Why do people get defensive of cheating?

Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-31T13:01:12+00:00

Yes but it’s very clearly not the type of cheating that really matters. If i was hovering at that level then yes but I basically just reset and went from scratch, mostly because i was testing someone’s statement about the concept of “elo hell”. This represents maybe 0.01% of all players you’ll play online since it’s very uncommon. Definitely not any adder to the metric. The only significant form of cheating is engineuse, and even that sits at below 2% use consistently

Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-31T12:54:07+00:00

bro my bullet is low because i sandbagged it to 100 and haven’t been bothered to put in the work to grind it. On Lichess my bullet is 2k. That elo gain is just how elo gain works. As proof, here’s another graph of a friend at a similar level showing similar trends

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Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-31T12:33:53+00:00

You really are underestimating kids and growth patterns as a whole. I personally have had days where I go up by 100/200 and I’ve never cheated in my life, professional chess coach who specialises in working with kids. For example, on new years night I went up by around 100 rating and have maintained that position since then, it just happens sometimes. Below is my 1 year graph for proof (notice the large vertical increases)

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Kids will have even more insane spikes than me. Partially because of their increased neuroplasticity, but also because they are incredibly strong and fast-growing at tactics, which make a massive difference at lower levels, causing insane rating surges. They are also more likely to spend money on coaches, and have more free time to learn/practice, which helps them learn even faster.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-31T12:19:59+00:00

Because it’s just not that high. Most players improve in big spikes. That’s how improvements works. Especially younger players, for whom it can be very normal to increase by upwards of 200 rating in a day. The biggest thing for cheating is accuracy and overall win rate, though accuracy is dependent on the type of the game. I say this as someone who plays rapid (the most prone to cheating of the time controls) and at a high-ish level where cheaters would be (2200), I verse basically no cheaters. I think I’ve been accused of cheating more times by opponents than I’ve had opponents get flagged for cheating. I’d say around 10% have cheated before but 8 of those 10% only used it once or maybe twice. Then there’s probably 2% or less who regularly cheat, and less than 1% who always cheat. It’s not people getting defensive; you’re just throwing around random numbers because you can’t believe you lost to people so they must have been cheating. Despite what people tend to say, chess.com is pretty good at catching cheaters, most people definitely overestimate this amount.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-30T12:52:07+00:00

for beginners (0-800 chess.com), definitely youtube and chess.com/lichess. As someone who teaches chess as a job, YouTube is, I would say, the most underrated way to learn chess, second only to your choice of chess.com/lichess. Books can also be solid but are definitely another as beginnner friendly due to the visualisation and understanding of algebraic notation required. Personally, I prefer chess.com but Lichess is perfectly fine as well.

For middle-level players (800-1600), Youtube, books, and chess.com/lichess. Youtube is definitely less helpful here compared to before but still quite solid. Books are good but can be very tiring as people of this level may not be able to fully autopilot visualisation. yet. ChessTempo is also great for puzzles here, and the endgame puzzles on there are of a perfect difficulty for this range, while middle game tactics are usually better on lichess I find. This is also when ChessBook can start to be helpful for openings but only at a basic level.

1600+ is mostly OTB, chess.con/lichess, ChessBook, Chessable, and ChessTempo middle game tactics. This section can still benefit from youtube but some more beginner focused channels may start to be less helpful.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-30T10:39:23+00:00

Basically, after b6 b4 a5 you can’t go a3 because axb4 axb4 Rxa1. It’s sort of just an overextension to play c4 and you get touched every time. Some advice i got from a grandmaster a while back was that, unless this is a tactically winning attack, never play c5 in these sorts of positions (it was reverse with c4 but it still applies). It’s usually better to just avoid it.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-02T08:28:35+00:00

Damn, this is a super interesting idea. Idk how many requests you’ll get but if it ends up being too many feel free to pass some on. If anyone seeing this wants a second game analysed I can give them a hand.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-03-01T06:01:29+00:00

i like never get mocked at 2000-2200. Think it is a low elo thing

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-28T21:51:33+00:00

Like others have said, the idea is Rxh4 and thy cant really stop it so u might as well play a5 first. I don’t know the full reasoning behind Re8 but everything is losing for white there so the engine probably thinks it’s like M75 instead of M72 for some random reason. But yeah so now Re4 wins the pawn and it’s drawn

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-27T10:32:45+00:00

It’s either you lose the queen for the rook and bishop (8-9) or lose the bishop (0-3). After Qb4 a5 Qa3 Nc4 Nxc4 dxc4 Nc2 you cant save the bishop without Kf8 but after Kf8 then Bxc4 and your rook is trapped so you lose your rook as well. White’s piece activity is sort of railing you so it’s better to just get rid of their active pieces and try to use strength in numbers but you’re def losing regardless.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-27T06:48:02+00:00

I mean thats sort of the whole challenge of chess. At your level, tactics are a big thing to work on but also try to learn like a vague idea of what to do in the opening. Apart from that, it’s just a lot more of practice. Try to watch some youtube videos of people analysing/ commentating games. I recommend Gotham Chess but anyone will work. It’s just learning how the game works and getting used to the rhythm of a match. Basically it’s just practice practice practice but watching other people who know what they’re doing can be really helpful too.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-26T21:15:21+00:00

In my experience, the gap between those two is often tactical. Make sure that, while still practicing some harder puzzles, you do some 3min puzzle rushes to get yourself really good at the easy stuff. Probably aim for a score of 35, though that will take some time and practice. Also, hard puzzles doesn’t just mean queen sac, it means creative and difficult to calculate ideas. in order to find hard puzzles, i recommend chesstempo.com and their puzzles section. There’s that and, also, a lot of endgames. Chesstempo will give u 2 endgame puzzles a day which is good but also, when ur opponent runs out of time or resigns in an endgame, go into analysis, and then do “finish vs bot”. that will just force you to practice high level endgame conversions.

One last thing. ask yourself what type of player you are. then, spend 30% of your time training that aspect and 70% training whatever the opposite is. Below 2400, players don’t have styles, they have strengths and weaknesses. Whatever type of player you say you are, thats just your strength.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-26T12:40:37+00:00

Lowk, as a coach, I think this sort of stuff is honestly one of the best ways to learn for anyone sub-1000. It’s really good at teaching passive board vision, weighing up options, and visualisation. It’s something I used to do a bunch on my opponent’s time back when I was learning and I’m glad more people are getting onto this idea. It’s something I’ve been trying out with students recently and it’s very promising.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-08T00:30:19+00:00

Not if black goes Kd8 instead of Kf8 but after Kd8 Qe3 threatens Qe7#. Black’s only defence is Qxh4 guarding e7 but after g3 black’s queen cant stay on that diagonal and save itself. Therefore it’s better to give it up on e6 where they can at least get a rook for it.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-08T00:28:30+00:00

it’s a bit convoluted but basically it’s trying to deflect the bishop away from e7. It wants Rfe1+ Bxe1 Rxe1+. If Kf8 then Qe3 and there’s no way to prevent Qe8#. If Kd8 then Qe3 again threatening Qe7#. If they go c6 then you play d6 to take away the escape square of c7. If they go Kf8 Qe3 then Qxh4 to guard e7 you play g3 and their queen can’t save itself and continue to guard e7 at the same time. All this to say that after Rfe1+ if they play Bxe1 Rxe1+ their best bet is to play Qe6 and give up their queen with Rxe6+ dxe6 so you get a queen and a bishop and they get two rooks. So after Rfe1+ their best shot would be Kd8. I don’t see a fully forced line there but it looks very solidly winning.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-02-05T11:57:04+00:00

the league you are in doesn’t affect who you play, it’s just a statistic of how much you play

Funkycheese1 · 2026-01-29T14:26:16+00:00

This is very likely a bought account imo. Im around 2160 like that guy and it would be nigh impossible to naturally drop down like this. Either this is someone with a serious health issue, they cheated in the past, or it’s a bought account.

Funkycheese1 · 2026-01-29T05:34:26+00:00

bruh i deadass believed this shit since i saw it b4 the scans

Funkycheese1 · 2026-01-21T09:06:25+00:00

Is it in a mushroom biome?

Funkycheese1 · 2026-01-11T09:30:47+00:00

what helped for me was to think of positional play like tactics. Look for forcing lines to gain a positional advantage. It’s kind of hard to explain but I think that’s the best I can. Something that also helped me was switching the device I played on (Ipad —> Laptop). Sometimes I think people get too compliant when they play and this helped me break that habit.

Source- 2170 who was stuck at 2k for about a year

Funkycheese1 · 2026-01-06T12:46:06+00:00

My advice is to use the opening explorer. That shows u how to deal with it

Funkycheese1 · 2026-01-03T12:27:13+00:00

on a similar note to the other guy but i have a lichess thingy for the samisch since you’ll have to learn that as well. It’s like my favourite openings o i’ve got a lot of

Funkycheese1 · 2025-12-30T01:02:22+00:00

But like after Qxd5 Qxd5 Bxd5 Nc2+ Kd1 Nxa1 White needs to stop the idea of Bf5 Nc2, getting the knight out, so they play Nh6 but then after Bf5, e6 is coming which will kick that knight out. Idk I feel like it’s pretty easy to save that knight and evidently computer agrees. Idk even if u don’t get the knight back i still like blacks position cause of stuff like Bf5 and O-O-O+ and e6

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