Hello Codeforces friends,
I want to share my frustration with you with rampant cheating in online games, in particular chess. This applies to Codeforces as well, even though on Codeforces it doesn't bother me at all (I'll explain the difference later). For context, I'm not a good chess player (peak 1500 blitz on Lichess), and I'm not writing this post to get chess advice. I typically play in bursts: I play a lot for a month or two, and then have a longer break. Fairly recently, YouTube started (again) recommending me chess videos (mostly GothamChess, ChessWithAkeem and Witty_alien), which made me wanna play again, so I've been playing some recent evenings.
Today, my frustration with cheaters reached its peak, after I was matched with what I suspect were cheaters two times in a row (for a total of 5 games, because of rematches). What annoyed me the most, is the clockwork precision in the endgames of my opponents. Idk, playing against the cheaters is just such a waste of time and it's so frustrating. If I wanted to play against an engine, it would just play Stockfish. I'd like to play humans because it's exciting to outsmart someone in a game and a priori I have chance of winning. Idk why so many people are so miserable to not follow fair play.
My anger was additionally fueled by checking the blogs about AI cheating in the recent div 1 round here on Codeforces (I didn't even participated in that round but I was pretty pissed anyway). People cheating with machines are killing all of the fun in the world and all of the competitive mental activities. On Codeforces at least, you are "playing" against everyone at the same time, both cheaters and legit players. That's why it doesn't bother me much. Maybe I'll lose some rating due to cheaters but at least I have a feeling that there are people somewhere there which I outplayed on equal grounds. If Codeforces was PvP, being matched against a cheater would leave the same feeling of time wasted and frustration as if does on Lichess. The same goes for any online game, be it some FPS shooter or some other PvP game.
I searched some chess forums about how people deal with this state of affairs, and I recurrently encountered the same argument: "bro trust me, the stats show that at 2300 level there are much fewer cheaters, like 1-5% only, just get good and everything will be okay". I don't want to get good, I want to have fun. I don't want to learn theory for two years to start enjoying the game. Imagine requiring someone to spend considerable amount of time to get good in a hobby before it even starts being enjoyable?? Like, okay, maybe chess at 2300 is more fun, but you should also understand that not everyone has enough persistence and patience to reach that level, and with this approach you will have less people sharing your hobby, because they got discouraged at some earlier stage.
I'm finishing my rant and encourage you to write your frustrations on AI and engines killing fun online in the comments. I pledge to not get tricked by YouTube into watching chess content anytime soon, because I know it would hook me again into playing, and eventually lead to the same frustrations, a level of toxicity which I don't need in my life. I guess I could do tactics puzzles, because those are at least a bit of fun, but with no actual playing on sight, it feels a bit pointless tbh.
Just play at the chess club lol
I thought about this but I don't really have consistent time slot for that, I sometimes have time in the evenings. But I think this is certainly a solution for people that want to be more consistent!
You should try chess.com, although it also has cheaters but the number is low(they detect quite quickly) so you will be frustrated less.
Why don't you play Bullet then? More fun and harder to cheat.
I used to play a lot, actually! But in the end I moved to blitz because I'm too slow for bullet, pretty often losing on time :< but I agree, it's a lot of fun, high pace and it's very addictive!
As a 2000 bullet player on lichess, for bullet u just need to know a base debut that you play every game (better if its not connected with opponent's moves) and ability to notice checkmate in one/two or to make a threat quickly. If you can do this it will be easy to play on 2000+
as a bullet chess addict, i would recommend you to try grinding a bunch of bullet games :) you'll get better at playing fast and avoiding flagging over experience
there's something about online chess that just brings out the worst in people. one time I was playing against someone and I was losing and they started spamming the chat with kissy face emojis and I had no choice but to break my computer monitor. online chess is just too intense for most people I think.
Huh?? In chess you actually have reliable cheater detection because of plentiful data and a clear ground truth to compare against (top engine moves). Report and move on. Play 1 game an hour and you won't have rematch issues.
I mean the same moves are available to you whether you are 800 or 2000 ELO. The only hint of cheating you may have is the great move frequency, move timing and suspicious distribution theseof. But I think that most cheaters do not blatantly copy all the moves to the engine and pick the top engine move each time, those get filtered out very fast. The worst are the ones which only so often (eg. because they have a series of loses and want to recover) check the engine and go undetected. Besides, even if the cheater is detected fairly fast, you still lost time on playing them, and possibly suffered a loss and some emotional damage. I also started thinking that maybe the popular platforms are not so efficient in cheating detection, as you suggest that should be in principle possible. For one, they may want to minimize false positives count (ie. banning legit players) for the price of letting some more cheaters go on, and two, cheaters are generating traffic on the site too.
just play chess with me :)
You should be grateful to the gentlemen you're bashing here, as their actions have severely discouraged you from wasting any more time on the low-IQ sport that is chess.
Start playing on Mahjong Soul. Much better game than chess, much easier to become good and compete on high level. I quit chess for it and have no regrets. Cheating is not a problem as well.
Agreed. Even AI isn’t unbeatable in it, and that uncertainty is what makes the game so much more fun.
I'll give it a try, good recommendation, thanks!
Thanks. I started playing Mahjong Soul after seeing your comment. I found it very interesting and addictive. I am gonna quit playing chess also.
Was 2000+ rapid on chesscom, The best thing you can do is find people offline to play with, is more fun also, otherwise there's no other way round this frustration. People have the tendency to cheat no matter what platform or game.
And actually, Contradictory to what you said, I feel chess after 2000 starts to get boring, at that point practicing and learning theory starts to become a chore, and for that reason it starts to get pretty boring. Left chess cause of the same reason.
Play anon. Less cheaters
What is anon?
Unranked
1900 chesscom 1800 lichess 1500 FIDE 1400 codeforces I encounter cheaters on each of these platforms.Very sad (
how do you have lichess rating less than chesscom?
I play more on chess.com
Lichess currently has 99% less undetected cheating than competitive programming did before AI. :)
I don’t understand the logic of how someone can be 1500 rated and cheat. Also give props to lichess for retroactive removal of players for cheating.