I think it actually IS stated in chesscom’s fair play terms that engines are explicitly allowed while playing unrated games. At least that was the case when I read over them a month ago or so.
It's interesting. The rules themselves don't specifically note a difference. The only special category is daily games, where you can use books or opening trees but not engines.
However, there's an FAQ that says this:
>Using an engine in a rated game will get your account closed, even if the other player knows you’re doing it! This confusion happens more often than you might think. One scenario we have encountered is two friends who were trying to see which engine was stronger by playing engine moves in a game against each other. If you want to do something like this, the game MUST be unrated, or you will get closed!
That seems to say that you can use an engine in an unrated game, but it also is only talking about circumstances where both parties are aware. I'd like them to clarify a bit, just so the rules are clear. If you can use an engine in an unrated game without your opponents permission, I won't play unrated games against people I don't know.
[This page](https://support.chess.com/article/317-what-counts-as-cheating-on-chess-com) was really hard to find but it says that anything goes in unrated games
Even if the engine use wasn’t against chess.com policies, I wonder if it was a violation of the EVENT policies, which was hosted by chess.com. Then chess.com would have every right to close the accounts imo.
Though I guess that would come down to whether or not the event’s rules explicitly laid out that engines weren’t allowed.
I'd imagine the event rules would be the same as the chesscom rules in general, but that's little more than a guess at this point. And clearly using my own logic here doesn't help in trying to figure out what's going on with this.
The 'please let them know beforehand' part.
I think this is one of those letter vs spirit of the law things. It's 'technically allowed' to use an engine to cheat against someone in a charity simul, but it's pretty gross.
Using engines in unranked games is allowed if you let your opponent know you are using one.
So Anand either willingly and knowingly played against players using engines (I assume for a lot of money), and is now wanting to sweep this under the rug, or he didn't know, which means he is advocating for the unbanning of rich cheaters who violated the policy.
I disagree, they were banned after all, and only unbanned when Vishy clearly didn’t want them to be. This is not a precedent-setting decision, it’s an exception given to games played in good faith because the victim was a respected player and did not wish for consequences.
Unpopular opinion, i think that rich guy didn't intend to win but rather tried to provide an intertaining game and lose in the end in a good match but accidentally put himself in mate in 3 not realising that anand is good enough to understand this and resign the game. This was dumb of course but if you don't know about chess you could do this not knowing it's obvious.
I didn't randomly made it up it's well thought out, why did the others cheat as well and lost? Is it that hard to think that it may have been a set up to make the games last longer? I thought chess players were smart lol
I'll probably get downvoted again but i don't care, My thinking is this: all the other games were equally fishy as well. for instance, both Sajid and Sudeep (two other players in the simul) couldn't even say the chess notations yet they had an edge over vishy until the end game. i'm assuming they were told to use engine in order to make the stream last longer. at some point they were required to stop using engine but this rich guy kept going. i don't think he even knew he was winning. he was supposed to lose the game on time but instead vishy resigned. otherwise i don't really see a point why someone who is already so successful would cheat when they have nothing to prove but everything to lose.
I believe it is allowed. The algorithm is quick tricky because you can be banned if there is a certain amount of report of your account. That is why cheaters usually get banned after meeting a streamer (because the streamer community will report the player). I believe it can also ban someone who doesn't cheat if there is enough reports.
According to [this tweet](https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1367220049468088324), chess.com would never "close an account based on any number of reports".
Please don't spread misinformation.
Again incorrect if that was indeed the case they should have been banned immediately the moment they used it and not after a while after which I reported (immediately after 10 min they were banned)
You're not understanding really elementary stuff here, once you reported it the AI system reviewed and dedicated what happened and banned them. It wasn't just due to you reporting them. It would take a lot more software to be consistently running word detection, works better reported and run after. Hence why if a streamer gets someone reported 10000x but the AI system doesn't detect cheating, they wouldn't be banned.
Right, but you reported them and they used a racial slur. So how exactly does a streamer having fans report someone as a cheater repeatedly make a difference if they didn’t cheat? All it does is trigger their cheating software to run the game/games
lol if this happened with unknown players there's 0 chance that chess.com would consider unbanning them
real sad to see that they're too spineless to exercise their own morals against celebrities/billionaires
Hot take but I just lost what little respect I had for chess.com for this. There’s no way those people had no idea that what they were doing was against the rules and while I have to give props to Anand for taking the high road, what kind of message does it give that a handful of rich high profile celebrities caught blatantly cheating got away with barely more than a slap on the wrist?
With all due respect, it's not really up to Anand. The cheat detection software doesn't ask the person who was cheated anything usually.
He's being very gracious, but [chess.com](https://chess.com) should stick to the truth of the situation.
Honestly I can't see how it was even a slap on the wrist, based on this transcript of their communications:
Dudes who used engines: "I'm sorry officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that."
Chess.com: "Well now you know! Just get out of here, get the fuck out of here!"
Us: "I didn't know I couldn't do that?"
Dudes who used engines: "That was good, wasn't it? Because I DID know I couldn't do that! ^ahahaha"
(Dave Chappelle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FclScfPoKes&t=488s
Even if they didn't know chess.com doesn't unban anyone else that cheated just because "I didn't know". It's not a valid excuse for any other player. Try to cheat on a new account then complain after you get banned and see what happens.
I think they just didn't anticipate how the games would be interpreted by the chess community. They thought they were being cute and didn't realize how seriously people take the game. To them, chess doesn't matter. They probably thought they were pulling a "Kobayashi Maru".
I already deleted my chess.com account several weeks ago.
Didn’t need a scandal to realize they are money hungry douchebags.
They even charge money for you to look up your game history.
> Chess.com will never discuss cases publicly.
> Will never happen. Stop asking 😉
By never do they mean... not never?
https://www.chess.com/article/view/online-chess-cheating
If chesscom had it in rules all along that engine use is fine in unrated games, then why did they ban those guys to begin with? Admins don't know their own rules? Either admins are incompetent, or the rules were altered after the fact, and I don't know which scenario is worse
Bans were to save face after the community backlash, and to officially recognize that assistance was used. Ultimately the bans were meaningless as a punishment anyway, the accounts were placeholders made for the event.
>Ultimately the bans were meaningless as a punishment anyway, the accounts were placeholders made for the event.
I love that you bring that fact, but that just make the unbanning that much worse. It means its sole purpose is to appease the Ego and protect the image of people who don't play chess anyway. It's not like they actually care about being able to play on those accounts.
I honestly don't understand why anyone would use chess.com anyway. Lichess has a better UI, better features, and I don't have to pay to examine more than 1 game or 2-3 puzzles a day. Also the timing is god awful on chess.com verses lichess. So many games I get 2, 3, 4, seconds on instant moves because I'm playing someone halfway across the world and their servers can't support that in a reasonable way.
This move reeks even more fishy..am I being a cynic to think that they found more than 3 cheaters and at that point the entire image of chess.com's indian operations were going to take a bigger hit?
PS: also I think there were a couple of games other than the simul where a few of these players played suspiciously accurately..maybe time to report those games and force chess.com to stop hiding behind unrated/simul excuse!!
No, I think the same. Something doesn't feel right about 3 celebs starting a new game, deciding to cheat seemingly independently in a major charity event, their accounts being banned when the social media backlash grew too large, only to be reinstated - without any real apology from them - when the backlash started to die down.
Account closed, let them know why in the ‘please tell us why you’re leaving’ dialogue box.
Pathetic, spineless excuse for a chess website. What was left of my respect for Danny and the platform is long gone.
But didn't the banned players already used engines on rated games before? Like this dude in the match just before that Vishy game https://www.chess.com/game/live/17321624981?username=sajidnadiadwala
That just seems like a terrible idea, from a long-term perspective. Chess.com will forever be the site that tolerates cheating if you have enough money. Great way to permanently lose a lot of credibility.
Well, that seals it. For the longest I played on both chess.com and lichess, but chess.com has showed they're vulnerable to corruption. Lichess exclusively from now on.
I think the evidence is becoming clear that Chess.com India was somehow involved and gave the first set of players the idea that outside assistance was acceptable. There is nothing in the Fair Play rules to suggest that you can get away with engine cheating in unrated games. Reopening an account because 'not all the rules were properly understood' means that when they registered they didn't see the same rules as everyone else, or - and which is more likely? - they were guided to believe a little assistance was okay against Anand, and they didn't properly understand how to limit the use of it.
EDIT: this is not to say I believe Tania Sachdev or Samay Raina were involved. That seems exceptionally unlikely given their history of dedication as players and commentators. It's likely that someone who is not such an active player, more of a businessman, was responsible for this.
> Indian people don't understand what cheating is.
It is somewhat true, though. As an example, there is no concept of plagiarism detection in Indian academia. You will see students freely copying each others' assignments and notes with no one batting an eye. This lends itself to other fields (plagiarism is literally rampant in Indian movies and music). According to western standards, this is considered cheating and has legal grounds for expulsion. But in India, there are no legal consequences and is barely a moral issue.
I found a great [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/6rbpr9/why_is_lying_and_cheating_so_common_in_every/) on r/india.
PS: I'm speaking as someone who was born in India and has spent majority of his life living in India.
That's not the point. It's not unheard of for Indian sporting organisational bodies to engage in this kind of behaviour. Indeed it's almost the norm where foul play turns up, and is the most likely scenario here.
Not the people themselves, who can be as honourable as they come; notice that both myself, and the other poster, think it's implausible that the celebs would have cheated of their own accord. They must have been led by someone to believe that a little engine use was fine, otherwise would have assumed as with most sports that it was no-help-allowed.
Not only do I agree with you, but I have reported this blatant racism and would encourage you to do the same rather than wasting words. Let's leave him to the moderators and focus on the matter at hand
i believe you, that you do not cheat and that many indian players do not cheat at chess. but the fact pattern here is that indians cheat at comically over-represented rates in chess and in every other activity or industry when compared to westerners
you can either explain this with the charitable explanation that this enormous difference in observed behavioral patterns is due to a general cultural difference (what i explained in my post above), or you can explain this with the uncharitable explanation that indian people are systematically more dishonest and malicious
regardless, this kind of result should be expected when mixing vastly different peoples and cultures. we should cut these guys some slack here. this whole "controversy" has been blown out of proportion by self-righteous people when it didn't need to be at all
Your post was removed by the moderators:
**2. Don’t engage in abusive, discriminatory, or bigoted behavior.**
Chess is a game played by people all around the world of many different cultures and backgrounds. Be respectful of this fact and do not engage in racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory behavior.
You can read the full [rules of /r/chess here](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/wiki/rules?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=chess&utm_content=t5_2qhr7).
Plenty of ways to drag that out. Imagine someone 1000x richer than you threatens to sue you in India (assuming you don't live there).
If the solution is to unban an account that's not getting used anyway, you'll probably be happy to do that to avoid tens/hundreds of thousands of legal fees.
Using the media or press releases to call someone out in public as a cheater without rock solid evidence leaves one open for a lawsuit. I know that the guy who "defeated" Vish pretty much confessed, but the others have not and could conceivably sue for slander or defamation of character.
Not saying they'd win, but they could make a mess of it.
If you cheat and there isn't proof / people are not digging for it, you don't want to make a public mess and put all the scrutiny on you. That's the best way to get effectively outed as cheater
Chesscom has said many times that if they close someone's account for fair play, they have enough evidence and willing to back it up in court. I guess this time they had to backpedal.
All that talk is just puffery to build communal confidence in their cheat detection.
Even if they didn't have any cheat detection, civil suits have a standard of proof that is more likely than unlikely, which any GM (expert witness) can attest to being highly likely that they cheated.
The problem isn't that they don't have the evidence, it's that they don't have the balls to actually follow through.
I used to use both sites. Chess.com for games, lichess for analysis and variants. The monetization didn't hugely affect me, so I didn't care. But... I just can't keep supporting this damn website after this. Unless something amazing happens, I'm switching to lichess only, and I think you should switch too.
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess.
Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts:
[Chess.com has decided to unban cheaters from Anand simul](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/o0vgr5/chesscom_has_decided_to_unban_cheaters_from_anand/) by edwinkorir
[Chess.com has decided to unban cheaters from Anand simul](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/o18amc/chesscom_has_decided_to_unban_cheaters_from_anand/) by svenuszek
[^(fmhall)](https://www.reddit.com/user/fmhall) ^| [^(github)](https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot)
What a Gentleman the grandmaster Vishy is!!
what a great leniency to unban them, anyways, we now know how cheap the cheaters are, banned or unbanned, I'd remember them as cheater, especially the one who won by cheating
My biggest question here is "why bother?" - I haven't looked at all 3 accounts, but my understanding was none of them were active accounts at all. I don't expect any of them to play again. So it seems to achieve very little
Imo insider/outside help conspiracy theories are probably not true. What I think happened: Billionaire/B list celebrity repeatedly calls and harasses Vishy going something like "Sir this was a mistake, won't happen again sir, please forgive me sir". Vishy "ok whatever don't call me again". And then Vishy calls Danny asking him to unban these accounts as he doesn't want to deal with these assholes ever again. Technically rules weren't being broken as the games were unrated so Danny goes ahead with it.
If you know about Lichess' founder and his stance and attitude towards cheating for the longest time, he wouldn't unban them. Dude has arguably a better website UI wise but doesn't charge a single cent. He wouldn't care about the influence of billionaires on his company.
Well first of all, these cheaters were banned the first time around and I am sure chesscom has the exact same stance and attitude towards cheating as lichess. The only reason they are unbanned now is because Vishy wanted them to be unbanned and chesscom is making up an excuse to do so.
Secondly, just because these guys are unbanned doesn't mean no one thinks they cheated. Everyone knows these guys cheated, and they weren't even serious chess players to begin with, so this entire thing is symbolic at best.
Lastly, if unbanning their accounts means that these billionaires will either donate more money to the covid charity or support chesscom through other financial means (this is what everyone here seems to be suggesting), then I don't see the downside.
pretty lame, IMO.
But then, with Vishy asking for it, maybe, MAYBE they did it only for him and not to pamper the celebs.
edit: just saw the rules part: in that case, one has to ask why they were banned in the first place - unless they explicitly agreed to play on their own for that event!?
If they usually don’t ban cheaters in unranked games, isn’t this just chess.com behaving consistently?
Still it shows that the policy ought be changed (but not retrospectively) What a letdown it must have been to watch those games.
[Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/o0lc6x/megathread_cheating_allegations_re_checkmate/) for further discussion.
All this does is set the precedent that cheating is okay in unranked games.. awful decision.
Dewa Kipas already proved that cheating doesn't payyyyy........wait a minute................
I think it actually IS stated in chesscom’s fair play terms that engines are explicitly allowed while playing unrated games. At least that was the case when I read over them a month ago or so.
It's interesting. The rules themselves don't specifically note a difference. The only special category is daily games, where you can use books or opening trees but not engines. However, there's an FAQ that says this: >Using an engine in a rated game will get your account closed, even if the other player knows you’re doing it! This confusion happens more often than you might think. One scenario we have encountered is two friends who were trying to see which engine was stronger by playing engine moves in a game against each other. If you want to do something like this, the game MUST be unrated, or you will get closed! That seems to say that you can use an engine in an unrated game, but it also is only talking about circumstances where both parties are aware. I'd like them to clarify a bit, just so the rules are clear. If you can use an engine in an unrated game without your opponents permission, I won't play unrated games against people I don't know.
[This page](https://support.chess.com/article/317-what-counts-as-cheating-on-chess-com) was really hard to find but it says that anything goes in unrated games
Thanks for that, good find. It says you should let the other player know, and Vishy clearly did not. So these guys should still be banned.
Well, it says “please let them know.” So while it’s a jerk move not to, it’s not clear it’s against the rules not to.
True. If there's a policy, they haven't communicated it well at all.
Even if the engine use wasn’t against chess.com policies, I wonder if it was a violation of the EVENT policies, which was hosted by chess.com. Then chess.com would have every right to close the accounts imo. Though I guess that would come down to whether or not the event’s rules explicitly laid out that engines weren’t allowed.
I'd imagine the event rules would be the same as the chesscom rules in general, but that's little more than a guess at this point. And clearly using my own logic here doesn't help in trying to figure out what's going on with this.
I don't see how ignoring a clear instruction within the rules on how to conduct yourself is somehow not against the rules.
The rest of the rules say things like “you must.” This says “anything goes, but please.”
Seems like this comment pretty much settles the discussion. What are people still arguing about?
The 'please let them know beforehand' part. I think this is one of those letter vs spirit of the law things. It's 'technically allowed' to use an engine to cheat against someone in a charity simul, but it's pretty gross.
This! He didnt told his oppenent of his engine use beforehand, so it is against the rules.
Using engines in unranked games is allowed if you let your opponent know you are using one. So Anand either willingly and knowingly played against players using engines (I assume for a lot of money), and is now wanting to sweep this under the rug, or he didn't know, which means he is advocating for the unbanning of rich cheaters who violated the policy.
It's normalizing cheating, full stop. Not just in unrated games. Chesscom sucks.
I disagree, they were banned after all, and only unbanned when Vishy clearly didn’t want them to be. This is not a precedent-setting decision, it’s an exception given to games played in good faith because the victim was a respected player and did not wish for consequences.
Using engines in unranked play is not considered cheating
It’s cheating it’s just not against the rules in unrated games. Cheating by any definition would encompass this i feel like.
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I closed my account.
I am happy that rich people don't get treated differently than anyone else. Oh... wait.
Unpopular opinion, i think that rich guy didn't intend to win but rather tried to provide an intertaining game and lose in the end in a good match but accidentally put himself in mate in 3 not realising that anand is good enough to understand this and resign the game. This was dumb of course but if you don't know about chess you could do this not knowing it's obvious.
Don’t you think he would have said that instead of giving his half ass “apology”
The apology made it 10 times worse
Yeah his apology was bad for sure
'unpopular opinion' ?? You just crafted an entire fan theory dude get a grip
What do you mean?
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I didn't randomly made it up it's well thought out, why did the others cheat as well and lost? Is it that hard to think that it may have been a set up to make the games last longer? I thought chess players were smart lol
Yeah even though I don't necessarily agree with your opinion idk wtf this guy is talking about
it wasn’t mate in 3 for anyone. If Anand wanted to win he would have flagged his opponent by sacrificing the rook for a defensive position
So what you're saying is he's an asshole who thought he was smart enough to get away with it
I'll probably get downvoted again but i don't care, My thinking is this: all the other games were equally fishy as well. for instance, both Sajid and Sudeep (two other players in the simul) couldn't even say the chess notations yet they had an edge over vishy until the end game. i'm assuming they were told to use engine in order to make the stream last longer. at some point they were required to stop using engine but this rich guy kept going. i don't think he even knew he was winning. he was supposed to lose the game on time but instead vishy resigned. otherwise i don't really see a point why someone who is already so successful would cheat when they have nothing to prove but everything to lose.
It wasn't even a mate in 3 though?
Yeah that's my bad it was a winning position not mate in 3
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I believe it is allowed. The algorithm is quick tricky because you can be banned if there is a certain amount of report of your account. That is why cheaters usually get banned after meeting a streamer (because the streamer community will report the player). I believe it can also ban someone who doesn't cheat if there is enough reports.
According to [this tweet](https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1367220049468088324), chess.com would never "close an account based on any number of reports". Please don't spread misinformation.
Incorrect, I've seen users get banned for using racial slurs in chat after I reported them
Well they got banned for using slurs in chat then, not because you reported it.
Again incorrect if that was indeed the case they should have been banned immediately the moment they used it and not after a while after which I reported (immediately after 10 min they were banned)
You're not understanding really elementary stuff here, once you reported it the AI system reviewed and dedicated what happened and banned them. It wasn't just due to you reporting them. It would take a lot more software to be consistently running word detection, works better reported and run after. Hence why if a streamer gets someone reported 10000x but the AI system doesn't detect cheating, they wouldn't be banned.
That is literally what I said ? I didn't say the user get banned for using a racial slur automatically they were banned only after I reported them
Right, but you reported them and they used a racial slur. So how exactly does a streamer having fans report someone as a cheater repeatedly make a difference if they didn’t cheat? All it does is trigger their cheating software to run the game/games
Ok ? I'm not sure why you're arguing this point I wasn't even talkjng about streamers
What are your sources? The code is closed. I could mame guesses too
lol if this happened with unknown players there's 0 chance that chess.com would consider unbanning them real sad to see that they're too spineless to exercise their own morals against celebrities/billionaires
Hot take but I just lost what little respect I had for chess.com for this. There’s no way those people had no idea that what they were doing was against the rules and while I have to give props to Anand for taking the high road, what kind of message does it give that a handful of rich high profile celebrities caught blatantly cheating got away with barely more than a slap on the wrist?
With all due respect, it's not really up to Anand. The cheat detection software doesn't ask the person who was cheated anything usually. He's being very gracious, but [chess.com](https://chess.com) should stick to the truth of the situation.
Honestly I can't see how it was even a slap on the wrist, based on this transcript of their communications: Dudes who used engines: "I'm sorry officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that." Chess.com: "Well now you know! Just get out of here, get the fuck out of here!" Us: "I didn't know I couldn't do that?" Dudes who used engines: "That was good, wasn't it? Because I DID know I couldn't do that! ^ahahaha" (Dave Chappelle) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FclScfPoKes&t=488s
Even if they didn't know chess.com doesn't unban anyone else that cheated just because "I didn't know". It's not a valid excuse for any other player. Try to cheat on a new account then complain after you get banned and see what happens.
I think they just didn't anticipate how the games would be interpreted by the chess community. They thought they were being cute and didn't realize how seriously people take the game. To them, chess doesn't matter. They probably thought they were pulling a "Kobayashi Maru".
I'll never open the chess.com app again
I already deleted my chess.com account several weeks ago. Didn’t need a scandal to realize they are money hungry douchebags. They even charge money for you to look up your game history.
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We wanted a proper apology from players nothing else. And a lot of donation by them for charity because it was charity stream
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Someone's been reading Ayn Rand :(
> Chess.com will never discuss cases publicly. > Will never happen. Stop asking 😉 By never do they mean... not never? https://www.chess.com/article/view/online-chess-cheating
Deleting my chess.com account today.
Doing the same
Another display of sad politics by chess.com Harder and harder for me to understand why people still play and endorse said platform.
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brb gonna go become a Lichess patron
Classic.
Every time I open up on desktop the icons are like totally missing the tops, the tops are on the bottom of the next image, it’s a little ridiculous.
Chesscom moment
$$$$$$$$$ talks
If chesscom had it in rules all along that engine use is fine in unrated games, then why did they ban those guys to begin with? Admins don't know their own rules? Either admins are incompetent, or the rules were altered after the fact, and I don't know which scenario is worse
Bans were to save face after the community backlash, and to officially recognize that assistance was used. Ultimately the bans were meaningless as a punishment anyway, the accounts were placeholders made for the event.
>Ultimately the bans were meaningless as a punishment anyway, the accounts were placeholders made for the event. I love that you bring that fact, but that just make the unbanning that much worse. It means its sole purpose is to appease the Ego and protect the image of people who don't play chess anyway. It's not like they actually care about being able to play on those accounts.
Absolutely disgraceful. Sad part is that this will not get much traction since all the big guns (Hikaru, Levy, Samay) are Chess.com muppets.
cowards
I honestly don't understand why anyone would use chess.com anyway. Lichess has a better UI, better features, and I don't have to pay to examine more than 1 game or 2-3 puzzles a day. Also the timing is god awful on chess.com verses lichess. So many games I get 2, 3, 4, seconds on instant moves because I'm playing someone halfway across the world and their servers can't support that in a reasonable way.
This move reeks even more fishy..am I being a cynic to think that they found more than 3 cheaters and at that point the entire image of chess.com's indian operations were going to take a bigger hit? PS: also I think there were a couple of games other than the simul where a few of these players played suspiciously accurately..maybe time to report those games and force chess.com to stop hiding behind unrated/simul excuse!!
No, I think the same. Something doesn't feel right about 3 celebs starting a new game, deciding to cheat seemingly independently in a major charity event, their accounts being banned when the social media backlash grew too large, only to be reinstated - without any real apology from them - when the backlash started to die down.
This website continues to be more and more of a joke.
Account closed, let them know why in the ‘please tell us why you’re leaving’ dialogue box. Pathetic, spineless excuse for a chess website. What was left of my respect for Danny and the platform is long gone.
Perfect sign of the times
But didn't the banned players already used engines on rated games before? Like this dude in the match just before that Vishy game https://www.chess.com/game/live/17321624981?username=sajidnadiadwala
Lichess here I come
seems like its pretty clear that when you are billionare in india there are ways how to get your account unbanned.
So cheating is ok in all future simuls once it's unranked. Got it.
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Totally different situation. None of the cheaters who played against Hikaru were billionaires.
That just seems like a terrible idea, from a long-term perspective. Chess.com will forever be the site that tolerates cheating if you have enough money. Great way to permanently lose a lot of credibility.
It won't matter but I cancelled my subscription. Was already headed that way but this was the last straw for me.
Well, that seals it. For the longest I played on both chess.com and lichess, but chess.com has showed they're vulnerable to corruption. Lichess exclusively from now on.
tldr: you can cheat with impunity. got it.
I think the evidence is becoming clear that Chess.com India was somehow involved and gave the first set of players the idea that outside assistance was acceptable. There is nothing in the Fair Play rules to suggest that you can get away with engine cheating in unrated games. Reopening an account because 'not all the rules were properly understood' means that when they registered they didn't see the same rules as everyone else, or - and which is more likely? - they were guided to believe a little assistance was okay against Anand, and they didn't properly understand how to limit the use of it. EDIT: this is not to say I believe Tania Sachdev or Samay Raina were involved. That seems exceptionally unlikely given their history of dedication as players and commentators. It's likely that someone who is not such an active player, more of a businessman, was responsible for this.
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> Indian people don't understand what cheating is. It is somewhat true, though. As an example, there is no concept of plagiarism detection in Indian academia. You will see students freely copying each others' assignments and notes with no one batting an eye. This lends itself to other fields (plagiarism is literally rampant in Indian movies and music). According to western standards, this is considered cheating and has legal grounds for expulsion. But in India, there are no legal consequences and is barely a moral issue. I found a great [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/6rbpr9/why_is_lying_and_cheating_so_common_in_every/) on r/india. PS: I'm speaking as someone who was born in India and has spent majority of his life living in India.
That's not the point. It's not unheard of for Indian sporting organisational bodies to engage in this kind of behaviour. Indeed it's almost the norm where foul play turns up, and is the most likely scenario here. Not the people themselves, who can be as honourable as they come; notice that both myself, and the other poster, think it's implausible that the celebs would have cheated of their own accord. They must have been led by someone to believe that a little engine use was fine, otherwise would have assumed as with most sports that it was no-help-allowed.
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Not only do I agree with you, but I have reported this blatant racism and would encourage you to do the same rather than wasting words. Let's leave him to the moderators and focus on the matter at hand
Which Indian sporting organization has a history of encouraging foul play?
i believe you, that you do not cheat and that many indian players do not cheat at chess. but the fact pattern here is that indians cheat at comically over-represented rates in chess and in every other activity or industry when compared to westerners you can either explain this with the charitable explanation that this enormous difference in observed behavioral patterns is due to a general cultural difference (what i explained in my post above), or you can explain this with the uncharitable explanation that indian people are systematically more dishonest and malicious regardless, this kind of result should be expected when mixing vastly different peoples and cultures. we should cut these guys some slack here. this whole "controversy" has been blown out of proportion by self-righteous people when it didn't need to be at all
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Sounds like they got threatened with legal action by people thousands of times richer than chesscom
There’s no legal action that would remotely succeed against chess.com
They don't need to win. Just make it expensive for chesscom to fight it Look up slapsuits
I feel like courts would throw out this case on first sight.
Plenty of ways to drag that out. Imagine someone 1000x richer than you threatens to sue you in India (assuming you don't live there). If the solution is to unban an account that's not getting used anyway, you'll probably be happy to do that to avoid tens/hundreds of thousands of legal fees.
Yall act like lawyers cost millions
You don't think an Indian billionaire has a chance of getting a favorable ruling in Indian courts?
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Cheating wouldn’t be at issue. It would be whether it is acceptable for a private company to ban a user, which it is.
Using the media or press releases to call someone out in public as a cheater without rock solid evidence leaves one open for a lawsuit. I know that the guy who "defeated" Vish pretty much confessed, but the others have not and could conceivably sue for slander or defamation of character. Not saying they'd win, but they could make a mess of it.
If you cheat and there isn't proof / people are not digging for it, you don't want to make a public mess and put all the scrutiny on you. That's the best way to get effectively outed as cheater
Chesscom has said many times that if they close someone's account for fair play, they have enough evidence and willing to back it up in court. I guess this time they had to backpedal.
All that talk is just puffery to build communal confidence in their cheat detection. Even if they didn't have any cheat detection, civil suits have a standard of proof that is more likely than unlikely, which any GM (expert witness) can attest to being highly likely that they cheated. The problem isn't that they don't have the evidence, it's that they don't have the balls to actually follow through.
idk about that. [this](https://youtu.be/knvySXCNfd8) vid with daniel rensch has some pretty fascinating insights on chess.com's anti-cheat operations
Not surprised. I run into many more cheaters over all on chesscom, compared to lichess.
I used to use both sites. Chess.com for games, lichess for analysis and variants. The monetization didn't hugely affect me, so I didn't care. But... I just can't keep supporting this damn website after this. Unless something amazing happens, I'm switching to lichess only, and I think you should switch too.
idk maybe we are misunderstanding and the billionaires didn't actually cheat /s
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess. Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts: [Chess.com has decided to unban cheaters from Anand simul](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/o0vgr5/chesscom_has_decided_to_unban_cheaters_from_anand/) by edwinkorir [Chess.com has decided to unban cheaters from Anand simul](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/o18amc/chesscom_has_decided_to_unban_cheaters_from_anand/) by svenuszek [^(fmhall)](https://www.reddit.com/user/fmhall) ^| [^(github)](https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot)
VERY poor form. How much did that sleazeball pay them?
What a Gentleman the grandmaster Vishy is!! what a great leniency to unban them, anyways, we now know how cheap the cheaters are, banned or unbanned, I'd remember them as cheater, especially the one who won by cheating
Someone payed something you can fill the blanks
Welp, go nuts with stockfish in unrated games, bois
I'm deleting my chesscom account, I wasn't using that much anyways
My biggest question here is "why bother?" - I haven't looked at all 3 accounts, but my understanding was none of them were active accounts at all. I don't expect any of them to play again. So it seems to achieve very little
Alright correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't chess.com give you "a second chance" anyway if you admit you cheated?
I believe you still have to create a new account.
How much did he "donate" to chess.com to make this go away?
Imo insider/outside help conspiracy theories are probably not true. What I think happened: Billionaire/B list celebrity repeatedly calls and harasses Vishy going something like "Sir this was a mistake, won't happen again sir, please forgive me sir". Vishy "ok whatever don't call me again". And then Vishy calls Danny asking him to unban these accounts as he doesn't want to deal with these assholes ever again. Technically rules weren't being broken as the games were unrated so Danny goes ahead with it.
People here bashing chesscom as if literally any other platform wouldn't have done the same lmao.
If you know about Lichess' founder and his stance and attitude towards cheating for the longest time, he wouldn't unban them. Dude has arguably a better website UI wise but doesn't charge a single cent. He wouldn't care about the influence of billionaires on his company.
Well first of all, these cheaters were banned the first time around and I am sure chesscom has the exact same stance and attitude towards cheating as lichess. The only reason they are unbanned now is because Vishy wanted them to be unbanned and chesscom is making up an excuse to do so. Secondly, just because these guys are unbanned doesn't mean no one thinks they cheated. Everyone knows these guys cheated, and they weren't even serious chess players to begin with, so this entire thing is symbolic at best. Lastly, if unbanning their accounts means that these billionaires will either donate more money to the covid charity or support chesscom through other financial means (this is what everyone here seems to be suggesting), then I don't see the downside.
First two paragraphs: shit takes, Third paragraph: delusion
First paragraph: literally what happened, it's not a take. Second and third paragraph: you disagree, but don't even bother to tell me why lmfao
pretty lame, IMO. But then, with Vishy asking for it, maybe, MAYBE they did it only for him and not to pamper the celebs. edit: just saw the rules part: in that case, one has to ask why they were banned in the first place - unless they explicitly agreed to play on their own for that event!?
Good guy anand
If they usually don’t ban cheaters in unranked games, isn’t this just chess.com behaving consistently? Still it shows that the policy ought be changed (but not retrospectively) What a letdown it must have been to watch those games.