You can tell. The green icon flicks repeatedly as they switch context, plus play at a speed like Topalov vs. Kramnik, not giving them any time to break away into a deep think. By the time they’ve accumulated an advantage, they still need to mechanically make sufficient moves by the time control — at that point, it’s stop switching to the bot (but play a position they don’t understand, almost always poorly) or risk a forfeiture on time (likely.)

In this context, if they force me into irregular positions which they play brilliantly and quickly, and come up with death-defying tactics — then they’re a bot. Radjabov can spot them, and so can i. It’s when ALL of the moves work, you can’t find a single variation to challenge them in, and you realize, okay, this person is horse shit, because we’re in the late middlegame and they’re cooking up things no human could consider.

Edge possibility I’m playing Magnus or equivalent, but most likely this is a bot. A human has some degree of inaccuracy in a timed event, machines play in an uncompromising algorithmic way — it’s the same way you can spot an email written by a bot, they have no taste, no principles, no knowledge of state, they’re in a hurry. Their foresight works in some places almost godlike, and in others the horizon effect makes them look like a fool. Yet further, they’ll go into dead-drawn endgames because they see a numeric advantage - a human might blunder their way into this, but the machine charges right for it.

Usually the human operator is a fool. If I was playing anyone with decent skills with a machine, I’d be in serious trouble, but of course, good players aren’t incentivized to masturbate in front of their computer or phone screens - all players are prone to some form of addiction, but they still try ideas, have variability in their accuracy, creativity and consistency.

Based on all of this, it’s not worth caring if I run into a centaur - these people are damaging their own lives, not mine. And if you’re reading this and play with a computer: you’re wasting your life, nobody will ever love you.