No-one knows the true extent of cheating in chess, both online and offline. As a result, everyone argues for the own felt reality, and differences range from chess being flooded with cheaters and the rare occasion of cheaters at all. Acutally, I think the number of undected cases in online chess is rather high. And despite the best efforts of the websites to find the black sheeps, I believe that the answer lies somewhere else. If one sites bans you, you just go somewhere else, make a new account, etc. In addition,
chess.com is, in my opinion, too forgiving. They usually allow cheaters easily to come back, with Hans Niemann being the most prominent case, lately. And even if they had banned him before his clash with Magnus, that would not have affected his FIDE tournament participation.
So, at least for high level chess (top x%), my suggestions are the following:
- All accounts have to be linked to your personal data (which is acutally true for most master players)
- The websites work together with FIDE, the local chess federations and each other. You cheat somewhere, you are banned everywhere
- require two cameras for tournaments with prize money
- Something like a three strike (or even less) rule is implemented. You can be forgiven once or twice, but after that your chess career just ends, forever.
And even with these rules implemented, there will be probably cheating, as there is still doping in sports with contronls and lifetime bans, but at least there will be lifetime bans and players who misconduct will not be seen again. And I know there are many people out there, that believe that lifetime bans are too harsh. But I am not one of them. Putting people in jail for the rest of their lifes is wrong, but keep cheaters away from professional sport is something different. And in my experience (with online gaming in general, rather than chess alone), you cannot trust convicted cheaters to not cheat again.
And to come to the point of the article: Actually, I do not mind the cheaters too much, it would just destroy the fun I have playing the game and I am still far away from winning any prize money or big prestige at all. But, I would still not trust some online super star, unless he or she performs similarily offline. I trust in the capability of the websites to close accounts, who were used for cheating and that is at least enough for me. But at the high level, I think without working together and have a common jurisdiction, you cannot stop cheating, because even if detected, there are too few consequences. To come back to the Niemann case (not because he is the most despicable case, but everyone knows it): After cheating several times on
chess.com and lying publically about it, there should have been a generall chess ban.