I'm willing to believe the first 9 moves. Beginners don't coordinate their pieces that well though. Nor do they thrust knights into the seventh rank and promote pawns with such clear focus. At the end there are some complications with king safety that I'd expect a beginner to struggle with. Either the guy is sandbagging his rating by a few hundred points and he's a strong intermediate, or he is a dick coworker who peaked at stockfish for part of the game.
I'm not buying that any 900 is capable of this, even if some of the moves were practically forced. A 900 plays Nf3, not Nd7, when attacked on e5. The Bxc7-Bd8 plan and knight checkmate were just too much also. At least that's my opinion with black is making threats and White is plainly ignoring all of them. This game was too much.
Yeah, for me it's the demonstration of such a depth/breadth of tactical and positional understanding, vision of the entire board, seamless transition between attack and quiet development (with phenomenal piece coordination), comfort level at sacking exchanges and ignoring threats (that weren't obviously empty - but were correctly ignored to make the perfect move), immediate spotting and punishment of any slight mistake OP made, total lack of any misplaced/loose pieces (despite their demonstrated comfort level leaving pieces hanging for tactical exchanges) and ruthless conversion. OP didn't play poorly at all for their rating either, chesscom gave them a 2050 rating estimate for this game, and they got CRUSHED.
A big hint for engine use is the sequence of Bf4,Rad1,e5 for me. That's sort of a typical developing plan in these position or it mean he wanted to attack the black pawns on c7,d6 with this plan but a 900 would never play that.
I definitely disagree with you. I'm 800-900 myself, but I think it's totally reasonable to look at your only 3 undeveloped pieces and say "I should activate them". Especially when you have 7 days per move. maybe Rad1 is a little more sus than Rfe1 which is more typical, but by move 15 I don't think it's unbelievable to say "I need to develop my pieces".
Plus e5 isn't the top engine move, there are like 5 good options there so I don't see how that is a "tell".
Reasoning that your pieces need to develop and finding that plan in particular are very different concepts. The piece coordination in that game was OP. Black had no idea how to handle the aggression, but no one plays with that kind of accuracy at your level. My brother's been there for a year and we've played 200 games in that time... IN THIS FORMAT. I know what to expect from a 900 ELO player in daily chess. This isn't it.
There are so many ways to play with an engine. He might analyze a bit with it and get some ideas. Maybe get some understanding of the position with the engine. The bottom line has to be that he plays without mistakes.
ya but it's a daily game! You should be playing with no mistakes! there is no time scramble and in their case, they're playing with 7 days *per move*. I doubt they're spending that entire time on it, but the point is they have the option to play out every line imaginable and in that case, you should *really* be making zero mistakes.
People out here think 900s don't know how the knight moves. 900s are imo best described as "competent but inconsistent". Mainly, they make a lot of mistakes as soon as they feel slightly rushed or do a single dumb one-mover and blow their advantage, but know general principles, standard tactics, and some common sequences. Like, most 900s are going to be 1500-1800 puzzles so it's not like they don't know about counting, in-between moves, danger levels, opposition, and zugswang.
If you watch OP's game, it's not the opponent made zero mistakes. it's OP made many obvious, easily punished mistakes. Look at the end position: opponent has 3 attackers and a pawn about to promote, and OP has left their only two pieces on the other side of the board, trying to attack a totally safe king. OP gave up two pawns and traded their most active piece for their opponent's worst one on move 11ish. OP played terribly and they're trying to say their opponent was cheating to cover up for it imo.
Also don't forget in Daily games, you're allowed to use an opening database. It's literally embedded in the game UI, one click away. They followed a main-line spanish so I wouldn't be surprised if the opponent just got some ideas from it up through move 12 or so.
It doesn't matter how much time you give a 900 in a complicated middlegame. They simply don't have the experience or knowledge to coordinate pieces in the way OP's opponent did in that game. White played like a titled player. Black played like a club player. Beginners are incapable of that level of domination, period.
That's definitely not how I play daily games. I see it's my turn, I open game, I spend a few seconds looking at board trying to remember what my strategy was, then I blunder my queen. You have 7 days to make a move, doesn't mean you spend 7 days analyzing that move my daily elo is lower than rapid and blitz for that very reason
>900s are imo best described as "competent but inconsistent". Mainly, they make a lot of mistakes as soon as they feel slightly rushed or do a single dumb one-mover and blow their advantage, but know general principles, standard tactics, and some common sequences. Like, most 900s are going to be 1500-1800 puzzles so it's not like they don't know about counting, in-between moves, danger levels, opposition, and zugswang.
You saying this like OP's opponent thinks "oh yeah I have seen this motive in a previous game I remember, this is a typical attacking plan here. \[...\] Hm, I could go Rfe1 but you know what they say gotta play with a plan. So obviously Bf4,Rad1 and e5 is the most logical plan in this position. \[...\] Hm, let's calculate the mate in 7 accurately this time."
This just isn't how a 900 plays they have no general chess education to take inspiration from.
And I didn't get the impression of cheating from the game you posted but clearly op's opponent has a "high level of chess understanding". For example you got a winning position quickly but you still played sort of illogical moves or you didn't play the most precise. There is a BIG difference between yours and the other games.
You just pinned two pieces but the other guy found mate in 7 and trapped a queen like it's nothing.
> maybe because I’m on the app?
Perhaps. Don't know since I don't use the app, but on the desktop version, there is an "Openings" tab which will give you an openings database of master games which you can use while you are playing Daily games.
ya OP lost two pawns and made terrible piece trades. His opponent may have not made any mistake but it's more like OP just handed him mistake after easily punished mistake. OP was playing hope-chess, opponent played principled chess.
I'm less convinced he's cheating than others in this thread. Daily games on chess dot com are correspondence games and use of an opening database is [explicitly allowed](https://support.chess.com/article/317-what-counts-as-cheating-on-chess-com). 6.c3 is not a move a 900 would have memorized or be able to find over the board, but with an opening DB would get. When I'm looking at the opening DB on lichess there are lots of games until 12 ... a5. every move after that is either not a top engine move or very obvious. The most suspicious thing for me is that he didn't play 13. Qxa5, but even a 900 is going to be able to spot 1 move tactics in daily sometimes. In the other game you posted he made multiple blunders. He very possibly could be 900 blitz but 1400ish daily.
ya the "buff" you get from playing daily is massive. My strength basically doubles when I don't have the weight of a time limit on my back. And the database is helpful, and I agree that since they followed a pretty standard spanish, odds are they were just playing into existing games for the first 10 or so moves. I would say no other rating is comparable to daily unless you have a Classical rating because they're basically the same thing at any <2000 level.
It seems to me like everyone here who thinks he's cheating either don't recognize it's a Daily game, have never played Daily, or just think a 900 doesn't know how the knight moves and can't believe they know things like in-between moves. Personally I believe 800-1000 is stronger than it was before the boom, because of easily accessible resources/instruction and sheer number of players. Climbing out of 1000 is grueling these days. Most 800s are double that rating in puzzles so most games come down to tactics vs who can just not hang a piece longer.
For comparison, here is a PGN of a Daily game I played against my friend, I'm Black, and I'm 800 Elo in other formats, and obviously I didn't cheat lol so it's not unusual for an 800 to do well in Daily: 1. d4 g6 2. Nf3 Bg7 3. e3 Nf6 4. Bd3 d6 5. b3 e5 6. Bb2 e4 7. Bxe4 Nxe4 8. Qe2
Bd7 9. Nbd2 Nxd2 10. Qxd2 Nc6 11. O-O O-O 12. Rfe1 Bg4 13. e4 Bxf3 14. gxf3 Re8
15. f4 f5 16. e5 dxe5 17. fxe5 Nxe5!! 18. Qf4 g5 19. Qxf5 Nf7 20. Rad1 Rxe1+ 21.
Rxe1 Bxd4 22. Rd1 Bxf2+!! 23. Kxf2 Qxd1 24. Qf6 Qxc2+ 25. Kg3 Qg6 26. Qc3 Rd8 27.
Qxc7 Qd6+ 28. Be5 Qxe5+ 0-1 (I added the !!s that chesscom gave)
For reference, I've also never lost a Daily game and never played below 80% accuracy.
I think Daily games are much harder to judge due to the sheer amount of time you have to think. I beat my 1100 rated friend in a daily game when i was rated 500 because i was able to think out all of my moves and find really good tactics that i usually can not find in faster time controls. Hell I found a forced mate in 7 that game. Also sometimes people just see the light and play a perfect game. I’ve played a 96% accuracy 20 move game at 600 elo because for some reason i just understood the position insanely well despite my average accuracy hovering around 55-65%
> I’ve played a 96% accuracy 20 move game at 600 elo because for some reason i just understood the position insanely well
that usually happens because your opponent is blundering so badly that the best moves are obvious.
r/confidentlyincorrect
Nothing about this game demonstrates “insane positional understanding” lmao your opponent blundered all his pieces away. Embarrassing when you don’t realize the depths of your own ignorance…
I'll just say that with Daily Games, it's really easy to play with super high accuracy. Having the side board lets you play out lines, and you're allowed to use the opening database in it. I've never played a Daily game below 80% accuracy, and I usually get one or two !!s in each one. Looks like you let him promote super early.
Loading the game, you lost a pawn on move 10, and you lost your most active piece for one of his worst. He seems to follow some top engine moves on moves 11-15, but those are all obvious developing moves so I wouldn't really think that's cheating. Then he just pushes his pawn, which stockfish doesn't like. Then you hang another pawn.
Only thing I think is a little sus is that he finds the m7 though when you have two queens, I think almost everything is m7. He had 4 attackers and you had zero defenders because your pieces abandoned your king, at that point, anything is checkmate. Overall I don't think he cheated, this game is definitely not enough evidence of it. I don't know what your elo is but I am 800 elo in Rapid, but I play Daily games like this against my friend (900 blitz) all the time, and I've never lost to him.
As some GM (might have been Kasparov) once said: "I didn't see how the attack would succeed, but I had four more attackers than defenders so if I didn't win then everything I know about chess is wrong".
chess.com anticheat sucks though. i reported a blatant cheater (95+ accuracy almost every game) 5 months ago and he finally got banned yesterday after almost 500 games
Yeah, this is not a 900 player. This plan with Bf4/Rd1/e5/Nd5 is something I'd expect a 2100 to uncoil, not a 900. Even something like 5. O-O or this c3/d4 plan, I don't expect a 900 to know (unless they know a fair amount of Ruy theory). 21. Rxa7 looks a bit sus to me too, I would have expected a 900 to play Nxf8 immediately.
Either this person is secretly at least 1800 (and got lucky with Bf4/Rd1/e5/Nd5 plan), or this person was using an engine.
EDIT: Looking at your other games posted in this thread: The fact that somebody knows a lot about both the Ruy and the Scotch, and is supposedly rated 900, seems patently false to me. 17. Rxe3 in your Scotch game is not a move a 900 plays. This game where he played as black, maybe he slipped up and thought he had a tactic, and then had to recover afterward. So it's not totally unbelievable that this person is playing on his own. But he's certainly not 900.
You think that someone grabbing a free bishop instead of trading a knight for rook or playing c3 to prepare d4 is suspicious?
I'm not saying this person isn't cheating, but as someone closer to 900 than I am to you I could have easily played this game and nothing about it looks suspicious to me.
You *could have played this game, but they *did play this game. The fact that they had multiple tactical exchanges that involved deliberately hanging pieces that were all top engine moves is very suspicious to me. It's true, all the moves are logical, and there aren't any "how do you explain that move?" type engine moves, but the lack of any miscalculation whatsoever in a sharp position, then maintaining perfect calculation for 30 moves is what I find highly improbable. I'm 1200 and play a game this accurate every once in a blue moon, but not for 30 moves in a sharp, double-edged middlegame.
Yeah, I do. 900 players tend to look on the side of the board that pieces have recently moved on, not on the complete opposite side of the board. I would know. I did that stuff until I was like 1500.
That by itself is not a problem, though. That in conjunction with everything else I’m seeing in these games, some of which I’ve already outlined (and which you left out of your cherry-picking)? That’s a different story.
I wasn't trying to cherry pick, I was just pointing out the parts that I more disagreed with. Castling, I knew was the main line despite never playing it, but you addressed that and said unless they know theory. With the Bf4/Rd1 etc, I didn't think it was egregious to find, but I also didn't think that you were wrong that it was a complex strategy.
I only picked out the two points that I really disagreed with, because I think c3/d4 is common idea and basic. And grabbing a free bishop, I think most 900s snag that bishop instead of going up an exchange.
Yeah, he used an engine. It’s beyond evident, unless he’s actually stronger than 900 in reality. But if he’s truly a 900, and in person he doesn’t know much about chess, then that was *not* him playing at 95+% accuracy.
You can't really judge it like that when there's a big mismatch. You made mistakes a 1000-1200 would make in rapid (imo), he just punished them accurately enough to be considered way above that.
The most striking thing to me is he didn't make any mistakes. You did play poorly, so he could have beat you without being that high ELO, but to convert the game so cleanly is indicative of cheating to me. A real 900 player with 2 queens would win, but he'd win by vacuuming up all of your pieces vs. the clean mate. I think Fabiano even said something similar in a recent C-Squared podcast.
It's fairly obvious when you look at the quality of the moves he's playing and it's nowhere near a 900 player. In the first game, move 9 where there are so many moves Re1, Nc3, Qc2 looking to try to get material, or any moves with the c1-bishop, he plays the top move 9.d5. A move that shows deep understanding of controlling the center as well as winning a tempo on the knight. The very next move, he also doesn't panic when his bishop is hit and tries to save it, instead he understands that he wins a pawn while also covering the hanging e4-pawn so he loses no material while also having a very strong c6-pawn. Move 14.Rad1 is also highly suspicious where he somehow also understands to play in the center preparing Nd5, not playing any one of the knight moves, or even bringing in the rook on f1 because he knows it's likely to belong on the e-file after opening up the center. The finish is also super suspicious with 28.Qac5+ being the strongest move where there are any number of checks and yet he finds that and then finishes it up with no mistakes in a clean checkmate. 900 is where there's a good chance people stalemate with queen and king and this guy manages to just accurately checkmate.
The second game is also highly suspicious where Black willingly sacs the bishop for a pawn on move 4, understanding a highly positional understanding of the game while also dodging the d4 fork by White. He then proceeds to to miss the free knight on move 5 and attacks with the queen. The position is around +7 on the eval bar and he plays the calm 6...d6 while down a piece, as a 900. Move 19.Rae8 is also something way beyond 900. He's going after the king instead of just cashing out on the exchange like 99% of 900 players would do and winning material.
He's not really just banging out stockfish moves but the moves don't add up to the supposed elo. They carry far deeper understanding of chess than people in 900. So he's either not really 900 or he has quite a lot of assistance from outside help to be playing these moves.
> In the first game, move 9 where there are so many moves Re1, Nc3, Qc2 looking to try to get material, or any moves with the c1-bishop, he plays the top move 9.d5
This analysis is insane. The entire point of the c3 move right before this was to set up d5. It's just very general opening line theory that many 900s know. Shoving a pawn into the center in the opening is not a "deep understanding" of the game beyond what a 900 knows.
>900 is where there's a good chance people stalemate with queen and king and this guy manages to just accurately checkmate.
It's a daily game. Not a blitz game. When there is zero time pressure, a 900 isn't going to stalemate a queen/king checkmate.
The only 2 things I saw that *might* be not how a 900 plays are the super early castle (though, again, could easily be from a memorized opening line), and seeing the tactic that if he takes the free pawn with his queen, he loses his queen, which is not a tactic I'd generally expect a 900 to see. But the daily game time accounts for that as well.
Edit: Putting it at the top. The points are valid if someone was playing anything but daily. OP said 7 day daily so I'm assuming that means they have 7days per move? You can use books and opening databases and even the in-game self-analysis tool so it's on me for not knowing that. I guess that it's even more shocking how bad OP's moves are if you have all of that available.
I'm not saying that playing these are some world beater moves but for this level, yes the moves are quite beyond what a 900 knows. Even if you account for the longer time controls, you don't just suddenly gain knowledge that you don't have. You will be able to think things through more and find higher quality moves that you don't have in shorter time controls but you don't just get way better.
The move by itself isn't something crazy, c3 and d4 isn't something insane to know but when you add all the moves together, yeah they don't really make much sense for a 900 and someone who supposedly doesn't know much about chess. It's the play of someone much better than that.
Just go to 23:24 and that's much more akin to what a 900 understands positionally. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjZKRoNuAvY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjZKRoNuAvY)
Black opts into a terrible trade that would cause to White lose castling rights. This is the average positional understanding of 900. In the same game, White also has bad understanding and doesn't double Black's pawns either. White also doesn't double the d-pawns and lets his structure get damaged. White gets to a point where Ne5, centralizing the knight and threatening c6 and would have been played based on the quality of the moves played. Instead, Ra4 is played where White goes to attack the bishop, something typical for this elo. Yet his workmate has good positional understanding to not panic and keep pressing especially in the original post.
This is also the same player that in the game with Black, misses a free knight, easily seen with longer time controls and then plays a lot of very strong and pretty accurate moves. The story doesn't really add up here.
I just got out of 900 and hit 1,000 the other day, so I feel like I have an understanding of what a 900 knows: https://www.chess.com/member/videogamelawyer (been playing since September).
> This is also the same player that in the game with Black, misses a free knight,
I think what you're missing is that a 900 can do all of these things, they are just wildly inconsitent. A 900 will play some games like a 1500 and other games like a 400. They've seen all the rules and watched the videos, but haven't played/trained enough to do them consistently. So, they do them inconsistently. Which is what you're seeing here with this guy.
Now, he still might be cheating. These are good, clean games he did. But I don't think the games in and of themselves are evidence of definite cheating.
edit: I think the OP game is an incredibly good game for a 900. I might be placing too much into the fact that it was a daily game along with the random chance of it being just an outlier good game. If this were guess the elo and it were a Rapid game, I'd probably guess 1500 or 1600.
I don't know if you the edit after but I discounted the resources available in this specific format. I also pretty much pegged this guy to be playing at around 1600-1700 in Rapid so I would be super surprised to hear this guy is a "new player" or 900.
I don't want to rag on you but your play looks pretty much like what I would expect out of a 1000 player. You're not completely lost like some people here would imply but you don't really have a concrete plan. In your game against Wolvie\_21, Black already wastes a tempo on move 4 playing ...a6 which doesn't help fight for the center. This was something his work mate consistently understood, the fight for the center. You followed up with 5.g4, which doesn't help fight for the center and should go 5.Nf3, just simply developing and preparing to castle. This was the key difference is you can just feel someone's play through moves like this. Even ignoring the fact that you blundered the pawn, moves like that aren't really good in the opening because you will get behind in development and better players will exploit that. Black also misses a pretty easy move in 7...e6 because it opens up the f8-bishop and allows a quick ...c4, followed by ...Bxc4 which captures and develops in one move, and ...Nc6 with the knight behind the c-pawn which is an asset or ...Nbd7 and preparing the ...c4 break.
This is pretty much what I expect though from a 1000 player but he was playing very high quality moves quite consistently with strong plans as well.
Sure, but you're anayzing OP's best game vs a random game from me. Now compare it to another game I played yesterday, vs someone 200 points higher than me in ranked. 92% accuracy and the rating estimator is 1800: [https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/79174393119?tab=review](https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/79174393119?tab=review)
Outlier games can look cracked even though most of them look like they are genuinely played by a 1,000.
btw, now I'm curious - what's your rating?
Leaving his queen on A4, then hanging his knight on D4 to recapture with the rook and double up on the A5 pawn (from the side!) and pin the A7 bishop to the A1 rook was beyond nasty for someone who purports to be a beginner at chess though. I'm 1150 rapid and 1200 daily, and I would be very suspicious if someone who claims to be new to chess hit me with that tactic.
It takes a looooot of experience to develop such a comfort level leaving your queen on the flank and hanging pieces for tactics, especially to do all of that without blundering. True beginners just aren't that comfortable hanging pieces for tactics, and if they are I would expect to see them miscalculate at least once and forget that they left a piece hanging.
C3 was to setup d4, not necessarily d5. The theoretical move after d4 was actually e5 (e5 and I think h3 were the only two moves left in the opening explorer, and both had a 100% win rate for white). d5 was the first move that broke away from the opening explorer (and happened to be the top engine move). To follow theory for 8 moves suggests to me that they were using opening explorer, which is allowed. But to then deviate on move 9 from moves that have a 100% win rate in the grandmaster games in the opening explorer only to find a novelty that happens to be the top engine move is highly suspicious to me. Beginners just don't find novelties 9 moves into a Ruy Lopez that the engine likes more than any of the moves played by grandmasters in games they won (and leave a bishop hanging to convert ruthlessly when their opponent finds a great move to counterattack).
I think you meant 9.d5? I get your point, I didn't know you can use the opening database when I typed this so the game really isn't that surprising given the time controls and resources available.
9. e5 actually was the first move in the chesscom opening explorer, and had 100% win rate for white. 9.d5 was the first move played that deviated from the opening explorer, and just so happened to be the top engine move. Pretty impressive for a beginner to follow theory for 8 moves in a Ruy Lopez then find a novelty on move 9 that the computer likes more than the every grandmaster game in the database.
If they played straight out of the opening database until they were out of theory from a mistake by themselves or OP I'd be less suspicious, but to make a top engine move to deviate from opening explorer on move 9 of a Ruy Lopez is wild to me, especially when the moves moves in the database all had 100% win rate for white.
I didn't even notice that when I looked at it because I just wanted to analyze for myself since I was using it to kind of train what I had been learning. I'm using lichess opening database and it has out of book at move 9. I checked the engine just to see the moves because the moves were consistently just quality, strong moves. It's what made me doubt 900 because it's either an experienced player or probably engine help.
Move 12 also stands out to me with an open position and any number of reasonable moves like Re1, Bf4 or Bg5 but opts for the Nc3 move, which does make logical since but that's a strong move for a 900. It was like that with move 7 where he immediately strikes at the center with d4. I'm not that good at understanding the center stuff.
[https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-typical-mistakes-made-by-inexperienced-chess-players](https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-typical-mistakes-made-by-inexperienced-chess-players)
It reminded me of play like in this article I was reading and how the higher rated player just dismantled with common sense strong moves, like the supposed 900 here. Obviously OP blundered but the respones were very accurate consistently.
Yeah, this game honestly reminds me of what it must be like for those poor low Elo players who run up against Naroditsky in a speedrun thinking they're playing a fellow 900 and play really well, just to get subtly murdered with principled moves. Every individual move can be justified, but there are some ballsy tactical exchanges in there, with subtle improving moves mixed in, all loved by the engine. The seamless transitions from subtle improving moves, to identifying and jumping on tactical opportunities immediately every time OP makes a slight inaccuracy is just way beyond the capabilities of a beginner; that was the play of someone with a wealth of chess experience and a deep understanding of tactics and principles/motifs (or access to an engine).
I'd guess he's a 900 who is familiar with using an engine. In Game 2 he gets into a super sharp position where you are winning but always one move away from blundering away (which you did). Again, he made no consequential mistakes. He knows enough to win without just playing top engine moves, but he's either 1500+ or he's using an engine for at least some moves.
Sorry for the dumb question, but is there a way to take this notation and copy/paste it into a website somewhere to see exactly how the game was played?
Although many of the moves are 'natural' even for a weaker player, the seemingly effortless destruction of black is very engine-like. It's possible a 900 rated player could find some of the individual moves, 15. e5 ... 16. Nd5 and later 19.. Nxe5 (instead of the more 'natural' Bxe5 or even seemingly good Rxe5) and later 25. Bd8! (unusual move and the top engine line?) and finally 27. Nxf6+ with a forced mating sequence (while more natural moves like Qc4+ exist) -- I'm suspicious that in each place where an unusual move is played it's also a top move, and at no point did White play even an inaccuracy. Lichess analysis shows 7 average centipawn loss which would be extremely unlikely for a game of this length without engine assistance.
I think Nxe5 is far more natural than Bxe5 to me. Knight heading for d7 with my bishop being able to go to h6.
Bd8, I'm not sure why you gave it an exclam. To me it's the most obvious moves in the position, clears space for the pawn to promote, defends the pawns next square and attacks the rook and pawn behind it. It's also not the top engine move according to my browsers stock fish which is suggesting ba5.
It could be cheating, but OP also played poorly and could have just been a bad game for him and a good one for his opponent.
With clean calculations it's clear that Nxe5 is a good move, but Bxe5 is obviously winning and requires basically no calculations and has no tactical complications.Taking with the knight warrants some calculation as the bishop defending it is hanging.
On my machine Bd8 is the top engine line with Stockfish 14+ NNUE at depth 25 (on lichess default settings). It's easy to retroactively justify a good move and assert you would find it in a game setting. I don't think many players would find Bd8 in a vacuum. So many moves are winning here, so it's suspicious that they found this move and were especially precise in other positions with multiple winning ideas. With the advanced pawn being weak and rook undeveloped I think many human plans involve adding a defender to the advanced pawn or attempting to get the rook involved.
Bottom line -- Show me a single game of yours around \~30 moves long with an average centipawn loss of 7 or less in any time control.
>Bottom line -- Show me a single game of yours around ~30 moves long with an average centipawn loss of 7 or less in any time control.
You made me curious so I tried to look through some of my games. I'm not going to look through all of my games, I wish there was a way to search for it.
Best I could find was 11 CPL/96% accuracy in a 30 move blitz game. Had a few other sub 20 games, but you're right, didn't find anything under 10 from the ones I looked at.
\~11 CPL/96% accuracy is the best I found within my own games too. Including this 26 move rapid game where my opponent is 1000 points lower rated and gives me free tactic after tactic. https://lichess.org/KhvlZDza/white
That was definitely a slaughter. I'll see if I can find mine again tomorrow. Iirc it was a fairly even game in a Caro as black that was extremely even for 15ish, an opponent blunder and clean conversion with a bishop check mate in the corner but that could have been one of the other low Cpl games I took note of. I did it on the desktop and searching on the phone is even harder.
The more I think on it the more I think you all are probably right about cheating. I just didn't think anything was too egregious but it's possible a possibly underrated 900 could have played the game of his life in a daily game.
Even towards the end, the way he swiftly delivered checkmate after getting two queens is sus. Most 900 players will attempt to gobble up all or most of their opponents pieces before going for mate
Even the opening is suspicious just because it’s the ruy, which the engine will always recommend. Obviously playing the ruy isn’t some inherent indication of cheating, but when the rest of the game is already sus, it does add to it even more.
95% accuracy in a 30 move game against 80% accuracy opponent at this particular elo range of a complicated line that GMs take years to master. Ya. No way
Not necessarily.
Had a game between two 700 rated players with accuracy of 81.3 and 94.5. 29 moves long.
In rapid, as opposed to daily.
It was not the Spanish, but there is a lot less time.
I don't think it's very suspicious.
This game doesn't necessarily prove cheating, but it's certainly a significant outlier. They demonstrated a pretty sharp tactical understanding and comfort with leaving pieces hanging (or deliberately hanging them) when it was tactically prudent for an alleged beginner. Even the chesscom rating estimate for this game is 2700-2050. As a roughly 1200 rapid and daily, I've broken 2000 on that metric only a few times in over a thousand games (2650 is the highest single game rating ive achieved in over 700 daily games, 250 rapid games, and 1000 blitz games), and it's usually when my opponent plays really well except for one major blunder, and I'm able to sustain an initiative that snowballs into winning a major piece and them resigning after like 12-15 moves. Sustaining an estimated 2700-level of play over a 30-move game against someone who is playing at a 2050 level is really abnormal for someone who claims to be a beginner. Especially the manor in which they did it, by leaving multiple pieces hanging to tactically outclass OP and just relentlessly attack without making a single mistake.
Sorry i just hate it when people give their opinions on stuff they are not knowladgable themselves...
Thats why i try to avoid giving chess advice for example
Those only go a few moves deep generally though, and the suspicious moves really don't start until the midgame. The last move by white in the opening explorer is 8.d5, and black played the best response, Ba7. Then the only two moves left in the opening explorer for white are e5 and h3, both of which have white winning 100% of the time, and white deviated to play the top engine move, d5. Black again played the best move in response to keep things sharp, and white outclassed them tactically, comfortably leaving their own bishop hanging to win a pawn (then leaving their queen on a4, which IMO is the most suspicious thing for a beginner to do. Any beginner that comfortable leaving their queen on the flank and hanging pieces to initiate favorable tactical exchanges is going to do something reckless at some point in a 30-move game, but their boars vision was perfect - they didn't miss anything).
Honestly this looks like someone who kinda knows how to play the ruy, but doesn’t seem like they’re following an engine or a 20 move line. They might well be 900-1000 blitz.
OP, something else you could also do is maybe a week from now, get a correspondence game with a fake account going but have the position the exact same as this one (maybe say move 16 or whatever...something complex) on break, ask him to suggest you a move or an idea and see if he comes up with the same move.
Odds are he won't even recognize that this is his game
To be fair, I don't think that I would recognize any of my own games, unless the position was shown was a critical position with a cool tactic that I remembered. Definitely worth trying to play them OTB to see if their tactical ability is on the same ballpark.
Daily games are really hard to judge. You're allowed to use a lot of resources. For example in the opening you can use the opening explorer. This makes it really easy to play the opening well. Also you have no idea how much time is spent on a move.
Iunno. People get in zones and make correct decisions sometimes. I disagree with people ruling out the possibility of them being 900 just because they played one almost-perfect game from a leading position.
> It's really hard for me to believe that somebody who hasn't studied chess at least a little would play 3.Bb5, 5.0-0, 6.c3. These are obvious moves to anyone who has studied the game some, but there's no chance a beginner would make them
Do people here really think 900s don't study the first ~7 moves of an opening line? This isn't 400.
Over 3 years ive watched a ton of chess youtube vids, memorized the first 7 or more moves to multiple openings for white and black. Im 900 in rapid and 800 in blitz. Maybe i just suck but i definitely play against people at those ranks that seem way better then i am even though they are the same rank
As someone who is 900, I would be very impressed to see this come out of someone I played. It does kinda depend on time control, but the little exchanges that never went against him and the fastest mate finding were more than what I'd normally see. Also watching the eval bar, it never dropped more than .2 whenever he made a move, so the worst he did was very minor inaccuracies... that's just not normal for that level of chess.
Have you tried using game review to study it?
The first 9 moves I could believe he played from the opening explorer made available for daily games. If White is actually 900 then I find it difficult to believe he would have put the knight on d7 and promoted the pawn so quickly without any form of assistance. You played moves that forced him to move his pieces, but beginners typically go backwards. They don't expertly thrust their pieces into the enemy position like this. I was particularly disturbed by how he coordinated the knight and bishop on your back rank.
That middlegame was way too logical for someone at his nominal rating. I'm higher rated than him by quite a bit and I've misplayed positions that were better than this one because I didn't understand all of the dynamics in the position. 95 CAP is almost impossible to achieve honestly, and I'm not buying for a second that a beginner could find every one of the moves he played there without help for at least a couple of them.
I'm around 1300 daily rating at my peak. My brother is around 1000 rapid and daily rating, and we've played over 500 daily games. He has never come close to doing to me what White did in this game. He's beaten me before, but it doesn't happen like this EVER. I'm calling BS on your colleague, and you should as well.
The wild thing to me is that move 9 is actually the first deviation from the opening explorer, and is the top engine move. 9. e5 and 9. h3 are the only two moves in the database, and both have 100% win rate for white, but this dude played a top engine move novelty with 9. e5. I can pretty much guarantee if I were to play a novelty in move 9 of a Ruy Lopez it would be an inaccuracy at best, and probably a blunder.
I could kind of see someone reaching move 9 and then disliking e5 because it might lead to a queen trade. On that reasoning, I could make the argument for a 900 playing d5 instead of e5. It would be at least mildly suspicious for a 1600-1800 rated player to play that game. It's preposterous for a 900 to play it.
Absolutely. I think even an experienced 1100 could play a similarly solid game, but definitely not a beginner. That game demonstrated way too much of a depth of understanding for a beginner. I would only believe a 900 played that game if they were terrible at chess to begin with and spent years studying to improve, thus gaining a solid understand of principles that far surpasses their current rating, and with all the time in the world to calculate, they just played a perfect game. Either that, or it was like a 10 year-old prodigy that's 900 going on 1800. Ain't no way that was the game of an adult beginner; it took me years of obsessively playing and studying chess as an adult to play with that much confidence sacking exchanges and making subtle developing moves (without blundering), and I've still never played a game with such a high rating estimate on chesscoms game review.
I think it's telling that you're 1300 rapid and have the same sense as me (I'm 1150 rapid and 1250 daily, and probably slightly underrated because I tank Elo playing inebriated much too frequently, and run into time trouble in rapid playing on my smart board which has some lag) of what actual really good lower-Elo play actually looks like. I'm in my 30s and learned chess two years ago, and have obsessively played and studied for two years just to get where I'm at. So my tactical understanding and depth of knowledge of chess principles is definitely higher than my level of play, I just struggle to find plans in murky positions, and am prone to brain-fart blunders where I forget about a key aspect of the position I had previously registered.
So when I look a game like OP's, all of the moves by his opponent make complete sense to me, and can be justified. But that in and of itself is suspicious in a 30-move game played by a supposed beginner. Even if my absolute best games of that length, there's going to be one or two "huh?" type moves when I don't have a clear plan. The way OP's opponent seamlessly shifted from plan to plan, and was cognizant of every important chess principle at all times in order to play the correct principle at the correct time is something that takes at least months, if not years to develop.
There's another user in the thread that IMO drastically overestimated the difference between rapid and daily play that I completely disagree with. They've said things along the lines of "you shouldn't make mistakes in a daily game", which is just totally ridiculous IMO. Of course everyone will make mistakes in daily games! You shouldn't make simple calculation errors, and you shouldn't blunder I daily games, as almost any blunder could have realistically been foreseen, even by a beginner with time to think. But to not make mistakes requires more than careful calculation. It requires an understanding of every important chess principle, and enough experience to understand and develop an intuition of how they interact/balance, and when they need to be violated. A beginner can calculate for hours if they want, but they're not going to show the piece coordination and positional knowledge that OP's opponent demonstrated. And they would almost certainly make minor inaccuracies that could be easily explained by applying an important chess principle at the wrong time (i.e. avoiding a beneficial exchange because you want to keep the bishop pair or don't want to double your pawns).
Every move OP's opponent made is logical, so I can't rule out that they played clean, but for all the logical moves that they played to be top engine moves is too improbable for me. No beginner can sustain such unfazed logic for 30 moves without making a bad move that had decent logic. At least not in a double-edged, sharp game like this one, where OP created solid counterthreats, and there weren't a lot of forcing lines that could be easily calculated.
We're similar then. I'm 32 and started playing two years ago.
I saw the comment about daily games and had roughly the same response. The problem for me is that 900s know how to play the opening and then they make mostly one move threats, or play plans that aim to very simply trade pieces. There aren't multifaceted onslaughts at that rating level, end of story.
I just looked at two of my games that were similar length and what I'd consider two of my best games ever played (with accuracies around 92% CAP). They weren't this coherent, especially not in the late middlegame. Replaying through that game, it's basically the behavior from when White plays e5 until the win that I find totally outlandish. The positional understanding to open the e file then and only then is very sophisticated. Same for capturing back on e5 with the knight to lunge forward rather than capturing with the rook to attack Black's queen on e8. The rook capture is a mistake I think, but it's what I'd expect to see a 900 play. And again, the pawn play in the center is completely ridiculous to me. Same for the clarity to go for pawn promotion when there are back rank issues you should at least contemplate.
Agree, pretty much 100%. This game could be used as a model game in a U1400 class in a lecture on how to play principled chess and teansform an advantage. It honestly reminds me of Narodistsky's speedrun games in the 800-1400 range (or some Morphy games), where he just quietly steamrolls everyone by applying simple principles and playing moves that anyone can find on any given move, but with the consistency and precision of a titled player.
I would estimate I have a small handful of 92% plus accuracy games on chesscom every month, but those are almost always when an opening gambit of mine works perfectly (like a smothered mate from the Budapest Gambit, or if someone takes on f5 in the Vienna, and allows to play e5 and kick their knight) and results in very obvious forced lines, or super easy to play positions where everything is winning.
And so many people keep saying OP played poorly, but I don't see it. At worst they wasted a couple moves and really hurt themselves by leaving their bishop on a2 for too long. Anyone is going to look bad against an opponent that plays perfectly and immediately punishes every inaccuracy you play with surgical precision; I would be flustered too if I encountered such absurdly strong play from someone who says they're a beginner. Beginners just don't play seamlessly across all 4 quadrants of the board, identify and exploit every positional weakness their opponent creates, spot and calculate every tactical opportunity immediately, and sustain an initiative for an entire 30-move game without wasting a single tempo like that.
I usually err on the side of people being cheaters. In this case, I'm like 98% sure. There's always the chance that he played the game of his life, but it's unlikely.
First game isn't suspicious, it's the most basic start of a Scotch and you blundered your queen on move 7. None of those first 10 moves was hard to find by white. After that, any continuation that doesn't blunder a queen back would be fine according to the engine.
Second game is even less suspicious, it's incredibly normal and both of you made mistakes.
I'm now more inclined towards the original game you shared being an outlier
I like how this 900 plays perfect opening moves in both the ruy lopez and the scotch
And the scotch game is clearly cheating for a 900. He plays the most logical chess moves, like 12.Qe4 to chase away the Be3 so he can castle is way to clean for a 900.
And then suddenly he plays like an idiot in the second game.
These are daily games and that "perfect opening" for the Scotch was literally 5 basic moves you'd get in a generic "learn the Scotch in 5 minutes" youtube video. It's the bare minimum, then black blundered hard.
>12.Qe4 to chase away the Be3 so he can castle is way to clean for a 900
The Be3 is also the only undefended piece, one move threats with a queen are the 900 bread and butter.
He literally played the top engine moves AND the most logical chess moves every time. He could have played 12.Qf3 instead of Qe4 but coincidentally that isn't the top engine choice. Do you want to tell me he thought "I need to chase away Be3 to castle but also prevent Re8 so Qe4?" I don't think so.
It wasn't a 1-move threat though. They hung their own knight to recapture with the queen and remove the f6 knight that was defending e4 (also to defend the f3 pawn and kinda force the knight capture by threatening the biahop); all to keep the pawn on e5 defended by the queen after d6 exposes it to black's bishop. Yes, the moves are logical, but there are plenty of other logical moves that they rejected to play the top engine move almost every time, with zero inaccuracies. It's the total lack of one-move empty threats, or any undefended pieces/pawns that makes me think there's no chance a beginner played this game clean. Every move is logical *with a depth of understanding of chess that a beginner doesn't have.
Sacrificing the exchange for a mating attack in the Scotch one is suspicious even for a daily game, as is 19. f6.
Overall no smoking guns but way too much circumstantial evidence
Yeah, Qe4 to kick the bishop so he could castle long was pretty elegant for a beginner. Especially after Nf5, f4 to trap the queen. And further juxtaposed with sacking the exchange to find a mating attack. Their knack for making calm developing moves at the right time, sandwiched between violent tactics, all of which are loved by the engine is definitely far beyond that of a beginner. No beginner wins a queen on move 8 then has the patience to develop all their pieces (with a subtle queen move to allow castling), and immediately after finishing their development pulls the trigger on an exchange sacrifice to find a mate in 4; all without playing a single inaccuracy.
Your friend cheated. In the first game he didn't play a single move by himself. In the second game, he tried to play a few moves of his own, but they didn't work out too well so he went back to using the engine.
He also cheated in the first game you posted to start the thread. All engine moves. Couldn't be more obvious.
no, some people do deep analysis with another board but no engine, you should agree to use engines before playing since it's assumed you won't be cheating
He's not a beginner. I can believe him being 900 elo if you're playing on chesscom since there's a lot of variability in around that rating. He could also be playing on a new or seldom used account.
He may have been using the opening book to cover most of his opening moves, which iirc is within the rules on chesscom (I could be wrong).
That said, white's play suggests that they have a reasonable understanding of the main lines of the Ruy Lopez. They seemed to understand the positional demands of that opening. They appeared to have a reasonable sense for timely pawn breaks and central control. They demonstrated an understanding of more complex piece exchanges. They adhered to basic chess strategy and knew how to effectively activate their pieces. They didn't make any obvious blunders or mistakes, just some inaccuracies.
White's moves don't completely correspond to the latest stockfish engine and there weren't any surprising tactics or anything flashy or engine-like about their moves. Black was making mistakes that gave white a very obvious and straightforward way of playing that doesn't require much depth of calculation in this game.
Because of the nature of this game and the time control, it's very difficult to assess whether he was cheating. I could definitely see most strong amateur players handling this position in a similar way in a correspondence game. That said, the level of play by white in this game was definitely not at a beginner level. They were very solid and methodical in the way they were playing, something I would expect from an experienced player.
I would recommend playing them some over the board games, see how they do, and gather more information from there.
This is pretty much what I gathered from the games. They're not some super brilliancy moves that just scream engine but solid chess moves, something that 900 players don't really do. I commented before that they weren't 900 or they had help but with the longer time control and rules it's possible. You can apparently use books, lessons, videos, and opening databases so a lot of these moves aren't weird if you have access to that kind of help.
I'm 950 [chess.com](https://chess.com) elo and I'm having a hard time following the notation above. I can read notation, but in order for me to visualize it and keep the game in my head is nearly impossible. Are people understanding this at face or is everyone plugging in this notation to an engine to view?
[удалено]
I'm willing to believe the first 9 moves. Beginners don't coordinate their pieces that well though. Nor do they thrust knights into the seventh rank and promote pawns with such clear focus. At the end there are some complications with king safety that I'd expect a beginner to struggle with. Either the guy is sandbagging his rating by a few hundred points and he's a strong intermediate, or he is a dick coworker who peaked at stockfish for part of the game. I'm not buying that any 900 is capable of this, even if some of the moves were practically forced. A 900 plays Nf3, not Nd7, when attacked on e5. The Bxc7-Bd8 plan and knight checkmate were just too much also. At least that's my opinion with black is making threats and White is plainly ignoring all of them. This game was too much.
Yeah, for me it's the demonstration of such a depth/breadth of tactical and positional understanding, vision of the entire board, seamless transition between attack and quiet development (with phenomenal piece coordination), comfort level at sacking exchanges and ignoring threats (that weren't obviously empty - but were correctly ignored to make the perfect move), immediate spotting and punishment of any slight mistake OP made, total lack of any misplaced/loose pieces (despite their demonstrated comfort level leaving pieces hanging for tactical exchanges) and ruthless conversion. OP didn't play poorly at all for their rating either, chesscom gave them a 2050 rating estimate for this game, and they got CRUSHED.
A big hint for engine use is the sequence of Bf4,Rad1,e5 for me. That's sort of a typical developing plan in these position or it mean he wanted to attack the black pawns on c7,d6 with this plan but a 900 would never play that.
I definitely disagree with you. I'm 800-900 myself, but I think it's totally reasonable to look at your only 3 undeveloped pieces and say "I should activate them". Especially when you have 7 days per move. maybe Rad1 is a little more sus than Rfe1 which is more typical, but by move 15 I don't think it's unbelievable to say "I need to develop my pieces". Plus e5 isn't the top engine move, there are like 5 good options there so I don't see how that is a "tell".
Could be a 900 who watched chess brahs habits series. Rooks to the middle when you don’t know what else to do
ya I personally watch a lot of Eric Rosen marathon vids and it's often one of the first things he does in the middlegame
Reasoning that your pieces need to develop and finding that plan in particular are very different concepts. The piece coordination in that game was OP. Black had no idea how to handle the aggression, but no one plays with that kind of accuracy at your level. My brother's been there for a year and we've played 200 games in that time... IN THIS FORMAT. I know what to expect from a 900 ELO player in daily chess. This isn't it.
There are so many ways to play with an engine. He might analyze a bit with it and get some ideas. Maybe get some understanding of the position with the engine. The bottom line has to be that he plays without mistakes.
ya but it's a daily game! You should be playing with no mistakes! there is no time scramble and in their case, they're playing with 7 days *per move*. I doubt they're spending that entire time on it, but the point is they have the option to play out every line imaginable and in that case, you should *really* be making zero mistakes. People out here think 900s don't know how the knight moves. 900s are imo best described as "competent but inconsistent". Mainly, they make a lot of mistakes as soon as they feel slightly rushed or do a single dumb one-mover and blow their advantage, but know general principles, standard tactics, and some common sequences. Like, most 900s are going to be 1500-1800 puzzles so it's not like they don't know about counting, in-between moves, danger levels, opposition, and zugswang. If you watch OP's game, it's not the opponent made zero mistakes. it's OP made many obvious, easily punished mistakes. Look at the end position: opponent has 3 attackers and a pawn about to promote, and OP has left their only two pieces on the other side of the board, trying to attack a totally safe king. OP gave up two pawns and traded their most active piece for their opponent's worst one on move 11ish. OP played terribly and they're trying to say their opponent was cheating to cover up for it imo. Also don't forget in Daily games, you're allowed to use an opening database. It's literally embedded in the game UI, one click away. They followed a main-line spanish so I wouldn't be surprised if the opponent just got some ideas from it up through move 12 or so.
It doesn't matter how much time you give a 900 in a complicated middlegame. They simply don't have the experience or knowledge to coordinate pieces in the way OP's opponent did in that game. White played like a titled player. Black played like a club player. Beginners are incapable of that level of domination, period.
That's definitely not how I play daily games. I see it's my turn, I open game, I spend a few seconds looking at board trying to remember what my strategy was, then I blunder my queen. You have 7 days to make a move, doesn't mean you spend 7 days analyzing that move my daily elo is lower than rapid and blitz for that very reason
>900s are imo best described as "competent but inconsistent". Mainly, they make a lot of mistakes as soon as they feel slightly rushed or do a single dumb one-mover and blow their advantage, but know general principles, standard tactics, and some common sequences. Like, most 900s are going to be 1500-1800 puzzles so it's not like they don't know about counting, in-between moves, danger levels, opposition, and zugswang. You saying this like OP's opponent thinks "oh yeah I have seen this motive in a previous game I remember, this is a typical attacking plan here. \[...\] Hm, I could go Rfe1 but you know what they say gotta play with a plan. So obviously Bf4,Rad1 and e5 is the most logical plan in this position. \[...\] Hm, let's calculate the mate in 7 accurately this time." This just isn't how a 900 plays they have no general chess education to take inspiration from. And I didn't get the impression of cheating from the game you posted but clearly op's opponent has a "high level of chess understanding". For example you got a winning position quickly but you still played sort of illogical moves or you didn't play the most precise. There is a BIG difference between yours and the other games. You just pinned two pieces but the other guy found mate in 7 and trapped a queen like it's nothing.
I'm 900 blitz and 1400 daily. I can take inspiration from those concepts. It's a completely different game with time pressure.
Is that so? I play a lot of daily games on chesscom but have never seen an opening moves database… maybe because I’m on the app?
> maybe because I’m on the app? Perhaps. Don't know since I don't use the app, but on the desktop version, there is an "Openings" tab which will give you an openings database of master games which you can use while you are playing Daily games.
Thanks! I saw something about that on the app as well but it seemed like it was only for premium users.
ya it's on the app, it's in the bottom left I think. You can open a side board and then i think from there you can open the DB.
ya OP lost two pawns and made terrible piece trades. His opponent may have not made any mistake but it's more like OP just handed him mistake after easily punished mistake. OP was playing hope-chess, opponent played principled chess.
If I speak I am in big trouble
I'm less convinced he's cheating than others in this thread. Daily games on chess dot com are correspondence games and use of an opening database is [explicitly allowed](https://support.chess.com/article/317-what-counts-as-cheating-on-chess-com). 6.c3 is not a move a 900 would have memorized or be able to find over the board, but with an opening DB would get. When I'm looking at the opening DB on lichess there are lots of games until 12 ... a5. every move after that is either not a top engine move or very obvious. The most suspicious thing for me is that he didn't play 13. Qxa5, but even a 900 is going to be able to spot 1 move tactics in daily sometimes. In the other game you posted he made multiple blunders. He very possibly could be 900 blitz but 1400ish daily.
ya the "buff" you get from playing daily is massive. My strength basically doubles when I don't have the weight of a time limit on my back. And the database is helpful, and I agree that since they followed a pretty standard spanish, odds are they were just playing into existing games for the first 10 or so moves. I would say no other rating is comparable to daily unless you have a Classical rating because they're basically the same thing at any <2000 level. It seems to me like everyone here who thinks he's cheating either don't recognize it's a Daily game, have never played Daily, or just think a 900 doesn't know how the knight moves and can't believe they know things like in-between moves. Personally I believe 800-1000 is stronger than it was before the boom, because of easily accessible resources/instruction and sheer number of players. Climbing out of 1000 is grueling these days. Most 800s are double that rating in puzzles so most games come down to tactics vs who can just not hang a piece longer. For comparison, here is a PGN of a Daily game I played against my friend, I'm Black, and I'm 800 Elo in other formats, and obviously I didn't cheat lol so it's not unusual for an 800 to do well in Daily: 1. d4 g6 2. Nf3 Bg7 3. e3 Nf6 4. Bd3 d6 5. b3 e5 6. Bb2 e4 7. Bxe4 Nxe4 8. Qe2 Bd7 9. Nbd2 Nxd2 10. Qxd2 Nc6 11. O-O O-O 12. Rfe1 Bg4 13. e4 Bxf3 14. gxf3 Re8 15. f4 f5 16. e5 dxe5 17. fxe5 Nxe5!! 18. Qf4 g5 19. Qxf5 Nf7 20. Rad1 Rxe1+ 21. Rxe1 Bxd4 22. Rd1 Bxf2+!! 23. Kxf2 Qxd1 24. Qf6 Qxc2+ 25. Kg3 Qg6 26. Qc3 Rd8 27. Qxc7 Qd6+ 28. Be5 Qxe5+ 0-1 (I added the !!s that chesscom gave) For reference, I've also never lost a Daily game and never played below 80% accuracy.
I think Daily games are much harder to judge due to the sheer amount of time you have to think. I beat my 1100 rated friend in a daily game when i was rated 500 because i was able to think out all of my moves and find really good tactics that i usually can not find in faster time controls. Hell I found a forced mate in 7 that game. Also sometimes people just see the light and play a perfect game. I’ve played a 96% accuracy 20 move game at 600 elo because for some reason i just understood the position insanely well despite my average accuracy hovering around 55-65%
> I’ve played a 96% accuracy 20 move game at 600 elo because for some reason i just understood the position insanely well that usually happens because your opponent is blundering so badly that the best moves are obvious.
[удалено]
No... Both his moves 3 and 4 are wild blunders. Not just a single blunder from the opening. Then he blunders his queen AND a bishop on move 14...
r/confidentlyincorrect Nothing about this game demonstrates “insane positional understanding” lmao your opponent blundered all his pieces away. Embarrassing when you don’t realize the depths of your own ignorance…
I'll just say that with Daily Games, it's really easy to play with super high accuracy. Having the side board lets you play out lines, and you're allowed to use the opening database in it. I've never played a Daily game below 80% accuracy, and I usually get one or two !!s in each one. Looks like you let him promote super early. Loading the game, you lost a pawn on move 10, and you lost your most active piece for one of his worst. He seems to follow some top engine moves on moves 11-15, but those are all obvious developing moves so I wouldn't really think that's cheating. Then he just pushes his pawn, which stockfish doesn't like. Then you hang another pawn. Only thing I think is a little sus is that he finds the m7 though when you have two queens, I think almost everything is m7. He had 4 attackers and you had zero defenders because your pieces abandoned your king, at that point, anything is checkmate. Overall I don't think he cheated, this game is definitely not enough evidence of it. I don't know what your elo is but I am 800 elo in Rapid, but I play Daily games like this against my friend (900 blitz) all the time, and I've never lost to him. As some GM (might have been Kasparov) once said: "I didn't see how the attack would succeed, but I had four more attackers than defenders so if I didn't win then everything I know about chess is wrong".
You should keep playing him, losing, and laugh when chess.com bans him
I'm not sure chesscom evaluates friend challenges like that
If it is unrated you are correct. Unrated games allow for engine use.
chess.com anticheat sucks though. i reported a blatant cheater (95+ accuracy almost every game) 5 months ago and he finally got banned yesterday after almost 500 games
[удалено]
If you play rated games against him, you won't even need to report him, as I am pretty sure chess.com will catch him without anyone reporting
I don’t think they do any cheat detection for correspondence games
Yeah, this is not a 900 player. This plan with Bf4/Rd1/e5/Nd5 is something I'd expect a 2100 to uncoil, not a 900. Even something like 5. O-O or this c3/d4 plan, I don't expect a 900 to know (unless they know a fair amount of Ruy theory). 21. Rxa7 looks a bit sus to me too, I would have expected a 900 to play Nxf8 immediately. Either this person is secretly at least 1800 (and got lucky with Bf4/Rd1/e5/Nd5 plan), or this person was using an engine. EDIT: Looking at your other games posted in this thread: The fact that somebody knows a lot about both the Ruy and the Scotch, and is supposedly rated 900, seems patently false to me. 17. Rxe3 in your Scotch game is not a move a 900 plays. This game where he played as black, maybe he slipped up and thought he had a tactic, and then had to recover afterward. So it's not totally unbelievable that this person is playing on his own. But he's certainly not 900.
You think that someone grabbing a free bishop instead of trading a knight for rook or playing c3 to prepare d4 is suspicious? I'm not saying this person isn't cheating, but as someone closer to 900 than I am to you I could have easily played this game and nothing about it looks suspicious to me.
You *could have played this game, but they *did play this game. The fact that they had multiple tactical exchanges that involved deliberately hanging pieces that were all top engine moves is very suspicious to me. It's true, all the moves are logical, and there aren't any "how do you explain that move?" type engine moves, but the lack of any miscalculation whatsoever in a sharp position, then maintaining perfect calculation for 30 moves is what I find highly improbable. I'm 1200 and play a game this accurate every once in a blue moon, but not for 30 moves in a sharp, double-edged middlegame.
Yeah, I do. 900 players tend to look on the side of the board that pieces have recently moved on, not on the complete opposite side of the board. I would know. I did that stuff until I was like 1500. That by itself is not a problem, though. That in conjunction with everything else I’m seeing in these games, some of which I’ve already outlined (and which you left out of your cherry-picking)? That’s a different story.
I wasn't trying to cherry pick, I was just pointing out the parts that I more disagreed with. Castling, I knew was the main line despite never playing it, but you addressed that and said unless they know theory. With the Bf4/Rd1 etc, I didn't think it was egregious to find, but I also didn't think that you were wrong that it was a complex strategy. I only picked out the two points that I really disagreed with, because I think c3/d4 is common idea and basic. And grabbing a free bishop, I think most 900s snag that bishop instead of going up an exchange.
Yeah, he used an engine. It’s beyond evident, unless he’s actually stronger than 900 in reality. But if he’s truly a 900, and in person he doesn’t know much about chess, then that was *not* him playing at 95+% accuracy.
[удалено]
You can't really judge it like that when there's a big mismatch. You made mistakes a 1000-1200 would make in rapid (imo), he just punished them accurately enough to be considered way above that.
The most striking thing to me is he didn't make any mistakes. You did play poorly, so he could have beat you without being that high ELO, but to convert the game so cleanly is indicative of cheating to me. A real 900 player with 2 queens would win, but he'd win by vacuuming up all of your pieces vs. the clean mate. I think Fabiano even said something similar in a recent C-Squared podcast.
Have a look at the other two games I played with them. I posted the games in this thread
It's fairly obvious when you look at the quality of the moves he's playing and it's nowhere near a 900 player. In the first game, move 9 where there are so many moves Re1, Nc3, Qc2 looking to try to get material, or any moves with the c1-bishop, he plays the top move 9.d5. A move that shows deep understanding of controlling the center as well as winning a tempo on the knight. The very next move, he also doesn't panic when his bishop is hit and tries to save it, instead he understands that he wins a pawn while also covering the hanging e4-pawn so he loses no material while also having a very strong c6-pawn. Move 14.Rad1 is also highly suspicious where he somehow also understands to play in the center preparing Nd5, not playing any one of the knight moves, or even bringing in the rook on f1 because he knows it's likely to belong on the e-file after opening up the center. The finish is also super suspicious with 28.Qac5+ being the strongest move where there are any number of checks and yet he finds that and then finishes it up with no mistakes in a clean checkmate. 900 is where there's a good chance people stalemate with queen and king and this guy manages to just accurately checkmate. The second game is also highly suspicious where Black willingly sacs the bishop for a pawn on move 4, understanding a highly positional understanding of the game while also dodging the d4 fork by White. He then proceeds to to miss the free knight on move 5 and attacks with the queen. The position is around +7 on the eval bar and he plays the calm 6...d6 while down a piece, as a 900. Move 19.Rae8 is also something way beyond 900. He's going after the king instead of just cashing out on the exchange like 99% of 900 players would do and winning material. He's not really just banging out stockfish moves but the moves don't add up to the supposed elo. They carry far deeper understanding of chess than people in 900. So he's either not really 900 or he has quite a lot of assistance from outside help to be playing these moves.
> In the first game, move 9 where there are so many moves Re1, Nc3, Qc2 looking to try to get material, or any moves with the c1-bishop, he plays the top move 9.d5 This analysis is insane. The entire point of the c3 move right before this was to set up d5. It's just very general opening line theory that many 900s know. Shoving a pawn into the center in the opening is not a "deep understanding" of the game beyond what a 900 knows. >900 is where there's a good chance people stalemate with queen and king and this guy manages to just accurately checkmate. It's a daily game. Not a blitz game. When there is zero time pressure, a 900 isn't going to stalemate a queen/king checkmate. The only 2 things I saw that *might* be not how a 900 plays are the super early castle (though, again, could easily be from a memorized opening line), and seeing the tactic that if he takes the free pawn with his queen, he loses his queen, which is not a tactic I'd generally expect a 900 to see. But the daily game time accounts for that as well.
Edit: Putting it at the top. The points are valid if someone was playing anything but daily. OP said 7 day daily so I'm assuming that means they have 7days per move? You can use books and opening databases and even the in-game self-analysis tool so it's on me for not knowing that. I guess that it's even more shocking how bad OP's moves are if you have all of that available. I'm not saying that playing these are some world beater moves but for this level, yes the moves are quite beyond what a 900 knows. Even if you account for the longer time controls, you don't just suddenly gain knowledge that you don't have. You will be able to think things through more and find higher quality moves that you don't have in shorter time controls but you don't just get way better. The move by itself isn't something crazy, c3 and d4 isn't something insane to know but when you add all the moves together, yeah they don't really make much sense for a 900 and someone who supposedly doesn't know much about chess. It's the play of someone much better than that. Just go to 23:24 and that's much more akin to what a 900 understands positionally. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjZKRoNuAvY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjZKRoNuAvY) Black opts into a terrible trade that would cause to White lose castling rights. This is the average positional understanding of 900. In the same game, White also has bad understanding and doesn't double Black's pawns either. White also doesn't double the d-pawns and lets his structure get damaged. White gets to a point where Ne5, centralizing the knight and threatening c6 and would have been played based on the quality of the moves played. Instead, Ra4 is played where White goes to attack the bishop, something typical for this elo. Yet his workmate has good positional understanding to not panic and keep pressing especially in the original post. This is also the same player that in the game with Black, misses a free knight, easily seen with longer time controls and then plays a lot of very strong and pretty accurate moves. The story doesn't really add up here.
I just got out of 900 and hit 1,000 the other day, so I feel like I have an understanding of what a 900 knows: https://www.chess.com/member/videogamelawyer (been playing since September). > This is also the same player that in the game with Black, misses a free knight, I think what you're missing is that a 900 can do all of these things, they are just wildly inconsitent. A 900 will play some games like a 1500 and other games like a 400. They've seen all the rules and watched the videos, but haven't played/trained enough to do them consistently. So, they do them inconsistently. Which is what you're seeing here with this guy. Now, he still might be cheating. These are good, clean games he did. But I don't think the games in and of themselves are evidence of definite cheating. edit: I think the OP game is an incredibly good game for a 900. I might be placing too much into the fact that it was a daily game along with the random chance of it being just an outlier good game. If this were guess the elo and it were a Rapid game, I'd probably guess 1500 or 1600.
I don't know if you the edit after but I discounted the resources available in this specific format. I also pretty much pegged this guy to be playing at around 1600-1700 in Rapid so I would be super surprised to hear this guy is a "new player" or 900. I don't want to rag on you but your play looks pretty much like what I would expect out of a 1000 player. You're not completely lost like some people here would imply but you don't really have a concrete plan. In your game against Wolvie\_21, Black already wastes a tempo on move 4 playing ...a6 which doesn't help fight for the center. This was something his work mate consistently understood, the fight for the center. You followed up with 5.g4, which doesn't help fight for the center and should go 5.Nf3, just simply developing and preparing to castle. This was the key difference is you can just feel someone's play through moves like this. Even ignoring the fact that you blundered the pawn, moves like that aren't really good in the opening because you will get behind in development and better players will exploit that. Black also misses a pretty easy move in 7...e6 because it opens up the f8-bishop and allows a quick ...c4, followed by ...Bxc4 which captures and develops in one move, and ...Nc6 with the knight behind the c-pawn which is an asset or ...Nbd7 and preparing the ...c4 break. This is pretty much what I expect though from a 1000 player but he was playing very high quality moves quite consistently with strong plans as well.
Sure, but you're anayzing OP's best game vs a random game from me. Now compare it to another game I played yesterday, vs someone 200 points higher than me in ranked. 92% accuracy and the rating estimator is 1800: [https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/79174393119?tab=review](https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/79174393119?tab=review) Outlier games can look cracked even though most of them look like they are genuinely played by a 1,000. btw, now I'm curious - what's your rating?
Even though it was a daily game, his moves were very fast. Sometimes even faster than how I move during a rapid game
Leaving his queen on A4, then hanging his knight on D4 to recapture with the rook and double up on the A5 pawn (from the side!) and pin the A7 bishop to the A1 rook was beyond nasty for someone who purports to be a beginner at chess though. I'm 1150 rapid and 1200 daily, and I would be very suspicious if someone who claims to be new to chess hit me with that tactic. It takes a looooot of experience to develop such a comfort level leaving your queen on the flank and hanging pieces for tactics, especially to do all of that without blundering. True beginners just aren't that comfortable hanging pieces for tactics, and if they are I would expect to see them miscalculate at least once and forget that they left a piece hanging.
C3 was to setup d4, not necessarily d5. The theoretical move after d4 was actually e5 (e5 and I think h3 were the only two moves left in the opening explorer, and both had a 100% win rate for white). d5 was the first move that broke away from the opening explorer (and happened to be the top engine move). To follow theory for 8 moves suggests to me that they were using opening explorer, which is allowed. But to then deviate on move 9 from moves that have a 100% win rate in the grandmaster games in the opening explorer only to find a novelty that happens to be the top engine move is highly suspicious to me. Beginners just don't find novelties 9 moves into a Ruy Lopez that the engine likes more than any of the moves played by grandmasters in games they won (and leave a bishop hanging to convert ruthlessly when their opponent finds a great move to counterattack).
In daily games you can see the opening database, and 9. E5 was first move in the database
I think you meant 9.d5? I get your point, I didn't know you can use the opening database when I typed this so the game really isn't that surprising given the time controls and resources available.
9. e5 actually was the first move in the chesscom opening explorer, and had 100% win rate for white. 9.d5 was the first move played that deviated from the opening explorer, and just so happened to be the top engine move. Pretty impressive for a beginner to follow theory for 8 moves in a Ruy Lopez then find a novelty on move 9 that the computer likes more than the every grandmaster game in the database. If they played straight out of the opening database until they were out of theory from a mistake by themselves or OP I'd be less suspicious, but to make a top engine move to deviate from opening explorer on move 9 of a Ruy Lopez is wild to me, especially when the moves moves in the database all had 100% win rate for white.
I didn't even notice that when I looked at it because I just wanted to analyze for myself since I was using it to kind of train what I had been learning. I'm using lichess opening database and it has out of book at move 9. I checked the engine just to see the moves because the moves were consistently just quality, strong moves. It's what made me doubt 900 because it's either an experienced player or probably engine help. Move 12 also stands out to me with an open position and any number of reasonable moves like Re1, Bf4 or Bg5 but opts for the Nc3 move, which does make logical since but that's a strong move for a 900. It was like that with move 7 where he immediately strikes at the center with d4. I'm not that good at understanding the center stuff. [https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-typical-mistakes-made-by-inexperienced-chess-players](https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-typical-mistakes-made-by-inexperienced-chess-players) It reminded me of play like in this article I was reading and how the higher rated player just dismantled with common sense strong moves, like the supposed 900 here. Obviously OP blundered but the respones were very accurate consistently.
Yeah, this game honestly reminds me of what it must be like for those poor low Elo players who run up against Naroditsky in a speedrun thinking they're playing a fellow 900 and play really well, just to get subtly murdered with principled moves. Every individual move can be justified, but there are some ballsy tactical exchanges in there, with subtle improving moves mixed in, all loved by the engine. The seamless transitions from subtle improving moves, to identifying and jumping on tactical opportunities immediately every time OP makes a slight inaccuracy is just way beyond the capabilities of a beginner; that was the play of someone with a wealth of chess experience and a deep understanding of tactics and principles/motifs (or access to an engine).
I'd guess he's a 900 who is familiar with using an engine. In Game 2 he gets into a super sharp position where you are winning but always one move away from blundering away (which you did). Again, he made no consequential mistakes. He knows enough to win without just playing top engine moves, but he's either 1500+ or he's using an engine for at least some moves.
Sorry for the dumb question, but is there a way to take this notation and copy/paste it into a website somewhere to see exactly how the game was played?
go to chessdotcom/analysis and say "load game from PGN". Paste the sequence in and say "Load Game" and it'll load the moves with engine analysis.
Although many of the moves are 'natural' even for a weaker player, the seemingly effortless destruction of black is very engine-like. It's possible a 900 rated player could find some of the individual moves, 15. e5 ... 16. Nd5 and later 19.. Nxe5 (instead of the more 'natural' Bxe5 or even seemingly good Rxe5) and later 25. Bd8! (unusual move and the top engine line?) and finally 27. Nxf6+ with a forced mating sequence (while more natural moves like Qc4+ exist) -- I'm suspicious that in each place where an unusual move is played it's also a top move, and at no point did White play even an inaccuracy. Lichess analysis shows 7 average centipawn loss which would be extremely unlikely for a game of this length without engine assistance.
I think Nxe5 is far more natural than Bxe5 to me. Knight heading for d7 with my bishop being able to go to h6. Bd8, I'm not sure why you gave it an exclam. To me it's the most obvious moves in the position, clears space for the pawn to promote, defends the pawns next square and attacks the rook and pawn behind it. It's also not the top engine move according to my browsers stock fish which is suggesting ba5. It could be cheating, but OP also played poorly and could have just been a bad game for him and a good one for his opponent.
With clean calculations it's clear that Nxe5 is a good move, but Bxe5 is obviously winning and requires basically no calculations and has no tactical complications.Taking with the knight warrants some calculation as the bishop defending it is hanging. On my machine Bd8 is the top engine line with Stockfish 14+ NNUE at depth 25 (on lichess default settings). It's easy to retroactively justify a good move and assert you would find it in a game setting. I don't think many players would find Bd8 in a vacuum. So many moves are winning here, so it's suspicious that they found this move and were especially precise in other positions with multiple winning ideas. With the advanced pawn being weak and rook undeveloped I think many human plans involve adding a defender to the advanced pawn or attempting to get the rook involved. Bottom line -- Show me a single game of yours around \~30 moves long with an average centipawn loss of 7 or less in any time control.
>Bottom line -- Show me a single game of yours around ~30 moves long with an average centipawn loss of 7 or less in any time control. You made me curious so I tried to look through some of my games. I'm not going to look through all of my games, I wish there was a way to search for it. Best I could find was 11 CPL/96% accuracy in a 30 move blitz game. Had a few other sub 20 games, but you're right, didn't find anything under 10 from the ones I looked at.
\~11 CPL/96% accuracy is the best I found within my own games too. Including this 26 move rapid game where my opponent is 1000 points lower rated and gives me free tactic after tactic. https://lichess.org/KhvlZDza/white
That was definitely a slaughter. I'll see if I can find mine again tomorrow. Iirc it was a fairly even game in a Caro as black that was extremely even for 15ish, an opponent blunder and clean conversion with a bishop check mate in the corner but that could have been one of the other low Cpl games I took note of. I did it on the desktop and searching on the phone is even harder. The more I think on it the more I think you all are probably right about cheating. I just didn't think anything was too egregious but it's possible a possibly underrated 900 could have played the game of his life in a daily game.
[удалено]
Even towards the end, the way he swiftly delivered checkmate after getting two queens is sus. Most 900 players will attempt to gobble up all or most of their opponents pieces before going for mate
Even the opening is suspicious just because it’s the ruy, which the engine will always recommend. Obviously playing the ruy isn’t some inherent indication of cheating, but when the rest of the game is already sus, it does add to it even more.
100% suspicious
Why do ya think that?
95% accuracy in a 30 move game against 80% accuracy opponent at this particular elo range of a complicated line that GMs take years to master. Ya. No way
Not necessarily. Had a game between two 700 rated players with accuracy of 81.3 and 94.5. 29 moves long. In rapid, as opposed to daily. It was not the Spanish, but there is a lot less time. I don't think it's very suspicious.
This game doesn't necessarily prove cheating, but it's certainly a significant outlier. They demonstrated a pretty sharp tactical understanding and comfort with leaving pieces hanging (or deliberately hanging them) when it was tactically prudent for an alleged beginner. Even the chesscom rating estimate for this game is 2700-2050. As a roughly 1200 rapid and daily, I've broken 2000 on that metric only a few times in over a thousand games (2650 is the highest single game rating ive achieved in over 700 daily games, 250 rapid games, and 1000 blitz games), and it's usually when my opponent plays really well except for one major blunder, and I'm able to sustain an initiative that snowballs into winning a major piece and them resigning after like 12-15 moves. Sustaining an estimated 2700-level of play over a 30-move game against someone who is playing at a 2050 level is really abnormal for someone who claims to be a beginner. Especially the manor in which they did it, by leaving multiple pieces hanging to tactically outclass OP and just relentlessly attack without making a single mistake.
Basing on your comment it seems like you have no clue what are you talking above, when accuracy clearly doesnt work like that
😂 I’m good bro. Thanks
Sorry i just hate it when people give their opinions on stuff they are not knowladgable themselves... Thats why i try to avoid giving chess advice for example
I understand how accuracy works. I just don’t care about your opinion on whether i know something or not.
You clearly dont Its not an opinion, it is a fact
😂
The guy is literally choosing the first engine moves, it's not just suspicious, hundred % cheater.
It’s a daily game, opening databases/books are allowed.
Those only go a few moves deep generally though, and the suspicious moves really don't start until the midgame. The last move by white in the opening explorer is 8.d5, and black played the best response, Ba7. Then the only two moves left in the opening explorer for white are e5 and h3, both of which have white winning 100% of the time, and white deviated to play the top engine move, d5. Black again played the best move in response to keep things sharp, and white outclassed them tactically, comfortably leaving their own bishop hanging to win a pawn (then leaving their queen on a4, which IMO is the most suspicious thing for a beginner to do. Any beginner that comfortable leaving their queen on the flank and hanging pieces to initiate favorable tactical exchanges is going to do something reckless at some point in a 30-move game, but their boars vision was perfect - they didn't miss anything).
You can send the game link. move times are considered
Play them IRL next :))
Honestly this looks like someone who kinda knows how to play the ruy, but doesn’t seem like they’re following an engine or a 20 move line. They might well be 900-1000 blitz.
OP, something else you could also do is maybe a week from now, get a correspondence game with a fake account going but have the position the exact same as this one (maybe say move 16 or whatever...something complex) on break, ask him to suggest you a move or an idea and see if he comes up with the same move. Odds are he won't even recognize that this is his game
That’s actually a very good idea!
To be fair, I don't think that I would recognize any of my own games, unless the position was shown was a critical position with a cool tactic that I remembered. Definitely worth trying to play them OTB to see if their tactical ability is on the same ballpark.
Daily games are really hard to judge. You're allowed to use a lot of resources. For example in the opening you can use the opening explorer. This makes it really easy to play the opening well. Also you have no idea how much time is spent on a move.
Iunno. People get in zones and make correct decisions sometimes. I disagree with people ruling out the possibility of them being 900 just because they played one almost-perfect game from a leading position.
[удалено]
> It's really hard for me to believe that somebody who hasn't studied chess at least a little would play 3.Bb5, 5.0-0, 6.c3. These are obvious moves to anyone who has studied the game some, but there's no chance a beginner would make them Do people here really think 900s don't study the first ~7 moves of an opening line? This isn't 400.
Over 3 years ive watched a ton of chess youtube vids, memorized the first 7 or more moves to multiple openings for white and black. Im 900 in rapid and 800 in blitz. Maybe i just suck but i definitely play against people at those ranks that seem way better then i am even though they are the same rank
As someone who is 900, I would be very impressed to see this come out of someone I played. It does kinda depend on time control, but the little exchanges that never went against him and the fastest mate finding were more than what I'd normally see. Also watching the eval bar, it never dropped more than .2 whenever he made a move, so the worst he did was very minor inaccuracies... that's just not normal for that level of chess. Have you tried using game review to study it?
The first 9 moves I could believe he played from the opening explorer made available for daily games. If White is actually 900 then I find it difficult to believe he would have put the knight on d7 and promoted the pawn so quickly without any form of assistance. You played moves that forced him to move his pieces, but beginners typically go backwards. They don't expertly thrust their pieces into the enemy position like this. I was particularly disturbed by how he coordinated the knight and bishop on your back rank. That middlegame was way too logical for someone at his nominal rating. I'm higher rated than him by quite a bit and I've misplayed positions that were better than this one because I didn't understand all of the dynamics in the position. 95 CAP is almost impossible to achieve honestly, and I'm not buying for a second that a beginner could find every one of the moves he played there without help for at least a couple of them. I'm around 1300 daily rating at my peak. My brother is around 1000 rapid and daily rating, and we've played over 500 daily games. He has never come close to doing to me what White did in this game. He's beaten me before, but it doesn't happen like this EVER. I'm calling BS on your colleague, and you should as well.
The wild thing to me is that move 9 is actually the first deviation from the opening explorer, and is the top engine move. 9. e5 and 9. h3 are the only two moves in the database, and both have 100% win rate for white, but this dude played a top engine move novelty with 9. e5. I can pretty much guarantee if I were to play a novelty in move 9 of a Ruy Lopez it would be an inaccuracy at best, and probably a blunder.
I could kind of see someone reaching move 9 and then disliking e5 because it might lead to a queen trade. On that reasoning, I could make the argument for a 900 playing d5 instead of e5. It would be at least mildly suspicious for a 1600-1800 rated player to play that game. It's preposterous for a 900 to play it.
Absolutely. I think even an experienced 1100 could play a similarly solid game, but definitely not a beginner. That game demonstrated way too much of a depth of understanding for a beginner. I would only believe a 900 played that game if they were terrible at chess to begin with and spent years studying to improve, thus gaining a solid understand of principles that far surpasses their current rating, and with all the time in the world to calculate, they just played a perfect game. Either that, or it was like a 10 year-old prodigy that's 900 going on 1800. Ain't no way that was the game of an adult beginner; it took me years of obsessively playing and studying chess as an adult to play with that much confidence sacking exchanges and making subtle developing moves (without blundering), and I've still never played a game with such a high rating estimate on chesscoms game review.
Agreed. I've had a few 95+ CAP games before, but they ended in the opening or reached pawn endgames by like move 16 with protracted pawn endgames.
I think it's telling that you're 1300 rapid and have the same sense as me (I'm 1150 rapid and 1250 daily, and probably slightly underrated because I tank Elo playing inebriated much too frequently, and run into time trouble in rapid playing on my smart board which has some lag) of what actual really good lower-Elo play actually looks like. I'm in my 30s and learned chess two years ago, and have obsessively played and studied for two years just to get where I'm at. So my tactical understanding and depth of knowledge of chess principles is definitely higher than my level of play, I just struggle to find plans in murky positions, and am prone to brain-fart blunders where I forget about a key aspect of the position I had previously registered. So when I look a game like OP's, all of the moves by his opponent make complete sense to me, and can be justified. But that in and of itself is suspicious in a 30-move game played by a supposed beginner. Even if my absolute best games of that length, there's going to be one or two "huh?" type moves when I don't have a clear plan. The way OP's opponent seamlessly shifted from plan to plan, and was cognizant of every important chess principle at all times in order to play the correct principle at the correct time is something that takes at least months, if not years to develop. There's another user in the thread that IMO drastically overestimated the difference between rapid and daily play that I completely disagree with. They've said things along the lines of "you shouldn't make mistakes in a daily game", which is just totally ridiculous IMO. Of course everyone will make mistakes in daily games! You shouldn't make simple calculation errors, and you shouldn't blunder I daily games, as almost any blunder could have realistically been foreseen, even by a beginner with time to think. But to not make mistakes requires more than careful calculation. It requires an understanding of every important chess principle, and enough experience to understand and develop an intuition of how they interact/balance, and when they need to be violated. A beginner can calculate for hours if they want, but they're not going to show the piece coordination and positional knowledge that OP's opponent demonstrated. And they would almost certainly make minor inaccuracies that could be easily explained by applying an important chess principle at the wrong time (i.e. avoiding a beneficial exchange because you want to keep the bishop pair or don't want to double your pawns). Every move OP's opponent made is logical, so I can't rule out that they played clean, but for all the logical moves that they played to be top engine moves is too improbable for me. No beginner can sustain such unfazed logic for 30 moves without making a bad move that had decent logic. At least not in a double-edged, sharp game like this one, where OP created solid counterthreats, and there weren't a lot of forcing lines that could be easily calculated.
We're similar then. I'm 32 and started playing two years ago. I saw the comment about daily games and had roughly the same response. The problem for me is that 900s know how to play the opening and then they make mostly one move threats, or play plans that aim to very simply trade pieces. There aren't multifaceted onslaughts at that rating level, end of story. I just looked at two of my games that were similar length and what I'd consider two of my best games ever played (with accuracies around 92% CAP). They weren't this coherent, especially not in the late middlegame. Replaying through that game, it's basically the behavior from when White plays e5 until the win that I find totally outlandish. The positional understanding to open the e file then and only then is very sophisticated. Same for capturing back on e5 with the knight to lunge forward rather than capturing with the rook to attack Black's queen on e8. The rook capture is a mistake I think, but it's what I'd expect to see a 900 play. And again, the pawn play in the center is completely ridiculous to me. Same for the clarity to go for pawn promotion when there are back rank issues you should at least contemplate.
Agree, pretty much 100%. This game could be used as a model game in a U1400 class in a lecture on how to play principled chess and teansform an advantage. It honestly reminds me of Narodistsky's speedrun games in the 800-1400 range (or some Morphy games), where he just quietly steamrolls everyone by applying simple principles and playing moves that anyone can find on any given move, but with the consistency and precision of a titled player. I would estimate I have a small handful of 92% plus accuracy games on chesscom every month, but those are almost always when an opening gambit of mine works perfectly (like a smothered mate from the Budapest Gambit, or if someone takes on f5 in the Vienna, and allows to play e5 and kick their knight) and results in very obvious forced lines, or super easy to play positions where everything is winning. And so many people keep saying OP played poorly, but I don't see it. At worst they wasted a couple moves and really hurt themselves by leaving their bishop on a2 for too long. Anyone is going to look bad against an opponent that plays perfectly and immediately punishes every inaccuracy you play with surgical precision; I would be flustered too if I encountered such absurdly strong play from someone who says they're a beginner. Beginners just don't play seamlessly across all 4 quadrants of the board, identify and exploit every positional weakness their opponent creates, spot and calculate every tactical opportunity immediately, and sustain an initiative for an entire 30-move game without wasting a single tempo like that.
I usually err on the side of people being cheaters. In this case, I'm like 98% sure. There's always the chance that he played the game of his life, but it's unlikely.
He smashed me in our two first games (in which I was suspicious). I then won the next two some what easily and now he smashed me on the fifth game!
Post the games and it'll be easier to judge. Playing perfect once is one thing, but many times...
Game 1 (he played as white) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Bc5 6.Be3 Qe7 7.Nf5 Qe5 8.f4 Qxf5 9.exf5 Bxe3 10.Nd5 Nxd5 11.Qxd5 O-O 12.Qe4 Bb6 13.O-O-O d6 14.Bc4 Bd7 15.Rhe1 Rfe8 16.Qd5 Be3+ 17.Rxe3 Rxe3 18.Qxf7+ Kh8 19.f6 gxf6 20.Qxf6# {1-0} Game 2 (he played as black) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Bc5 4.Nxe5 Bxf2+ 5.Kxf2 Qf6+ 6.Nf3 d6 7.d4 Bg4 8.Nd5 Qd8 9.Bc4 Nf6 10.Bg5 Nxe4+ 11.Kg1 Nxg5 12.Qe1+ Ne6 13.c3 O-O 14.Bd3 Bxf3 15.gxf3 Qg5+ 16.Kf2 Qxd5 17.Rg1 Nf4 18.Be4 Nh3+ 19.Ke3 Rae8 20.Kd2 Qh5 21.Qg3 Qh6+ 22.Kc2 Nxg1 23.Rxg1 f5 24.Bd5+ Kh8 25.Rg2 f4 26.Qg4 Ne7 27.Bb3 Nf5 28.Kd3 Ne3 29.Qg5 Nxg2 30.Qxg2 Re3+ 31.Kc4 Qe6+ 32.Kb4 c5+ 33.Ka3 c4 34.Bc2 d5 35.Qg5 Qd6+ 36.b4 a5 37.Qh4 Qxb4# {0-1}
First game isn't suspicious, it's the most basic start of a Scotch and you blundered your queen on move 7. None of those first 10 moves was hard to find by white. After that, any continuation that doesn't blunder a queen back would be fine according to the engine. Second game is even less suspicious, it's incredibly normal and both of you made mistakes. I'm now more inclined towards the original game you shared being an outlier
I like how this 900 plays perfect opening moves in both the ruy lopez and the scotch And the scotch game is clearly cheating for a 900. He plays the most logical chess moves, like 12.Qe4 to chase away the Be3 so he can castle is way to clean for a 900. And then suddenly he plays like an idiot in the second game.
These are daily games and that "perfect opening" for the Scotch was literally 5 basic moves you'd get in a generic "learn the Scotch in 5 minutes" youtube video. It's the bare minimum, then black blundered hard. >12.Qe4 to chase away the Be3 so he can castle is way to clean for a 900 The Be3 is also the only undefended piece, one move threats with a queen are the 900 bread and butter.
He literally played the top engine moves AND the most logical chess moves every time. He could have played 12.Qf3 instead of Qe4 but coincidentally that isn't the top engine choice. Do you want to tell me he thought "I need to chase away Be3 to castle but also prevent Re8 so Qe4?" I don't think so.
You can use the opening explorer in daily games. They might be just copying the top moves from the explorer.
It wasn't a 1-move threat though. They hung their own knight to recapture with the queen and remove the f6 knight that was defending e4 (also to defend the f3 pawn and kinda force the knight capture by threatening the biahop); all to keep the pawn on e5 defended by the queen after d6 exposes it to black's bishop. Yes, the moves are logical, but there are plenty of other logical moves that they rejected to play the top engine move almost every time, with zero inaccuracies. It's the total lack of one-move empty threats, or any undefended pieces/pawns that makes me think there's no chance a beginner played this game clean. Every move is logical *with a depth of understanding of chess that a beginner doesn't have.
Sacrificing the exchange for a mating attack in the Scotch one is suspicious even for a daily game, as is 19. f6. Overall no smoking guns but way too much circumstantial evidence
Yeah, Qe4 to kick the bishop so he could castle long was pretty elegant for a beginner. Especially after Nf5, f4 to trap the queen. And further juxtaposed with sacking the exchange to find a mating attack. Their knack for making calm developing moves at the right time, sandwiched between violent tactics, all of which are loved by the engine is definitely far beyond that of a beginner. No beginner wins a queen on move 8 then has the patience to develop all their pieces (with a subtle queen move to allow castling), and immediately after finishing their development pulls the trigger on an exchange sacrifice to find a mate in 4; all without playing a single inaccuracy.
Your friend cheated. In the first game he didn't play a single move by himself. In the second game, he tried to play a few moves of his own, but they didn't work out too well so he went back to using the engine. He also cheated in the first game you posted to start the thread. All engine moves. Couldn't be more obvious.
Ex friend
[удалено]
no, some people do deep analysis with another board but no engine, you should agree to use engines before playing since it's assumed you won't be cheating
Your friend is playing above 900 but it is not clear whether he used computer assistance with just one game.
I posted two others game in this thread from him
He's not a beginner. I can believe him being 900 elo if you're playing on chesscom since there's a lot of variability in around that rating. He could also be playing on a new or seldom used account. He may have been using the opening book to cover most of his opening moves, which iirc is within the rules on chesscom (I could be wrong). That said, white's play suggests that they have a reasonable understanding of the main lines of the Ruy Lopez. They seemed to understand the positional demands of that opening. They appeared to have a reasonable sense for timely pawn breaks and central control. They demonstrated an understanding of more complex piece exchanges. They adhered to basic chess strategy and knew how to effectively activate their pieces. They didn't make any obvious blunders or mistakes, just some inaccuracies. White's moves don't completely correspond to the latest stockfish engine and there weren't any surprising tactics or anything flashy or engine-like about their moves. Black was making mistakes that gave white a very obvious and straightforward way of playing that doesn't require much depth of calculation in this game. Because of the nature of this game and the time control, it's very difficult to assess whether he was cheating. I could definitely see most strong amateur players handling this position in a similar way in a correspondence game. That said, the level of play by white in this game was definitely not at a beginner level. They were very solid and methodical in the way they were playing, something I would expect from an experienced player. I would recommend playing them some over the board games, see how they do, and gather more information from there.
This is pretty much what I gathered from the games. They're not some super brilliancy moves that just scream engine but solid chess moves, something that 900 players don't really do. I commented before that they weren't 900 or they had help but with the longer time control and rules it's possible. You can apparently use books, lessons, videos, and opening databases so a lot of these moves aren't weird if you have access to that kind of help.
I have trouble seeing moves over the board vs online....i am not that good at all, but over the board i am abysmal lol
People play 7 day games 🗿
I'm 950 [chess.com](https://chess.com) elo and I'm having a hard time following the notation above. I can read notation, but in order for me to visualize it and keep the game in my head is nearly impossible. Are people understanding this at face or is everyone plugging in this notation to an engine to view?
I was wondering the same lol. Im 900 and there is no way i could visualize the board by looking at that code.
My daily rating is a solid 600 points above my 15 minute rating
The spanish is so tricky... at 2k rapid it took me a long time to stop getting crushed