I missed who it was when the game started, or I would have resigned on Move 1. If we actually have some strong master here who enjoys playing people who don't give him any real competition, I wouldn't want to cheat. But if the account is a bot pretending not to be, I see no reason not to also use assistance.

I count 8 games where they have more losses than victories.

So  yes, there's some human playing games other than chess. Even the chess-like Shogi. But it's rated 809 points higher in chess than in shogi. With a chess rating that seems all but impossible.

So the question is: if there is a cheater, why only chess?

In other words, I would personally give the benefit of doubt and assume that there indeed is a strong master who enjoys playing people who don't give him any real competition - for example, for teaching reasons, or because the person enjoys playing chess on the site while also trying their hand at other games, or something.

Another thing to consider is the scenario where the player posted in this thread, claiming that they don't cheat. Would you be happy? After all, nothing really changed; they could still be cheating regardless, or they could have been a strong master all this time. Does it really matter?

@mmKALL, a chess player is more likely to have access to a chess engine than to a Shogi one.

I'm pretty sure he is a cheater, which is sad - because he raises the Greek flag.

Why not ask him what his favorite drink is?   Also your game appears to be Chess960.  If so I think his/its advantage would be mostly neutralized.

Engines (at least Stockfish) work just fine with Chess960. If the operator of this account came to this thread and said they were human, and especially if they briefly discussed their situation, yes, that would be enough for me to take them at their word, whatever my private doubts. Heck, if they even responded to usual pleasantries over the board, it would give me pause.

If anyone cares, after games are over, the Stockfish engine at lichess.org web pages is nice for analyzing games. Including 960, but you need to include the starting FEN for it to work for that.

http://en.lichess.org/paste is the game import page. If you ask for a computer analysis, you get one I think about 18 ply deep, run on their server. You can also turn local analysis on for 22-23 ply, or more if you tell it to continue, in any given position. You have to remove the “resign” and any move number that has only resignation as a move, because that's not proper PGN.

https://en.lichess.org/analysis/chess960 shows the FEN as a PGN tag that can be pasted into the beginning of a move list and edited for a particular starting position.

I don't use the engine against human opponents. I have not used it against anyone but dimitris. But even without that, don't ask for an analysis, don't turn on local engine support, it makes a nice analysis board. Which scid vs pc does not for 960 games and which Little Golem used to provide but doesn't anymore.

As for the game against dimitris, I'm finding arguing with Stockfish, trying to find moves that are at least as good as its suggestions once analyzed a few moves further than its default depth–to be a fun change of pace. IN the future, I'll try to notice it's the presumed bot and resign on Move 1 as I've done in the past.

If it were a strong chess master, it would play shogi better than it does. There are major differences. There also enough similarities so that after 300+ games, it would not be as weak as it is.

I don't care much about where my opponent lives or if they are a human or a computer program… Of course conversation with computers is not (yet) as nice as conversation with humans, but give it some time and that will probably change… and BTW, is there any proof that Dvd Avins is a human?  ;-)   …also, not that it matters much, but I agree that “There also enough similarities (between the two games) so that after 300+ games, s/he/it would not be as weak as they are.” is some interesting circumstantial evidence that a computer is somehow involved, but it is far from conclusive… for what-ever that is worth.

“I would personally give the benefit of doubt and assume that there indeed is a strong master”

Also known as being naive. The benefit of doubt is a great tool if you consider to punish a person or not, but it'll never affect my actual assumption of what somebody is doing. In all of these games in which computers are better than human players I'd classify every single person on the first page of the rating list as a potential cheater be it chess, reversi, gomoku or whatever else bots are good at nowadays. For me this only really raises the question of what attitude I want to take in this playing environment. Do I let it bother me that I don't know what my opponent is doing? In the end everyone attains the rating that fits their playing strength be it human or computer. Whether it's a grandmaster or a computer program, in the end you don't stand a chance either way. The only thing I deem worth caring about is however well I can do against these strong moves, focussing on my own play.

For any individual game, I'd agree with purgency's not caring much.Given tournaments, I find it more bothersome.