Cheats, cronyism and Frankenstein's Monster.

If you want volunteers for verifying users let me know. Just make a request button or feature if it is added so people can verify off a request list/slip. Maybe only mods should be able to do it. Whatever the result as long as something gets changed.

@ 5

"Not everyone can donate period. Some that join are kids that do not have a credit card." agreed!

Lets say that as a minimum an ID-card is required.

1st. ID's are not the same (country wise) so it comes to a huge amount of data that needs to be checked carefully = time issue and furthermore this would lead to identity theft and forgery.

2nd. Kids not having ID'cards and countries are different when it comes to handing them out. Then we are coming down to "any ID" (e.g. libary card, etc) and back at the problem of 1st.

Sure it would let a reasonable percentage of cheaters or repeat offenders stay out of lichess due to their plain laziness to go for it but some "criminal minded" or with ill intention will remain and taking this as a challenge.

And honestly, who want's to end up on a FB like lichess page?? I for myself not.

All around terrible suggestions. Why does it seem that all suggestions to get rid of cheaters sound worse than having to deal with cheaters?

There will always be cheats no matter what you do. If you try so hard to prevent any cheats from playing on the site you will also drive away a large chunk of the regular players by setting up all kinds of hurdles.

And Wesley So incident? Good riddance, some cringewothy dumb kid seeking attention.

Ya all making a few cheaters into a huge drama.

I don't care about cheaters.

I love my Iphone.

@likeawizard Good riddance, he is super Gm how can you say that?It is really frustrating for such a high caliber player with a very strict training program to lose his time playing engines.

Truth be told I have not experienced teaching in my rating zone and time controls I play. But I would speculate that people really affected with cheating are the ones playing classical and they are in the rating zone of 2200-2400. So assuming this is a true assumption cheating does not affect the majority of the players.

But basically the issue is if there are cheater in that rating zone GMs will not be playing on the site until there are many identified strong players they can safely play.

Cheaters exist at all levels. And they exist in all time controls. Also on all websites.
Wesley So overreacted. He played against a couple of cheaters and got angry, but he didn't care about the 2k fans he had.
Also, he was paid for his videostreamed services.

The original poster, Toutatis, said Wesley "has an affiliation to a newly set-up pay site". Which site is that ?

@ 19

" I do not mean verified as in providing ID. I mean it as in once you have been on a certain amount of time and or played a certain number of games you can get a ribbon or checkmark saying you are not a cheater and you are a respectful lichess user."

somehow contrary or?

Lets be mean and ill intended with an long term plan on hand. Then I start playing as a noob for a while till I get my badge and then I start plugging in my engine -by time and the way that it would look as i am improving. In the end, I am able to manage to get my 10k games, my 3k rating due to an engine and whilst I made a bunch of friends here nobody would ever know that I am cheating from start. Maybe I start to volunteer, helping to sort out the "black sheeps" and be friendly as much in teaching others, help granny's to cross the street etc. after 6month I am an established and trusted platinum member and also have had donated a buck or two. ...

End of the story. Now its on you to track me down!

How can I say that? Simply by going through his posts in the thread about closing his account. Throwing a tantrum like a little kid. Should be embarrassing for anyone regardless of title. :^)

I understand that losing to a cheat can be somewhat frustrating because you got robbed of a fair fight but all you lost are some meaningless online rating points and gained some practice against "someone stronger". And GMs are probably least worried about their online ratings and mostly play and practice OTB anyways.

I really like Lichess current approach of dealing with cheats- simply remove their rating privilege and let them play on.

@c_0 All that matters of how many people would choose this route and how cheaters it would prevent. You cannot run a cheating prevention program on statistical extremeties.

To prevent a lot of damage in your pathological scenario we need to assume the engine program detection run would scan all the players in your scenario that player would be caught as well.

Now assuming that this is the case, this idea would work if playing against a trusted player would signicantly decrease the possibility playing against a cheater. So a counterargument on what noob2chess is suggesting would be too much effort and the results as statistically insignificant.

And generally the analysis of whether implementing something should go along the lines, how much effort it would required to implement and how much beneficial it would be.

The post made by tschukki from reddit sheds light on the Wesley story and shows how this was mainly a childish fight for #1 in blitz ratings:

Some backstory:
There was an interesting fight for the No 1 blitz spot going for weeks. Wesley had finally climbed the top, being rated 2871. Then some FM passed him and stopped playing at 2872.
Now Wesley came online to get back the top spot and unfortunately played the first available 2600 player there was. Some new account, had played less than 100 games, obvious cheater who played the first moves way too slowly and then way too quickly (and immaculate) when things got complicated. Wesley was even nice enough to give him a second game, and after that one was lost as well he made this post.