How to Avoid Cheaters on Chess.com

 I’ve been using Chess.com ever since the pandemic. I’ve been a paying member of the site for several years.

The Problem: Cheating on a chess website is pretty easy to do. Chess.com is very sensitive about it, too. If you try to start a thread that even hints “I think I've been cheated!” it will be removed. To its credit, the site has set up monitoring of obvious cheats and will refund points taken by players they suspect of doing it.

Every player on the site has a rating that’s based on their won-loss-tie record and the strengths of the opponents they’ve played. When you create a new account, you get a 1200 rating.

My usual chess rating range is between 1300 and 1400, sometimes approaching 1500 during win streaks. If I sat down and studied openings, tactics, end games, etc. my rating would be higher, but that feels like homework to me so I’m not interested in doing that.

Recently, I had a bizarre losing streak. For a few weeks I kept losing to players ranked in the 1100s and even 1000s. Then, during the same session, I would beat players ranked above 1300.

The Possible Solution: I made an adjustment that seems to have fixed the problem: I stopped playing any opponents rated below 1200.

The reason I think this works is that players who play a lot of games but remain ranked under 1200 are more likely using artificial means to play their games and are running into other players who are cheating the same way, which keeps both of their overall rankings down. 

After changing my settings to reflect this new policy, it seems to have solved the problem. I have no way of rigorously proving this. All I know is since I began using this policy my gameplay has stabilized back to my usual rating range. I still lose games regularly, and occasionally will encounter an opponent whose play is suspiciously perfect at just the right time, but most of the games I’m playing are against other humans.

It’s better to play higher-rated opponents anyway, because that’s how to learn to improve your own play.

If you’re a fellow chess enthusiast struggling in this area, give it a try. What do you have to lose?

Do you have a strategy (or strategies) for avoiding cheaters when you play chess online? Post a comment below!