All About Cheating - Part 2: The Psychology and Pathology of Cheaters

@CSKA_Moscou said in #16:
> - pathology is a medical term, cheating, although it is a filthy and horrible thing, is not a disease strictly speaking. Using such a term for cheating is not accurate.

Agreed. Cheating, itself, is probably not a pathology. It is, however, crystal clear that it is the result of pathologies.

> - cheating is often motivated by the lure of quick gain and the feeling of superiority. It's not an illness, everyone sometimes feels or want to feels like a champion or strong, but not everyone cheats (fortunately!).

Agreed. Cheating has many different pathological motivations. An inferiority complex, masquerading as a perceived need to experience 'superiority', is most certainly one of them.

> - so it's a question of controlling one's emotions. such values can be inculcated in the learning process of the child or person.

Agreed. To a large extent, that is exactly correct; however, with that said, there are also a plethora of antithetical 'learning processes' which can serve as a complete dichotomy to 'control of one's emotions' and make such things much less likely in the latter years.

> - a person can be educated or intelligent but also be dishonest. a crooked banker can be a crook and know how to admire Monet's paintings. the same goes for cheating. a great player is not immune to being attracted to cheating.

Agreed. I think that, for the most part, most of the titled players who cheat just see it as a convenience which they believe that they're entitled to. With that said, there are several pathologies which criss-cross with the matter of "entitlement".

> - therefore, I would say that the action called cheating is the result of several factors, sometimes coming from the person's education, sometimes from their personal values and morals, sometimes from their environment. It is undoubtedly possible to get off this bad path for those who have taken it, but I think it is very complicated.

I wasn't able to draw any causation between education and cheating.
I'm very curious to see your logic on this point?

Definitely, I was able to draw exact causation between a person's propensity for things like integrity, respect, truth, kindness, strength, and other personal values and morals. This is crystal clear.

Definitely, I was able to draw exact causation between environment and cheating. A large part of 'environment' includes whichever pathologies they may have inculcated that encourages, rather than discourages, their misbehaviour and willingness to cheat.

As for getting of the path? One needs only make the choice to value respect for others over the appeasement of what one thinks is their own "will to misbehave".

I think that, when we dig deeper, we find that people who have had booze destroy their lives, both want another drink, and also don't ever want another drink again. I think that one action can easily be traced to their damaged psyche, produced by misbehaviour of others, as well as themselves; and I think that we can trace the other action to the actual person, the actual instance of life and love which is the human spirit being reflected through our bodies.

When we ask which one they ACTUALLY want, regardless of if they take another drink or not, it's completely clear that the part that wants to successfully dry out and join A.A. is the REAL 'them'. This is why people who struggle with alcohol addiction often feel guilty after drinking, but never feel guilty after going to A.A.

Anyway. Great discussion! It's definitely a 'whole thing', that's for sure!

Too much text too read. But 3% of 20,000,000 = 580,000. Not 58,000. Simple math errors make the rest of the analysis very suspicious.

Where do I find part 1? Interesting but there is a Blogs area on this site.

I do think the majority of those who cheat simply do not get the impact it has on their opponent who is a real person who has come online to play a fair game of chess. It isn't just an arcade game.

The lazy master: interesting because those players obviously think they are big at the game, but have not made it to the major level, and yes, they might believe it is because they "don't know the theory they ought to know" in the openings. "Hey, guess what, I'll pull out something on opening theory - not Stockfish but some other resource - and use it online. They'll never know I didn't learn and memorise all this...!" And I'm sure a LOT of that goes on at that level. You'd have to ask Daniel Rensch who runs that other site. But he probably won't tell you.

@PaulC123 i suspect out of that 58,000 accounts many are just the same people creating new accounts. I’ve played a lot on this site and in chess.com and I only suspect maybe 1% of the people I’ve played against cheated. Maybe because I played mostly 3 minute blitz it has less cheaters because of time? Idk but I rarely ever think someone’s cheated me

Cheating got so out of control on this website that I stopped playing rated games entirely. I only played unrated games for well over a year, but now people are doing it even in unrated games!! It's absolutely insane. Some of them are so lazy they literally just sit there with the lichess engine open in a separate tab and play all the arrowed moves. It's an epidemic.

Bruh .....this is a forum.....not a book club

@mmfitzpa said in #22:

{ Too much text too read. But 3% of 20,000,000 = 580,000. Not 58,000. Simple math errors make the rest of the analysis very suspicious.}

I guess it's confusing when your reading and comprehension skills need polishing.

I wrote " 58,000 get kicked off Chess.com every MONTH!!! Chess.com say's they have 20 million people on there site.. and that's about to 3% ... so the cheating is not that bad."

Now multiply 58k by 12 months ...

Now re-read what you wrote..
here ends the math lesson

@W0rstPlayerInHistory or maybe it’s just your name holds true. I hardly ever see cheaters

I play rapid with increments and have a rating around 2000, so you'd expect I'd be playing against a lot of cheats, but the last player to beat me whose account is marked was back in June 2019 and it doesn't appear he cheated in the game against me but won because of my blunders. I had winning changes in the game but didn't take them, and certainly might have drawn it as we got into the endgame.

I play rapid with increments because I enjoy having time to think about my moves and not end up in flagging contests. Many avoid that because they're certain they'll be playing cheats at that time control. But as I say, it hasn't been happening to me. All my opponents who have beaten me recently were clean. But you don't need to cheat to beat me, you don't even need to play perfectly, you just need to play better than me on the day.

And when I win such games against 2100+ players? Usually because in the game they made a key blunder. They do occasionally make them, and some of the time it's against me.

@earlpurple said in #29:

Yup. Very well said.

Here is the actual reality of things:

"I, ____, have played some exceptional games of chess which were at least 200 points above my rating, where I was at my very best.

I saw the board clearly; nothing was ambiguous; and I was just, somehow, played completely differently.

My opponent definitely reported me, but no cheating was found because no cheating was present.

I was on a real heater that day, and I played some unbelievable chess! That's really the whole and entire truth of the matter!"

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Now, thanks to the truth, we can understand that the majority of lies are not occurring in games where people cheated, but right here, in these forums, by fearful people who employ careless imagination.

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Stay lovely, good people!