Cheating in Vote Chess?

Hi everyone, 

A thought has recently occurred to me. How does chess.com deal with cheating in vote chess? A club could easily get one member to use an engine (the club could either tell the player to do this or be unaware the player is doing this) and suggest the engine's moves. Then, the clubs could win almost all of their games. Does chess.com ever investigate VC games for possible cheating? I would assume not, because some clubs might have masters or really strong players that simply play really well and suggest all good moves. 

But, can chess.com hypothetically take any action against a club? For instance, if they investigated a club and found they were obviously cheating (for instance, a 1 man VC club that has won 20 of 20 games playing at an accuracy of over 99% when its only player is rated 1000.) Could/would chess.com even do anything about that? Have they ever punished a club (banned them from playing VC, etc.) for obvious cheating?

Also, what about this? A club leader could also make a 1 man VC club, challenge it to a ton of games, play the minimum of 3 moves, then resign/lose on time as the 1 man club, giving tons of points and wins to the main club. I am pretty sure a club somewhere has thought of this or done this before. Can chess.com do anything about that?

Basically, I am a bit concerned about the integrity in vote chess since it is so easy to cheat and I doubt chess.com investigates it the way they investigate single members' games because, as I said, some clubs legitimately just have really strong players.

Thanks!

Yeah. Probably to push their club up the leaderboard.

I mean, seriously, a club could just organize 100 VC matches against 1 man clubs, win them all, and get to the top 100 on the leaderboard. 

true true i think they would punish the individual  member if they found out but im not sure their processes

How do they find out who specifically was cheating though?

It would look odd to see a fair play closure due to vote chess, but I suppose that's what they would do.

I wonder if chess.com staff can see the private comments of clubs in vote chess games. 

For instance, someone saying "OK guys, ran it through the engine, best move is Qd2," and then 10 other people say "Thanks!" "You're the best!" including the leaders of the club. Could chess.com hypothetically do anything about that?

i suppose if someone reported them...

Yes, that's another thing, and I've seen it happen many times. Public clubs are especially vulnerable to this.

Yeah unfortunately I don't think chess.com can really do anything about cheating in vote chess. It would be too difficult to prove most of the time. Chess.com already has their hands full with normal games anyway. 

If someone outright admitted to cheating in the VC comments then I think chess.com would be totally justified in banning that person though.

Yeah, I think you're right. I agree, it would be too difficult to prove and the fair play team is busy enough with regular games. Maybe they have a separate FP team for club VC games, but I doubt that.

Yeah, that's true. I bet chess.com can see private comments in VC games if they want to.

Discussion of cheating is not permitted in the main forums; if you want to discuss cheating, you should join the Cheating Forum: https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum

However, there's also a thread on the subject in this club: https://www.chess.com/club/admin-s-corner-and-training-club

I am locking this thread.

BTW, in response to this: "I bet chess.com can see private comments in VC games if they want to."

Actually, once the game is complete, all comments on the game from both teams become visible to everyone.  This is actually quite valuable for reviewing a lost game - you can go back and see what the other side was thinking.