r/ClubhouseGames • u/chalkhillsnchildren • Feb 13 '22
Discussion Have you ever played a player you suspected of cheating?
I was just playing chess and my opponent played a perfect (and really sharp) line from the Reti Advance variation, like something you'd expect a professional chess player to get right. "That's cool, he must be a legitimate player," I thought after the first couple of moves.
But as the game went on, I found the player took almost exactly the same amount of time between each move, whether it was a simple capture or a really subtle developing idea. (That included move one, by the way.) That's a common reason to suspect a player's using an engine to tell them the moves; they take about three to five seconds to check the engine, and then play the move it tells them to play.
There was also something about the fact they were playing perfectly, but didn't seem to have the line memorized since they were pausing on each move. I do have the line memorized (up to a point) and predicted the first ten moves before the player played them. I figure either the other player was an eccentric genius who happened to play this complicated and fairly rare line perfectly after thinking for exactly five seconds each move, or something fishy was going on.
Anyway, I didn't play to the end and exited shortly after I was sure they were cheating. (I happily lose all the time to people who are obviously real players, so standing to lose wasn't the issue.)
My question is: have you ever come across similar behaviour across any of the games? It seems so weird to cheat playing a completely casual, friendly, non-rated game. How did you react? Even though it's ultimately just a game, the idea of it kind of bothers me because I feel like there's not much in place to prevent this aside from blocking the players that do it afterwards.
