Now that I'm playing better, I'm running into more cheaters
In the last two days, I have reported two cheaters; both were banned after investigation. It seems to correlate to Elo. As a sub-1000 player, I didn't experience much (that I was aware of). At 1200-1500, it seems to be happening more often.
I identify cheaters in three ways (which I learned from Levy Rozman): They take the same amount of time to move throughout the game (because all they are doing is entering the move into Stockfish and repeating it in your game), they make weird moves that you don't see the point of (because it's how the machine thinks, not how people think), and on post-game analysis you see that even with their moderate-level Elo they scored 95%+ on accuracy with no inaccuracies, mistakes, or blunders.
I have never cheated at a game. I don't say that to sound noble; I genuinely don't understand the point (at least not without money and fame on the line). An amateur game is for fun and developing skill. If you're never defeated, you can't learn about your weaknesses and get better. If you don't want to learn that, and to genuinely enjoy your victories, why do you play?
Yes, I know it's an ego thing, and yes, this is a rhetorical question. Here's the rhetoric behind it, that I hope some cheater reads and thinks about, someday:
I have played D&D since the early days. I have seen people cheat their d20 rolls there, too -- a game with no winners or losers, a game where the sole purpose is to enjoy creating a story with your friends. I just can't imagine anything more pitiful than cheating a roll, when you have the opportunity to moan or laugh about it. Do RPG cheaters imagine there can be a good story without any loss, any mistakes, any blunders?
What is your favorite story, whether film, book, or streaming series? Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, No Country for Old Men, Avengers: End Game, Blood Meridian, Lord of the Rings, Dune, The Queen's Gambit... hell, try to think of a SpongeBob episode without loss. It doesn't exist, because it can't exist. Regardless of culture, of time and place, every story, whether tragedy or comedy, has loss.
When you cheat, you are robbing yourself of a good story. Here on Lichess specifically, you are grinding away on a free chess site for an Elo score nobody will ever care about -- no even you, because you know it's a lie.
Why lie to yourself?
And what do you think will happen to you, when you start believing your own lies?
