Cheater apologists always try to shut down any discussion with an ad hominem and try to frame cheating threads as sour grapes. They imply that OP sucks, that's why he lost, not because his opponent was cheating. If someone of my rating claims that there is rampant cheating, my example can be cited and the apologists can no longer try to derail with ad hominems. My rating and unfortunately, credibility would be even higher if it weren't for cheater losses.
When I play casual games as anonymous, I'll get crushed 1/5th of the time. I don't mean I just lose, I mean I get totally outplayed. For a player of my rating to lose that badly that often is highly suspect. I run those losses through the computer afterwards and my opponent has under 10 centipawn loss most of the time. At the 30 rated game mark, I played 3 blatant cheaters. The site will only ban the most obvious of cheaters, the ones who don't even bother hiding it, that is to say, blatant. Maybe an administrator can comment on the statistics but I doubt the proportion of banned players comes close to 10%. 10% is already an absurd amount of cheaters but what needs to be considered is that the real proportion is even higher
Some additional points.
I'll concede that my statistics could be skewed. I exclusively join white hosted games, that is to say, games hosted by cowardly losers. It could be the case that there are more cheaters to be found in a sample population of cowardly losers. Nonetheless, I doubt the percentage of cheaters in the general population is that much lower.
Why do apologists exist? I can see no reason other than trolling or being a cheater themselves.
In case an apologist still tries to say sour grapes. I bookmarked all my cheating opponents. The computer analysis on them is indisputable proof.
In case apologists try to say ratings trend to what they should be and that cheater losses don't matter, that's only true over the long run. Not everyone plays enough games for there to be a long run. Additionally, with enough cheaters, your rating will still be lower.
It used to autoflag cheaters if enough of their games were analyzed by the computer to be perfect but no longer seems to do that. Could be mistaken, though.
Tough to crush all these cockroaches. I play anonymous on my tablet, just for fun. Most of the time my opponents play up and down, good moves, not so good. But about 10 percent of opponents play fast, regularly spaced moves. of great accuracy. Unless alot of master strength people like to play anonymously and like to beat mediocre players like me, somethings afoot. I'velost in correspondence games on another site with players who barely knew the moves of the pieces. I don't get it. They're like the terrorists of chess internet except they don't do us a favor and blow themselves up in the process.
Sad. Unfortunate. True. One can only hope that this issue is resolved at some point.
People cheat - that's reality. People cheat to win Olympic gold medals, championships, tournaments, playoffs, superbowls, finals, etc... People cheat. Because their incentive usually involves earning millions of dollars. What's your complaint? That some anon guy played better than you in an unrated game and you never lost any points? You got robbed of your valuable time? Log in to your account and play registered users only. And document all your encounters with alleged cheaters and send your complaints to the admins of this site. They have a program that allegedly detects cheaters. This super wonderful algorithm will then label cheaters as such and site owners will ban players purely at their own discretion. Not fair? Hey, that's the perk of owning the website. Don't agree? Go fund your own website. Wanna cheat? Play anon games - the developers of this website were gracious enough to allow this option.
You wanna ban all the cheaters? Prove they are cheaters first, before slinging baseless accusations.
@ watermelontrip A "cheater apologist" would be someone who defends the idea of cheating, not an individual who does not think that there has been cheating involved. You also say that your rating would be higher if cheaters didn't cheat, that is wrong unless cheaters periodically target you specifically. You also implay that you are a strong player, however 2022 on lichess is not that strong bro, nowadays it is inflated AF.
Mods are constantly on the lookout and there are programs that are analyzing the play of all the players. To avoid cheaters completely, just take a look at how many games your opponent has under his belt, if its an old account it cant be a cheater, since most are cought right away.
There's no money or big prizes in online chess people who cheat remind me of a guy who runs around stealing free drinks food and barbeque chips at a party people who see him do it will give him a strange look then conclude moron and move along.
Don't stress yourself out about them.
I like your analogy of the guy who steals free food at the party. And the crowd is peaceful too. Until a jerk arrives and tackles the free food thief to the ground and bloodies his nose.
i am a cheater ... my account was banned from playing tournament games ..... ...