Is cheating disappeared from Lichess?

I have been playing on Lichess for a while now.

I remember years ago sometimes i used to get notifications, where Lichess informed me that someone cheated against me in my games, and they gave me the rating points back.

Time passed. I can't recall the last time i have seen such notifications. In between i have played thousands of blitz and bullet games, but nothing happened.

Some games i get totally annihilated, my opponents completely destroy me without chances.
You may say : "Well you played prime Kasparov and Anand".
No actually i play against 2250 Lichess rated people. Still, i have no chances.

I came to the conclusion nobody is cheating on this site anymore. Everyone is friendly and fair. If in thousands games i didn't see notifications, then this must be the truth.

So when i get destroyed by a 2250 (or even less) that plays at the level of Caruana or Maxime Lagrave, i must remember this days with chessable courses around people got really good.

Still, some chessable courses must be better than others

@Lez1995 said in #1:

> I remember years ago sometimes i used to get notifications, where Lichess informed me that someone cheated against me in my games, and they gave me the rating points back.
>
> Time passed. I can't recall the last time i have seen such notifications. In between i have played thousands of blitz and bullet games, but nothing happened.

If it can comfort you then the same is happening on chess.com. Also there almost no refunding anymore and also there I don't get the feeling things improved in comparison with a year ago.

Detecting and refunding ratingpoints has a cost for a platform (resources must be assigned).
Detecting and refunding ratingpoints brings bad publicity for a platform (you admit there are cheaters).

So it could be a decision made by a platform to put the bar much lower for cheaters. This doesn't need to be especially bad however.

@Lez1995 said in #1:
> I have been playing on Lichess for a while now.
>
> I remember years ago sometimes i used to get notifications, where Lichess informed me that someone cheated against me in my games, and they gave me the rating points back.
>
> Time passed. I can't recall the last time i have seen such notifications. In between i have played thousands of blitz and bullet games, but nothing happened.
>
> Some games i get totally annihilated, my opponents completely destroy me without chances.
> You may say : "Well you played prime Kasparov and Anand".
> No actually i play against 2250 Lichess rated people. Still, i have no chances.
>
> I came to the conclusion nobody is cheating on this site anymore. Everyone is friendly and fair. If in thousands games i didn't see notifications, then this must be the truth.
>
> So when i get destroyed by a 2250 (or even less) that plays at the level of Caruana or Maxime Lagrave, i must remember this days with chessable courses around people got really good.
>
> Still, some chessable courses must be better than others
You need to report if someone has cheated. Or else that account won't get banned that easily because lichess cannot always look after millions of games a day. Moderators are real people so it's impossible to do that.
I think that still lichess doesn't have an automated system for catching and banning people who use engines. Other bad stuff like Rating Manipulation and Sandbagging will be immediately noted by lichess. As lichess is free, I think it's hard and costly to program that system yet.

@Lez1995 said in #1:
> I have been playing on Lichess for a while now.
>
> I remember years ago sometimes i used to get notifications, where Lichess informed me that someone cheated against me in my games, and they gave me the rating points back.
>
> Time passed. I can't recall the last time i have seen such notifications. In between i have played thousands of blitz and bullet games, but nothing happened.
>
> Some games i get totally annihilated, my opponents completely destroy me without chances.
> You may say : "Well you played prime Kasparov and Anand".
> No actually i play against 2250 Lichess rated people. Still, i have no chances.
>
> I came to the conclusion nobody is cheating on this site anymore. Everyone is friendly and fair. If in thousands games i didn't see notifications, then this must be the truth.
>
> So when i get destroyed by a 2250 (or even less) that plays at the level of Caruana or Maxime Lagrave, i must remember this days with chessable courses around people got really good.
>
> Still, some chessable courses must be better than others

All of lichess costs docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSkHLJKJkb0ZuI4/preview

> I remember years ago sometimes i used to get notifications, where Lichess informed me that someone cheated against me in my games, and they gave me the rating points back.

> Time passed. I can't recall the last time i have seen such notifications. In between i have played thousands of blitz and bullet games, but nothing happened.

> I came to the conclusion nobody is cheating on this site anymore. Everyone is friendly and fair. If in thousands games i didn't see notifications, then this must be the truth.

I count 14 cheat reports you sent in the last 6 months, of these 4 were banned accordingly and 1 was banned for else. So you have received at least 5 notifications from Lichess informing you that those reports were correct.

Of those 4 I don't know how many refunds you received but it's possible you received none. It's not automatic that when someone you reported gets banned you receive a refund all the times. You can see our policy here: lichess.org/faq#rating-refund.

> I think that still lichess doesn't have an automated system for catching and banning people who use engines.

Not true. We have several systems in place that automatically run different types of analysis and when cheating is detected they can ban the account.

Then there's a specialized team of fair play moderators dedicated to review user reports everyday.

But there's more than 5 million games played on Lichess everyday. It is simply not feasible to check every single one of them.

I like the sarcasm

Who is this anonymous mod!? *thinking face*

You just have to accept that there is some level of cheating going on with online games from the patzer to the GM level and it's very hard to detect. At the very least they seem to be getting rid of accounts that use engine on every move. At my level I am sometimes very impressed with some my opponents ends games - they obviously taken a "course".

I think smart cheaters just use the engine in a few tight spots to avoid detection. Or play alt accounts. The dumb cheaters probably don't last long.

It has to be difficult to figure out who got assistance for 4 moves. Likely impossible. We have our brilliant moments. At 50, not many but they happen lol