most of the games look like this, these are NOT a manual selection by searching the "correct" ones out of 100s of games.
@broken_pawn_hell said in #1:
> I have reported a user for suspected cheating twice now.
>
> Even though that person has not been punished yet, I want to know the opinion of people from this community, whether they agree or disagree with my suspicion.
>
> There are several key features / signs that can tell whether a player is cheating or not:
>
> * A user takes approximately the same time for every move (a clear indicator for a cheater in cases when the move is easy or forced) - the reason behind that is cheaters need to switch to the engine and enter the next move, which usually takes around 3-5 seconds
> * A user makes unnatural moves; a move that a human typically would not make - the reason behind that is that those moves avoid mistakes/inaccuracies according to the engine, calculating many moves ahead
> * A user has a very high success rate and thus the ELO progress jumps rapidly towards IM/GM level
>
> Now I present you a rapid progress of this user:
>
>
>
> And here are the move times of some of his games (left column: as black, right column: as white):
>
>
>
> In my opinion, the images clearly show the progress & games of a cheater:
>
> * a very rapid progress, after he chose to cheat because he just could not get above ~1200 score for several weeks - or maybe he learned how to play so much better within a very short time frame (lets say 1 week)?
> * very similar move times patterns: At first, very natural move times, but then he takes a very long time (1 minute or more at blitz) to set up the game in an engine, then uses the same amount of time for every move. It does not matter what type of moves they are: very complex or very easy/forced moves: all of them take the same amount of time.
>
> So, am I correct to assume this guy is a cheater, or are you of different opinion?
>
> Note that most of the games look like this, these are NOT a manual selection by searching the "correct" ones out of 100s of games.

One of the reasons I prefer offline chess more is because I don't lose as often as when I'm playing online.

So I always have my suspicions.

I will play online computer and puzzles. And rarely a person because it's hard to tell if they are cheating or not.

So I might play a casual game or the computer to enjoy my games of chess.

That's one reason my rating is low because I don't play people online that often.

If I start playing more people online my rating should jump up pretty quickly.

Because I beat GM all the time in person.

I had one person tell me that he was a championship player. But the way he played and how easily I beat him I doubt it.