The scary thing is this was such a blatant case of cheating. How many more are out there that get away with it. You only have to be slightly more savvy than this guy and you could get away with it for much longer. Ultimately I can’t understand why people bother with this. Even if you have zero decency, entering moves back and forth with stockfish would be about as much fun for me as data entry, which I’m not doing as a voluntary hobby any day of the week. The sheer amount of effort and time required to cheat your way to this level just once is absurd, let alone those that repeatedly create new accounts and start all over again. And for what? To tell some acquaintances that don’t know you very well that you’re pretty good at chess? It’s the pinnacle of vanity, that only poisons the well for everyone.
@roblodocus2539: I don't know. Is it ego? The times I noticed blatant cheating with me when chess was fairly new on Yahoo (long ago, of course), after I was winning some game handily, then my opponent would claim they needed to go to the bathroom or something, and then a few minutes later, their playing style changed COMPLETELY, they suddenly played like a player maybe three rating classes stronger, AND when I'd check, they could tell me NOTHING about the position, etc, even in a SIMPLE DEAD DRAW where they wanted to mindlessly play on (knowing little of the endgame, clearly). Did they get their ego hurt due to losing? It certainly soured my on internet chess, re anything semi-serious with ratings. Now I'm glad they can at least check for it statistically, but STILL, at many levels, you have lots of it going on. I, like others, just don't get it. Back before computers got seriously good (like early 90's as I best recall), as a hobbyist computer chess program writer and fiddler, I got our local club to have an annual computers vs. humans tournament. It was all open -- the special purpose small machines were openly used by their owners -- but it was FUN, because it was FAIR (everyone played the machines at similar agreed-upon levels, etc). Knowing more about how the software tended to actually WORK through my 15ish years study of that since college, I had an advantage and tended to win, re steering the positions into forced variations I could see and the computer (with its broad but limited depth search) could not. So I get using computers for fun or training, but cheating is for complete losers.
I mean yeah I get you but also like it is very difficult to actually cheat and get away with it Unless youre like actually pretty good and you maybe only play a few games cheating and play your own moves for most of the game you are probably gonna get banned
especially in a game where there is no reason to cheat. I can see if there was a million dollar prize, then maybe consider cheating but these games are just supposed to be fun. Win or lose, just do your best
The only point I can see is that you want to keep practicing against higher rated players so every time you lose a few games you cheat to get your rating back up. There’s absolutely zero point in cheating up to 1,000 points about your true rating though.
Cheaters derive satisfaction from seeing other people lose. They don't care how they win, just as long as they see their opponent lose. Unfortunately, cheaters have many tools at their disposal, from chess bot plugins to basic tab switching. Also, a big thing you didn't mention was the intermittent use of these tools. The more savvy cheaters don't use engines for every move, only some moves. This lowers the overall accuracy in the analysis, essentially disguising the cheating.
It’s a cess pool of cheaters. I play in the 1600-1900 range and I can tell u I don’t go more than a couple games without encountering a cheater. It’s sickening and frustrating.
hahaha I really like that... instead of the site admins banning them, silently flag their account to only be able to play others that have the same hidden flag, if indeed there are that many :) Funny :)
I think Lichess does that. A guy I know got banned early on for deliberately losing games to tank his rating, and he ended up being put in some kind of system where only banned people could play against each other
The scary question is, how many cheaters are just a bit smarter at cheating? Especially in a 10-minute game, if they just premove a few obvious moves, play some of the moves themselves without looking at the engine, and maybe avoid the most ridiculously non-human moves, how do we detect them?
To me, it would be a HELL of a lot easier to cheat "safely" in a much slower game, re picking and choosing which moves to risk cheating on, what sort of computer moves to avoid, etc. Virtually all the cheating I noticed against me 30ish years ago when chess on the net was pretty young, were in either slow games, or people directly using one of those little plastic special purpose chess games, and just doing direct auto-copy of all moves (and thus playing in a VERY computer-like way). As a player and a chess program writer, it was pretty easy for me to spot such cheaters and confirm their behavior, given several games to experiment/confirm. Later as engines got far stronger and more human-like in their play, it became a lot more subtle, so we need statistical analysis, etc. to be "reasonably" certain of cheating from a player of roughly level X.
@arturosubutex those people still end up getting banned usually because they'll see moves that are just impossible to see for a human and they'll play them It is a lot harder to catch those cheaters but they do still end up getting caught
Cheating just makes the game suck as it takes all the fun out of it. I hate cheaters so much as they win over and over without you having most chance. Good work Nelson your great been watching you for years now thanks for all the knowledge, also hope you are feeling great and well 👍
Had a guy yesterday beating me with a 98 rating taking a second over every single move. Called him out, got called a bad loser etc. but I'm talking about 850 level here. Checked his recent wins and most of them in the high 90s. That's not 800 level surely.
I literally just played this person recently. I was suspicious about this person because they were playing the grunfeld yet didn't make the obvious grunfeld moves instantly.
I vacillated between 1200 and 1300 for months. As soon as I got to 1350, I suddenly jumped to 1460 in a week. Under 1300, there are a ton of cheaters. There are still some at my current ELO, but nowhere near as common as sub-1300.
I feel especially bad for people who stream chess. I've seen IMs and GMs do open challenges for chat to play them. Every like 4 games, a 1000 elo player will just wipe the floor with them.
@@DanielSong39 I think I speak for most of us when I say this: The VAST majority of people do not find it "good comedy" watching someone use an engine and beat a talented player. And it absolutely is way more than every 50 games. There's a reason the big streamers (Hikaru, Levy, etc) NEVER accept random challenges.
@@DanielSong39 If you think that Simon Williams, Daniel Naroditsky, Eric Hansen, Aman Hambleton, or any other legit player for that matter, find encountering cheaters funny, then u r a moron.
@@DanielSong39: And Daniel calmly accesses, doesn't jump to quick conclusions, and lets the SYSTEM WORK, by properly using it to report suspected cheaters and letting the stats decide. vs. jumping up and down, arm waving, and quick judgement (where one might be wrong on occasion). When I was a 1350ish I drew a 2100 in an OTB tournament game, and was accused of "cheating" by the folks in my rating class, as I'd beaten and drawn a 1750ish player twice that day already. I pointed out I hadn't played in SIX YEARS, had matured a lot during college and working a full time job, AND had been playing and studying during those 6 years (but not at rated tournaments), plus why cheat all day to win a net $23 -- maybe, when I made $20ish an hour all day every day at work -- reliably. I also told them I didn't appreciate them insulting my intelligence -- that if I WERE going to cheat, I'd at least make it WORTH my time, and go after SERIOUS prize money (5 figures) in a BIG tournament. I had no idea I'd improved that much, so trying for such money (not from cheating, but just from being better / maturity) didn't even occur to me... They calmed down, but falsely accusing people of cheating without sufficient evidence is VERY BAD form as a matter of principle, IMO.
5:05 there's a threat of qe7 that is hard to deal with. And a threat of bishop moving away from h6 with discovered check and attacking black queen. And it's not like queen can move somewhere safe to defend e7. On tob of that bishop on h6 is threatening rook on f8. There doesn't seem to be a lot of ways to stop all threats other than trading rooks snd moving king.
You're absolutely right, Nelson. This is why I almost always play against the Chessbots. The level of cheating/gamesmanship that goes on, really puts me off playing other people....sadly.
Plus when playing against chess bots, you have the options of playing against stronger bots, which help you improve your chess rather than playing against people in your rating category who may play like 700s or 2000s or like stockfish.
I rarely encounter cheaters and I play a lot. Yes once in a while but it's not like every other other hand someone is cheating. And most people are not high level enough to know if they are playing a cheater anyway. Just because someone destroys you with high accuracy does not mean that they cheated. It's much deeper than that.
@@yashjindal6234The red circle next to their username in this video means they were banned. Also, if you check out the account it says they were banned. You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
I ran a 50km race yesterday. I made a wrong turn and cut around 5km off the loop. When I got back to the start for the next loop I let them know I missed something. When I finished I could've been 3rd overall had I not informed them, but I would KNOW that it was undeserved. For me all that matters is what I know to be true. Outward false measures give me no pleasure or solace.
Seeing the occasional cheater actually makes it more fun to watch chess streamers Can't catch them all but you can catch some Keep reporting them, Nelson, it's always worth a shot
I don't like cheating but it is sure fun and interesting to watch them get caught. Makes for good content. Btw congrats on the quick channel growth Nelson. Well deserved
Ive only ever reported two cheaters and neither got banned. How do I know they were cheaters? Well i'm 1100ish ELO and they played nothing like other 1100's id played. Also they had 10 games in a row at 90%+ accuracy!!!
That doesn't actually mean anything. Did you check to see if they were new accounts? Was there a pattern on the timing of their moves? I'm not saying they weren't cheating, just that there are legitimate and common reasons to explain an 1100 playing like a much higher rated player.
They were not new accounts. But normally their accuracy was 60 to 75% like most 1100's. So what are the odds on a long string of games at 90% accuracy and I'm talking 20 moves not 4 move scholar mates.
@@fishnets007 yeah but you need to remember that this is not an exact science especially at that level. And if you play terribly... If you make bad moves and your opponent capitalizes on them, they will have extremely high accuracy and it means nothing as far as cheating goes. Just because you get demolished does not mean someone is cheating either. You just made bad moves and they made the correct ones. I am a 1600 which is still dogsh!t and have been mopped by 1300s before. And beaten by much less. It happens and doesn't mean anyone is cheating. It happens but it's still rare in the overall context of things.
Just wanted to recheck my details and found out they have now been 🚫. I reported on 8th August and they got closed on 1st April, several hundred games later. Slow justice
It's obvious early on but only if you're specifically looking for it. So slow as well. In retrospect you could have probably flagged them if you found a way of getting pieces off and playing a bad ending, but you weren't to know.
It's a pity Stockfish itself isn't tracking those who are using it at the same time as playing the game, whether against the chess bots or real humans. That way the cheats can be instantly banned right down to their IP address.
But you do NOT want to falsely accuse, much less BAN, suspected vs. confirmed cheating. So it's a balancing act, and I think the powers that be are at least TRYING to do that balancing in a credible way. (And obviously not everyone will agree with the decisions, etc). But trying to BAN a "cheater" from part of ONE game -- you could easily be banned YOURSELF when having a great game or good day. I ***HATE*** cheating, BTW. I was outraged when in college my computer programs were stolen (and turned in by the theives as though they weren't my work) when I we done early but didn't turn them in early, not wanting to make anyone else look bad. Or in college when I was told people were copying off my paper during tests, like a cheating 9 year old. (I just focused on my work, did my best, and didn't think about cheating -- stupid me). I got accused of cheating ONCE in an OTB tournament. My crime? Laying off 6 years while attending college, maturing, and studying chess. When I returned to play at age 24 and started beating 1700 players and drawing 2100 players while rated below 1400, after a few games the accusation came up. To the credit of my accusers, once I explained the situation, and pointed out that cheating to win a $35ish class prize with 12+ hours of work and a $12 entry fee in a small local tournament made NO SENSE, given I made nearly $20 an hour at IBM programming computers at the time. (Spring of '84, as I recall, or at least within a year of that). I told them if I wanted to "cheat", I'd go to the world open in Philly, for example, spend 4 days, and win $10,000 taking the class D prize (that was before they lowered that to $3000 to try to prevent sandbagging type of cheating by getting a false low rating through trickery). I also pointed out even THAT wouldn't actually be cheating if my rating were HONESTLY below 1400 (due to be being immature, nervous, careless, etc. in high school and causing my own rating to be low vs. my skill). However, an honest person could only reap the rewards of lots of improvement ONCE, as one's rating rises rapidly if one plays way better than one's rating would indicate. So, I take false accusations of cheating as a BAD thing, and it CAN happen to honest player. So if we're going to do that and BAN people, we should be QUITE SURE, and that means not doing it real-time with only software.
That would require a ton of computer resources. More importantly, a singular game can't really be evaluated real time. Context matters. As does an assessment of prior games.
I would guess 10-15 moves(post common openings) into a game any repeats in position between a real game and a stockfish game in the same time period would be astronomically small. I'm sure there is a hash value that can be calculated off of each board setup and it would be easy to compare. I doubt it would ever falsely excuse or miss a stockfish cheater.
The ease of cheating is what puts me off on-line chess. And I suspect it puts a lot of people off as it is soul destroying to play against a near infallible machine. Hopefully the web sites will find ways of detecting it automatically.
These videos make me laugh :). At least at the start anyway. But I can see the frustration. As a person who played vs the high elo chess boards when young, I hated it. The computer played moves that looked bad and then later it became clear... It was boring and I had no hope on the stronger levels.
The joy in chess is playing not winning. I like winning but I know I'm going to lose 50% of my games. If folks want to cheat into the high ranks that doesn't concern me, I'll never see them anyway. The Sicilian defense is a tricky black response.
I think I've played this account before - not sure if it were a cheater though (at the time). One pattern I've noticed is that you might have an old account that has been inactive for some time, that then comes back and starrts cheating hard - which would imply that the account has been compromised
Sometimes your opponent is playing extremly good, But once you look at their profile, and you see they resign in random matches at move 2 and 7. (to lose to not get that winning streak that might get picked up by the anti cheat measures) While slamming others with 98% accuracy, allthough when they attempt a 1000 rated puzzle they manage to fail a lot. An experienced player of around that rating would do these puzzles without mistakes.
All players should have a trust rating. They should figure this out somehow - use AI , statistics, etc. That way, no one is accused of cheating. But you can choose not to play someone with a low trust rating
is anyone else having trouble against "800" elo, where they make zero mistakes and make the best move multiple times? i was close to 1100 then i just kept losing and now its impossible to win everyone is a smurf account now its bs now im down to 800 elo. (for context ive been playing chess for a while im not a beginner) that or they run an engine because they take forever on each move
They all tell themselves this is how they will get good. It's training & then they'll stop. That might actually be true & work to some extent but they don't care what it does to the game as a whole.
They can get good ALL THEY WANT by using the computer as a study tool and play it for practice. Using computers for opening study vs. trying to use a hardcopy BOOK, for example, is INCOMPARABLY more productive and enjoyable. I'm NOT buying that they think cheating will make them "get good" at all.
@@rogergeyer9851 I've heard this reason from a lot of cheaters & a few streamers relaying this is their mindset. I don't have any reason not to believe it & it does give some reason for why they do it. What's the pt. otherwise? Just to feel superior? Maybe. Not a cheater, so I wouldn't know. My ELO is more than proof lol. They should really try playing the Maia engine. It really plays like a human. It's based on probabilities of human moves in pos. rather than however normal engines/bots are trained to play. Maia will even fake think! I've gotten a lot out of it. It even has 3 levels.
You and Kramnik are the only people with courage. Hans makes me absolutely sick. He actually admitted to cheating to gain rating and is still allowed to play. Cheaters should be banned permanently.
Top players caught doing such cheating (proven with strong stats, not just being "suspicious") should be PERMA-BANNED from ALL serious tournament play, IMO. If you don't have serious consequences for bad behavior, there's little incentive for the (mentally ill, basically) pattern cheaters to stop.
Agreed, Hans Niemann is a cheater and liar, who downplayed and trivialized his cheating. Such an individual should not be readmitted to the site. Yet, he got back and gets to play high profile tournaments.
Bro he was 12 and 16 when he cheated lol ok y'all gotta chill out Like even right now hes still basically blackballed from playing in some tournaments just because people dont trust him but the over the board cheating has never been proven Like fr I get it if u dont like him but chill out lol
i know. I called out a person suggesting he/she is cheating in some games. he/she is 740 ELO some games are just average, mistakes and I win - and some (few) games he/she pulls a brilliant moves. I think after calling it out 2nd time he/she stopped cheating
There should be some harsher penalty to cheating other than a ban (as surely they just start up again with a new account) but not sure what, maybe a block on their IP address too... I guess none of the cheaters have paid accounts (or they would have a financial hit on the ban)? I wonder if there's some automated way it can be detected, monitoring suspicious timing in conjunction with best/2nd best moves averaged over some games perhaps? - particularly scaled against lower ranking, newer players therefore such opportunities are very short lived, limiting their exposure.
You know, I’m terrible at chess. My rating is embarrassingly low. Yet I sometimes get points added because somebody was cheating. If you can’t beat me without cheating, you’re really bad. And where’s the fun in it? It’s fun when even I find a move I didn’t know I could find. I can’t play endgames! I lose so many winning positions, or do stalemate draws, etc.
Cheating takes all the fun out of winning, it feels a lot better if you do it by yourself. Besides any rational person would just feel guilty about it afterwards.
"Not a single move was played quickly." You're just describing the whole reason I'm personally playing only rapid: to double check every move I make! (I tried faster formats buy it's just impossible.) Also I don't want to mistap on the touchscreen, but rapid gives me that possibility to enter moves at my leisure. Yes, there are probably lots of cheaters out there, but I find your arguments a bit horrifying because it just describes many of my own games. Also some of the "suspicious" moves you pointed were the first ones that came to my mind. And I'm nowhere near your rating.
But wouldn't you have moves that take more than 10 seconds? I think it's about people who only do about 5-8 seconds per move, when there is few options, they should be able to do it in 2-3 seconds.
Once you get to their level, literally everyone pre-moves certain moves that are safe to pre-move, because there's only one move that their opponent can logically, or sometimes legally, make. I'm sure you've seen Nelson do it many times. There should be at least a couple of moves in a 5:00 game at the 2000+ level that take less than one second. Not to mention the first 10 moves of the game where everyone is playing some opening theory or other and thinking is not usually required.
@@jadanejda9674Sure, having totally regular move times combined with multiple games in a row with almost total accuracy would seem suspicious. But the absence of quick moves is a strange argument. As another commenter writes it's probably also heavily dependent on the general level you're playing at. But I also remember Nelson's many accusations in the rice cooker saga were it turns out that the coach and the university course all exist (it would have sufficed to google a bit using the German "Schach" as keyword). That backstory with the coach checked out just fine. Yet there were accusations all over the place. I really wish Nelson would focus on his otherwise excellent content instead of seeing cheaters behind every defeat.
As my coach in my youth was saying - making obvious looking moves fast is how you blunder. Always take a breath and double check. Does not help me with fast controls, but it is a second nature to me.
One can easily flip that question - what is the problem to lose an occasional causal game of no consequence to an engine ? Why be upset, you may have even learnt something or had an exciting game where you had to do your best ? What's the problem ?
@@dmitripogosian5084 It's expected that the opponent is not a cheater. You can't say people shouldn't get mad for not getting what they rightfully expected. That's like saying ordering a pizza and not getting the pizza you want. It's not what you expected. There are ways around getting upset in situations like these, but shutting people down for that reason isn't cool.
I often play the Sicilian. Part of me wants to analyze what the cheater did and learn from it so I can maybe play something like it WITHOUT cheating. I don't want even indirect benefit from cheating though. So, I'm pretty sure I won't do it.
Actually, you can just play the engine and see the same moves. In effect with the cheater you are playing against the engine. Engines have gotten a lot better that when I first played against them. In those days, you could trap the engine by chance sacrificing a high level piece. The engine would always take the piece without evaluating whether it was a good move or not.
Do anyone know if we can cheat with time? I was playing against someone, and he/she took lots of time to play, but his/her time was very slow to decrease... That happens twice with me, as I lost by time...
I’m not very good but I’m quite confident most of the losses that end up tilting me and sending me on losing streaks are from cheaters. They go from not even obeying basic opening principles and taking short and random time intervals between moves to making amazing inhuman moves and taking the same time between each one.
People do cheat constantly. But this game looks pretty mundane to me. Played thirty games very similar and ive noticed my chess site has me rated as an 1860 and when i watch 2250 or whatever they dont wow me none of this seems hardcore tactical to me.
Regardless of who you play against, the opportunity to learn from your mistakes still exist. No need to be upset, just report if you are concerned. I defeated a cheater once, by the way.
Good job on the win lol And that is a really good point like yes its annoying to lose a good game but if you lose that still means you messed up somewhere and that will just help you get better
99% of cheaters never get caught. Only the most blatant egregious cheaters get (eventually) caught. The ones that play every single computer move, all the time. The majority of cheaters only play a couple computer moves here and there during a game, when they're in trouble or don't know what to move next, or to finish a winning endgame.
Sometimes during games I think my opponent is cheating, he beat me and then I see from the analysis that he did 6 blunders.
Totally true😂
Yeah that's right! Been there done that
they can do that on purpose to mask cheating
@@pap1raNa that's also true
there's a good chance that they didn't start cheating until mid-end game
The scary thing is this was such a blatant case of cheating. How many more are out there that get away with it. You only have to be slightly more savvy than this guy and you could get away with it for much longer.
Ultimately I can’t understand why people bother with this. Even if you have zero decency, entering moves back and forth with stockfish would be about as much fun for me as data entry, which I’m not doing as a voluntary hobby any day of the week. The sheer amount of effort and time required to cheat your way to this level just once is absurd, let alone those that repeatedly create new accounts and start all over again. And for what? To tell some acquaintances that don’t know you very well that you’re pretty good at chess? It’s the pinnacle of vanity, that only poisons the well for everyone.
I agree
They just enjoying to ruin others fun. I think it is sick, I mean, they are seriously ill, because no man in his senses enjoys hurting others.
@roblodocus2539:
I don't know. Is it ego?
The times I noticed blatant cheating with me when chess was fairly new on Yahoo (long ago, of course), after I was winning some game handily, then my opponent would claim they needed to go to the bathroom or something, and then a few minutes later, their playing style changed COMPLETELY, they suddenly played like a player maybe three rating classes stronger, AND when I'd check, they could tell me NOTHING about the position, etc, even in a SIMPLE DEAD DRAW where they wanted to mindlessly play on (knowing little of the endgame, clearly). Did they get their ego hurt due to losing?
It certainly soured my on internet chess, re anything semi-serious with ratings. Now I'm glad they can at least check for it statistically, but STILL, at many levels, you have lots of it going on. I, like others, just don't get it.
Back before computers got seriously good (like early 90's as I best recall), as a hobbyist computer chess program writer and fiddler, I got our local club to have an annual computers vs. humans tournament. It was all open -- the special purpose small machines were openly used by their owners -- but it was FUN, because it was FAIR (everyone played the machines at similar agreed-upon levels, etc).
Knowing more about how the software tended to actually WORK through my 15ish years study of that since college, I had an advantage and tended to win, re steering the positions into forced variations I could see and the computer (with its broad but limited depth search) could not.
So I get using computers for fun or training, but cheating is for complete losers.
I mean yeah I get you but also like it is very difficult to actually cheat and get away with it
Unless youre like actually pretty good and you maybe only play a few games cheating and play your own moves for most of the game you are probably gonna get banned
Well, the analysts look for so called one-movers. No human being takes 4 seconds for an obvious easy move.
I don't get cheating, it takes the joy out of winning
especially in a game where there is no reason to cheat. I can see if there was a million dollar prize, then maybe consider cheating but these games are just supposed to be fun. Win or lose, just do your best
It's pretty fun for a while actually 😄
@@PauIdeninocheater spotted
The only point I can see is that you want to keep practicing against higher rated players so every time you lose a few games you cheat to get your rating back up. There’s absolutely zero point in cheating up to 1,000 points about your true rating though.
@@STUDYHARD-tx2nn I don't cheat regularly, I've only tried it a couple times for fun on a new account. 😄
Can we appreciate, how Nelson got checkmated by 2 different cheaters the exact same way, just the board is flipped?
His claims are real I verified.
True 😂
Cheaters derive satisfaction from seeing other people lose. They don't care how they win, just as long as they see their opponent lose.
Unfortunately, cheaters have many tools at their disposal, from chess bot plugins to basic tab switching. Also, a big thing you didn't mention was the intermittent use of these tools. The more savvy cheaters don't use engines for every move, only some moves. This lowers the overall accuracy in the analysis, essentially disguising the cheating.
It’s a cess pool of cheaters. I play in the 1600-1900 range and I can tell u I don’t go more than a couple games without encountering a cheater. It’s sickening and frustrating.
Play blitz less cheaters.
There is a lot of cheaters at both higher and lower range too.
I still don't understand what incentive there is to cheat when you don't get paid for winning
Love the cheat busting vids. Your methodology for identifying a cheater is very impressive.
Cheaters trying to prosper...🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
They never do.
Should just structure the algorithm to play known cheaters against only known cheaters to waster their time.
hahaha I really like that... instead of the site admins banning them, silently flag their account to only be able to play others that have the same hidden flag, if indeed there are that many :) Funny :)
I think Lichess does that. A guy I know got banned early on for deliberately losing games to tank his rating, and he ended up being put in some kind of system where only banned people could play against each other
@@greatdanelegend7001 the chess Gulag
The cheater has a new account and they're cheating again. All report AvijitBanerjeeChess. He only plays rapid games now.
Thank you Nelson for breaking down these thoughts on how to spot a cheater and why we need to be not tilted by this shenanigans
The scary question is, how many cheaters are just a bit smarter at cheating? Especially in a 10-minute game, if they just premove a few obvious moves, play some of the moves themselves without looking at the engine, and maybe avoid the most ridiculously non-human moves, how do we detect them?
Yeah but most cheater are like 600 elo without a brain
hans niemann (2020) sends his regards
They have to be smart enough to know what moves are obvious or non-human, which most cheaters arent
To me, it would be a HELL of a lot easier to cheat "safely" in a much slower game, re picking and choosing which moves to risk cheating on, what sort of computer moves to avoid, etc.
Virtually all the cheating I noticed against me 30ish years ago when chess on the net was pretty young, were in either slow games, or people directly using one of those little plastic special purpose chess games, and just doing direct auto-copy of all moves (and thus playing in a VERY computer-like way). As a player and a chess program writer, it was pretty easy for me to spot such cheaters and confirm their behavior, given several games to experiment/confirm.
Later as engines got far stronger and more human-like in their play, it became a lot more subtle, so we need statistical analysis, etc. to be "reasonably" certain of cheating from a player of roughly level X.
@arturosubutex those people still end up getting banned usually because they'll see moves that are just impossible to see for a human and they'll play them
It is a lot harder to catch those cheaters but they do still end up getting caught
Cheating just makes the game suck as it takes all the fun out of it. I hate cheaters so much as they win over and over without you having most chance. Good work Nelson your great been watching you for years now thanks for all the knowledge, also hope you are feeling great and well 👍
Had a guy yesterday beating me with a 98 rating taking a second over every single move. Called him out, got called a bad loser etc. but I'm talking about 850 level here. Checked his recent wins and most of them in the high 90s. That's not 800 level surely.
I literally just played this person recently. I was suspicious about this person because they were playing the grunfeld yet didn't make the obvious grunfeld moves instantly.
you can check his game record to see his wining rate
I vacillated between 1200 and 1300 for months. As soon as I got to 1350, I suddenly jumped to 1460 in a week. Under 1300, there are a ton of cheaters. There are still some at my current ELO, but nowhere near as common as sub-1300.
I feel especially bad for people who stream chess. I've seen IMs and GMs do open challenges for chat to play them. Every like 4 games, a 1000 elo player will just wipe the floor with them.
It happens more like once in 50 games and for a viewer, it's good comedy
They do have to remain occasional for it to remain funny though
@@DanielSong39 I think I speak for most of us when I say this: The VAST majority of people do not find it "good comedy" watching someone use an engine and beat a talented player.
And it absolutely is way more than every 50 games. There's a reason the big streamers (Hikaru, Levy, etc) NEVER accept random challenges.
@@Trewq79 Some streamers just don't have a sense of humor
Daniel Naroditsky and chessbrah (Erik Hansen and Aman Hambleton) have a much better attitude
@@DanielSong39 If you think that Simon Williams, Daniel Naroditsky, Eric Hansen, Aman Hambleton, or any other legit player for that matter, find encountering cheaters funny, then u r a moron.
@@DanielSong39: And Daniel calmly accesses, doesn't jump to quick conclusions, and lets the SYSTEM WORK, by properly using it to report suspected cheaters and letting the stats decide.
vs. jumping up and down, arm waving, and quick judgement (where one might be wrong on occasion).
When I was a 1350ish I drew a 2100 in an OTB tournament game, and was accused of "cheating" by the folks in my rating class, as I'd beaten and drawn a 1750ish player twice that day already.
I pointed out I hadn't played in SIX YEARS, had matured a lot during college and working a full time job, AND had been playing and studying during those 6 years (but not at rated tournaments), plus why cheat all day to win a net $23 -- maybe, when I made $20ish an hour all day every day at work -- reliably.
I also told them I didn't appreciate them insulting my intelligence -- that if I WERE going to cheat, I'd at least make it WORTH my time, and go after SERIOUS prize money (5 figures) in a BIG tournament. I had no idea I'd improved that much, so trying for such money (not from cheating, but just from being better / maturity) didn't even occur to me...
They calmed down, but falsely accusing people of cheating without sufficient evidence is VERY BAD form as a matter of principle, IMO.
cheaters are indeed very frustrating
Liars and cheats are the scurge of this world.
Politicans, yes.
@@joshuakehl5891They work for big business not for themselves.
5:05 there's a threat of qe7 that is hard to deal with. And a threat of bishop moving away from h6 with discovered check and attacking black queen. And it's not like queen can move somewhere safe to defend e7. On tob of that bishop on h6 is threatening rook on f8.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of ways to stop all threats other than trading rooks snd moving king.
You're absolutely right, Nelson. This is why I almost always play against the Chessbots. The level of cheating/gamesmanship that goes on, really puts me off playing other people....sadly.
Plus when playing against chess bots, you have the options of playing against stronger bots, which help you improve your chess rather than playing against people in your rating category who may play like 700s or 2000s or like stockfish.
Same for me
Sane
you get refunded elo from cheaters
I rarely encounter cheaters and I play a lot. Yes once in a while but it's not like every other other hand someone is cheating. And most people are not high level enough to know if they are playing a cheater anyway. Just because someone destroys you with high accuracy does not mean that they cheated. It's much deeper than that.
I'm around lvl 500 and was playing against someone who was doing that. They're everywhere at every lvl, it's ridiculous.
sometimes ppl with hight elo make new acount for troll chess
@@UCcdTp7XpCkVLkaRCsDcifFg Something else that isn't allowed unless the sight is notified so it can reimburse Elo for all the players they beat.
Next level detective work here lol
@@yashjindal6234Why were they banned then? Why did they lose 2 games to a 1000 a month ago?
@@yashjindal6234The red circle next to their username in this video means they were banned. Also, if you check out the account it says they were banned. You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
I ran a 50km race yesterday. I made a wrong turn and cut around 5km off the loop. When I got back to the start for the next loop I let them know I missed something.
When I finished I could've been 3rd overall had I not informed them, but I would KNOW that it was undeserved.
For me all that matters is what I know to be true. Outward false measures give me no pleasure or solace.
Agreed. I'm not sure why people do it.
Thank you for having balls like Kramnik to call out cheating. I appreciate you. I have had my live list look like this sometimes 🚫🚫🚫🚫🚫🚫🚫🚫.
Im new and down in 500 elo and even ive had some ELO refunded. At 500 why bother cheating? Just wait for me to hang my queen lmao
Seeing the occasional cheater actually makes it more fun to watch chess streamers
Can't catch them all but you can catch some
Keep reporting them, Nelson, it's always worth a shot
I don't like cheating but it is sure fun and interesting to watch them get caught. Makes for good content. Btw congrats on the quick channel growth Nelson. Well deserved
this is a good reason why a lot of people stay away from daily and rapid. hard to cheat in bullet and blitz
Ive only ever reported two cheaters and neither got banned. How do I know they were cheaters? Well i'm 1100ish ELO and they played nothing like other 1100's id played. Also they had 10 games in a row at 90%+ accuracy!!!
That doesn't actually mean anything. Did you check to see if they were new accounts? Was there a pattern on the timing of their moves? I'm not saying they weren't cheating, just that there are legitimate and common reasons to explain an 1100 playing like a much higher rated player.
They were not new accounts. But normally their accuracy was 60 to 75% like most 1100's. So what are the odds on a long string of games at 90% accuracy and I'm talking 20 moves not 4 move scholar mates.
@@fishnets007 my opponent got 94% once at 800 and i also got 97% once (only once) when i was like 1200 elo
@@fishnets007 yeah but you need to remember that this is not an exact science especially at that level. And if you play terribly... If you make bad moves and your opponent capitalizes on them, they will have extremely high accuracy and it means nothing as far as cheating goes. Just because you get demolished does not mean someone is cheating either. You just made bad moves and they made the correct ones. I am a 1600 which is still dogsh!t and have been mopped by 1300s before. And beaten by much less. It happens and doesn't mean anyone is cheating. It happens but it's still rare in the overall context of things.
Just wanted to recheck my details and found out they have now been 🚫. I reported on 8th August and they got closed on 1st April, several hundred games later. Slow justice
they call it Indian defense
Haha
Stockfish is again used as a rice cooking machine.
It's obvious early on but only if you're specifically looking for it. So slow as well. In retrospect you could have probably flagged them if you found a way of getting pieces off and playing a bad ending, but you weren't to know.
It's a pity Stockfish itself isn't tracking those who are using it at the same time as playing the game, whether against the chess bots or real humans. That way the cheats can be instantly banned right down to their IP address.
But you do NOT want to falsely accuse, much less BAN, suspected vs. confirmed cheating. So it's a balancing act, and I think the powers that be are at least TRYING to do that balancing in a credible way. (And obviously not everyone will agree with the decisions, etc).
But trying to BAN a "cheater" from part of ONE game -- you could easily be banned YOURSELF when having a great game or good day.
I ***HATE*** cheating, BTW. I was outraged when in college my computer programs were stolen (and turned in by the theives as though they weren't my work) when I we done early but didn't turn them in early, not wanting to make anyone else look bad. Or in college when I was told people were copying off my paper during tests, like a cheating 9 year old. (I just focused on my work, did my best, and didn't think about cheating -- stupid me).
I got accused of cheating ONCE in an OTB tournament. My crime? Laying off 6 years while attending college, maturing, and studying chess.
When I returned to play at age 24 and started beating 1700 players and drawing 2100 players while rated below 1400, after a few games the accusation came up.
To the credit of my accusers, once I explained the situation, and pointed out that cheating to win a $35ish class prize with 12+ hours of work and a $12 entry fee in a small local tournament made NO SENSE, given I made nearly $20 an hour at IBM programming computers at the time. (Spring of '84, as I recall, or at least within a year of that).
I told them if I wanted to "cheat", I'd go to the world open in Philly, for example, spend 4 days, and win $10,000 taking the class D prize (that was before they lowered that to $3000 to try to prevent sandbagging type of cheating by getting a false low rating through trickery). I also pointed out even THAT wouldn't actually be cheating if my rating were HONESTLY below 1400 (due to be being immature, nervous, careless, etc. in high school and causing my own rating to be low vs. my skill). However, an honest person could only reap the rewards of lots of improvement ONCE, as one's rating rises rapidly if one plays way better than one's rating would indicate.
So, I take false accusations of cheating as a BAD thing, and it CAN happen to honest player. So if we're going to do that and BAN people, we should be QUITE SURE, and that means not doing it real-time with only software.
That would require a ton of computer resources. More importantly, a singular game can't really be evaluated real time. Context matters. As does an assessment of prior games.
I would guess 10-15 moves(post common openings) into a game any repeats in position between a real game and a stockfish game in the same time period would be astronomically small.
I'm sure there is a hash value that can be calculated off of each board setup and it would be easy to compare.
I doubt it would ever falsely excuse or miss a stockfish cheater.
That is a great idea.
Banning IP addresses doesn't work. You can spoof an IP address easily today.
Besides the time and first or second computer choice, Kg6 was also a big red flag.
Lol he got checkmated the same way as the last game
The ease of cheating is what puts me off on-line chess. And I suspect it puts a lot of people off as it is soul destroying to play against a near infallible machine. Hopefully the web sites will find ways of detecting it automatically.
These videos make me laugh :). At least at the start anyway. But I can see the frustration. As a person who played vs the high elo chess boards when young, I hated it. The computer played moves that looked bad and then later it became clear... It was boring and I had no hope on the stronger levels.
The joy in chess is playing not winning. I like winning but I know I'm going to lose 50% of my games. If folks want to cheat into the high ranks that doesn't concern me, I'll never see them anyway. The Sicilian defense is a tricky black response.
You are more than likely a cheater...hence your attitude.
Idk what your elo is but closed Sicilian and alapin are both reeeeallly good and easy was to beat the Sicilian if youre struggling
I think I've played this account before - not sure if it were a cheater though (at the time).
One pattern I've noticed is that you might have an old account that has been inactive for some time, that then comes back and starrts cheating hard - which would imply that the account has been compromised
Some people do other things while playing chess like talking to someone else or watching a video so they won't know it's their turn to make a move
Sometimes your opponent is playing extremly good, But once you look at their profile, and you see they resign in random matches at move 2 and 7. (to lose to not get that winning streak that might get picked up by the anti cheat measures) While slamming others with 98% accuracy, allthough when they attempt a 1000 rated puzzle they manage to fail a lot.
An experienced player of around that rating would do these puzzles without mistakes.
But there are times when I resign because I'm in a game and a delivery comes or an appointment starts.
I hate cheaters. Thx for sharing Nelson . Keep your spirits up!!!
Rice cookers getting out of control!
All players should have a trust rating. They should figure this out somehow - use AI , statistics, etc. That way, no one is accused of cheating. But you can choose not to play someone with a low trust rating
Once heard it said, and it's very true, that the Bg7 is an excellent defender of the exposed king on g8.
It can't be stopped. It goes with computers.
I don’t see how this app will continue with BLATANT dishonest and unethical policies and behavior.
I have used that Sicilian trap to get a pawn before. I am surprised he fell for it.
is anyone else having trouble against "800" elo, where they make zero mistakes and make the best move multiple times? i was close to 1100 then i just kept losing and now its impossible to win everyone is a smurf account now its bs now im down to 800 elo. (for context ive been playing chess for a while im not a beginner) that or they run an engine because they take forever on each move
They all tell themselves this is how they will get good. It's training & then they'll stop. That might actually be true & work to some extent but they don't care what it does to the game as a whole.
They can get good ALL THEY WANT by using the computer as a study tool and play it for practice. Using computers for opening study vs. trying to use a hardcopy BOOK, for example, is INCOMPARABLY more productive and enjoyable.
I'm NOT buying that they think cheating will make them "get good" at all.
@@rogergeyer9851 I've heard this reason from a lot of cheaters & a few streamers relaying this is their mindset. I don't have any reason not to believe it & it does give some reason for why they do it. What's the pt. otherwise? Just to feel superior? Maybe. Not a cheater, so I wouldn't know. My ELO is more than proof lol. They should really try playing the Maia engine. It really plays like a human. It's based on probabilities of human moves in pos. rather than however normal engines/bots are trained to play. Maia will even fake think! I've gotten a lot out of it. It even has 3 levels.
You and Kramnik are the only people with courage. Hans makes me absolutely sick. He actually admitted to cheating to gain rating and is still allowed to play. Cheaters should be banned permanently.
Top players caught doing such cheating (proven with strong stats, not just being "suspicious") should be PERMA-BANNED from ALL serious tournament play, IMO.
If you don't have serious consequences for bad behavior, there's little incentive for the (mentally ill, basically) pattern cheaters to stop.
Agreed, Hans Niemann is a cheater and liar, who downplayed and trivialized his cheating. Such an individual should not be readmitted to the site. Yet, he got back and gets to play high profile tournaments.
He was at age when a person doesn’t take full responsibility.
Bro he was 12 and 16 when he cheated lol ok y'all gotta chill out
Like even right now hes still basically blackballed from playing in some tournaments just because people dont trust him but the over the board cheating has never been proven
Like fr I get it if u dont like him but chill out lol
@@cubsfanman-nx6pg Its cos the messiah Magnus Carlsen was the accuser. I guarantee if it was anyone else, no one would care.
i know. I called out a person suggesting he/she is cheating in some games. he/she is 740 ELO some games are just average, mistakes and I win - and some (few) games he/she pulls a brilliant moves. I think after calling it out 2nd time he/she stopped cheating
I was there! haha. After the game Nelson said he will review and / or report off stream. Guess he did.
Maybe a good opponent will take 10 seconds to "find" an easy checkmate because their kids are asking them something or they're pouring a drink.
Anyone else notice how this guy checkmated him in the EXACT same way as the guy in his other cheater video like a day before this?
cheating is wack, but 7 seconds to make a move is just not suspicious to me
It is in conjunction with other factors
I’ve either been getting worse at chess over the last couple of years OR cheating is really on the rise!
There should be some harsher penalty to cheating other than a ban (as surely they just start up again with a new account) but not sure what, maybe a block on their IP address too... I guess none of the cheaters have paid accounts (or they would have a financial hit on the ban)?
I wonder if there's some automated way it can be detected, monitoring suspicious timing in conjunction with best/2nd best moves averaged over some games perhaps? - particularly scaled against lower ranking, newer players therefore such opportunities are very short lived, limiting their exposure.
You know, I’m terrible at chess. My rating is embarrassingly low. Yet I sometimes get points added because somebody was cheating. If you can’t beat me without cheating, you’re really bad. And where’s the fun in it? It’s fun when even I find a move I didn’t know I could find.
I can’t play endgames! I lose so many winning positions, or do stalemate draws, etc.
The thing is !
There is no absolute way to detect cheating !
It is a huge problem not likely to ever go away !
Destroys the idea of chess for me !
This is why I prefer bullet. It's impossible to cheat in that format
That's why I just play the BOTs.
I would go apeshit after a loss like that 😂
What happened to the other cheater? The student with the rice cooker
Now I understand why Nelson has switched to the 3 minute format. The solution to cheating might be compulsory webcams?
you just got checked mated with tomato dude
Cheating takes all the fun out of winning, it feels a lot better if you do it by yourself. Besides any rational person would just feel guilty about it afterwards.
"Not a single move was played quickly." You're just describing the whole reason I'm personally playing only rapid: to double check every move I make! (I tried faster formats buy it's just impossible.) Also I don't want to mistap on the touchscreen, but rapid gives me that possibility to enter moves at my leisure.
Yes, there are probably lots of cheaters out there, but I find your arguments a bit horrifying because it just describes many of my own games. Also some of the "suspicious" moves you pointed were the first ones that came to my mind. And I'm nowhere near your rating.
But wouldn't you have moves that take more than 10 seconds? I think it's about people who only do about 5-8 seconds per move, when there is few options, they should be able to do it in 2-3 seconds.
Once you get to their level, literally everyone pre-moves certain moves that are safe to pre-move, because there's only one move that their opponent can logically, or sometimes legally, make. I'm sure you've seen Nelson do it many times. There should be at least a couple of moves in a 5:00 game at the 2000+ level that take less than one second.
Not to mention the first 10 moves of the game where everyone is playing some opening theory or other and thinking is not usually required.
@@jadanejda9674Sure, having totally regular move times combined with multiple games in a row with almost total accuracy would seem suspicious. But the absence of quick moves is a strange argument. As another commenter writes it's probably also heavily dependent on the general level you're playing at.
But I also remember Nelson's many accusations in the rice cooker saga were it turns out that the coach and the university course all exist (it would have sufficed to google a bit using the German "Schach" as keyword). That backstory with the coach checked out just fine. Yet there were accusations all over the place. I really wish Nelson would focus on his otherwise excellent content instead of seeing cheaters behind every defeat.
As my coach in my youth was saying - making obvious looking moves fast is how you blunder. Always take a breath and double check. Does not help me with fast controls, but it is a second nature to me.
This guy was actually banned for cheating, did you know?
I dont understand why these guys cheat? What are they gaining? Is it just to be a jerk? What satisfaction is there in winning?
One can easily flip that question - what is the problem to lose an occasional causal game of no consequence to an engine ? Why be upset, you may have even learnt something or had an exciting game where you had to do your best ? What's the problem ?
@@dmitripogosian5084 It's expected that the opponent is not a cheater. You can't say people shouldn't get mad for not getting what they rightfully expected.
That's like saying ordering a pizza and not getting the pizza you want. It's not what you expected. There are ways around getting upset in situations like these, but shutting people down for that reason isn't cool.
Probably they cheat so they can show off their enormous rating
I often play the Sicilian. Part of me wants to analyze what the cheater did and learn from it so I can maybe play something like it WITHOUT cheating. I don't want even indirect benefit from cheating though. So, I'm pretty sure I won't do it.
Actually, you can just play the engine and see the same moves. In effect with the cheater you are playing against the engine. Engines have gotten a lot better that when I first played against them. In those days, you could trap the engine by chance sacrificing a high level piece. The engine would always take the piece without evaluating whether it was a good move or not.
AvijitbanerjeeChess....They opened a new account right after the old was banned for cheating....(he appears he still "dabbles" in cheating)
You will love the %100 accuracy game they played on 8/16/2024....
Do anyone know if we can cheat with time?
I was playing against someone, and he/she took lots of time to play, but his/her time was very slow to decrease...
That happens twice with me, as I lost by time...
You played so well! How frustrating 😑
Apparently Hikaru is accused of cheating
I don't know, I really rarely have games where people are banned afterwards and I get points back. But I'm not over 2000 :(
Call Magnus, beat cheaters with their own weapons
I hover around 1600 in bullet but sometimes will drop 100 points in an hour. I wonder how many of them are cheating.
Galadriel97 isn't even banned yet
I’m not very good but I’m quite confident most of the losses that end up tilting me and sending me on losing streaks are from cheaters. They go from not even obeying basic opening principles and taking short and random time intervals between moves to making amazing inhuman moves and taking the same time between each one.
Did you get your points back?
I'd say the real giveaway isn't the instant moves, it's the slow ones. How many cheaters spend 30s-1m on a move? How many times did you?
People do cheat constantly.
But this game looks pretty mundane to me. Played thirty games very similar and ive noticed my chess site has me rated as an 1860 and when i watch 2250 or whatever they dont wow me none of this seems hardcore tactical to me.
Looks like Avijit got Bannerjee'd from the website.
I have question I got like 110 elo in like 2 months without cheating.. I played like 3 4 hours a day
I was wat hing he got banned
link to cheat pls?
Cheaters never prosper but sometimes they win!!😂😂😂😂😂
Kg6 seems the most logical move? What else can you do?
Regardless of who you play against, the opportunity to learn from your mistakes still exist. No need to be upset, just report if you are concerned. I defeated a cheater once, by the way.
Good job on the win lol
And that is a really good point like yes its annoying to lose a good game but if you lose that still means you messed up somewhere and that will just help you get better
I doubt I will ever be accused of cheating! 😂
Even Magnus is saying cheating is at the highest level against him
Please, I would be honored to play Magnus Carlsen (or Hikaru Nakamura or Judit Polgar etc). Of course I'd lose. It'd be all me playing though.
All cheaters should be banned.
They all seem to be from the same country too.
Danny told me they got rid of all the cheaters though
Very suspicious when someone has 70+ wins in a row
Remember that the first victim of the cheater is the cheater himself.
I HAD A CHEATER when I called him out he's reply was but ur a tough player it does shatter ur mojo,
99% of cheaters never get caught. Only the most blatant egregious cheaters get (eventually) caught. The ones that play every single computer move, all the time. The majority of cheaters only play a couple computer moves here and there during a game, when they're in trouble or don't know what to move next, or to finish a winning endgame.
I caught a cheater who made a inpossbel pawn move this sucks