Addressing Sandbagging and Cheating

Online chess will always have its share of people sandbagging and cheating. But chess.com has some serious potential to make this site more enjoyable. The rating system is the main issue in enabling these players . A player should get a rating based off how they play for 100 games win or lose. Chess.com has the resources to do this after each game they give you a rating for that game. But how would this negate cheaters? Cheaters under this rating system would quickly rise to the top where they would play higher skill players and have to cheat in a more obvious way  making it easier to ban them. Sandbaggers would have to play 100 games at low level to get a desired rating making it very boring for them. Overall it’s good idea as it would encourage good chess and cheaters wouldn’t get the satisfaction of taking elo that doesn’t belong to them. 

Please understand I love the idea of the winner getting elo but it has created the monster that is cheating/sandbagging.

In before the lock.

The perception of cheating levels is orders of magnitude more than the actual amount.

https://support.chess.com/article/648-what-do-i-need-to-know-about-fair-play-on-chess-com

https://www.chess.com/article/view/online-chess-cheating

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chesscom-update-december-2024?alert=content#FairPlay

The site closed more than 74,000 accounts in November for fair play violations and has a full team of staff working on reports along with some automated systems for detection.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/fair-play

That said, discussions of cheating, potential cheating, or cheat detection are not allowed in the general forums. If you want to discuss join the following club

https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum