I once played a member of the chess.com staff and I asked him if he really thought they stopped cheating on the site and at first he said that cheaters really don’t bother him, and that he likes to play cheats because they squirm in time trouble (which is sometimes, but rarely, true). When I said that even at 2/1 time controls it is possible to cheat just using an engine, not even addressing the issue of bots, he admitted that there is really nothing they can do to stop cheating. Sometimes I will analyze games with an engine after I play and I have seen players rated 900! (you start at 1200) match the 1st or 2nd moves that my engine suggests for 20 or more moves in a row… I can’t tell you how many times I will get an advantage out of the opening and then all of a sudden my opponent just plays perfectly and wipes me out. I think many cheaters play the opening themselves to avoid suspicion and to make themselves feel like they have a role to play in the victory. I would guess that 90% of the people rated over 1200 use an engine to some extent. The top German grandmaster, Arkadij Naiditsch, once admitted to using computer help to win an online chess tournament in his youth. He said it was obvious that everyone else was using one too. So even grandmasters are not immune to the cheating bug. Online chess really is unplayable… Many video games are the same way. You get hackers who ruin those… Games are no fun anymore… 