I miss chess here.

The rating tournaments are gone, the monthly cups are entirely ruined by cheaters if you get to the second round, and the championship, which I still play in, is infrequent and more than half ruined by the cheaters.

Agreed.

I'm still thinking a lot about the psychology of 'Cheating' - why do people do that?

And its not just that there are so many bad or stupid people out there, it's probably a lot of rather good and nice people that do it. It just seems to be stronger than you once it got you. Like an addiction.

As a scientist, I'm of course experimenting on myself (who doesn't), and try to follow the lure just enough to understand it. Often, in Go for example, I'm in a difficult and decisive situation (for my level of play), and I feel like I would gladly have a program look at that situation and tell me if I picked the best (or a good enough) move, or if I'm blundering it away. After you played well (again, for my level) through the whole game, it is incredibly frustrating to give it away with a single blunder - anybody who learned Go knows what I mean. And still, this is how you learn it. Everybody has to go through this frustration and overcome it.

So if I had a Go program (and I don't, thank God), I probably would be lured into checking - just this one position - with it. And after a while, it would be like 10 situations in each game. Maybe because it's so much easier then thinking yourself and getting frustrated. And then end up having the computer play all moves and just looking at them and nod, yes I might have found that too. And there I am a cheater. Duh.

And after my rating went up a bit, I cannot stop anymore, because it would mean losing a lot of games I would have won before, and losing rating. And maybe giving away the fact that I was cheating - which I'm of course ashamed of - so the only options are stopping playing Go or keeping cheating.

As I said I don't have a Go program, and I hope I don't get one. It could happen, I think. Really.

So much for psychology. Can anyone see himself in that maelstrom? Or is it my mind only that thinks so?

In your opinion, is Chess 960 full of cheaters too?

Yes it is

You know I've been here less than a year now. I entirely agree with the observations and conclusions of Mr. Avins. Thanks for saying this here; now I know I'm not the only one to observe this - and apparently you guys have been seeing this for years now; I didn't take me that long (brag?).

But I still have fun here, and continue to play. I, too, shall be taking steps to avoid wasting my time with cheaters in this place; it may come down to a highly reduced playing schedule, and picking and choosing games only against folks I know and trust.

Remember - there are no prizes and no fees here. It's just the personal satisfaction of rating points. It's really not that big a deal. Eventually the few cheaters who seek to ruin the playing field for others will find that they (he) are only 'playing' each other, and nobody else will give them the time of day. (I predict.)

Regarding the last two comments, I do believe that computer cheating is present in all games where software now dominates (and Chess 960 is among them). If we had Checkers here, people would cheat at that. It's nice that we have a few, relatively obscure games, that nobody has bothered busting with engines; they'll probably all fall, one by one - if not in this generation, then in the next.

I guess we could avoid all suspected cheaters by filling the boards with user tournaments - BY INVITE ONLY - and you'd have to know somebody, or be personally recommended. Of course, more of us would have to actually become paid members for this to be feasible.

(meow)

There is also the possibility of user tournaments with password, you can try to create your own no-cheater league.

@Aganju's observations:

I think you hit the bull's eye. There isn't only one kind of cheater, it's more some kind of gradient until you become a pure cheater.

I had the expierence myself in loa. After playing some games and getting better I found mia. I only used it for training, but on my latest games I checked some positions after I made a move and the temptation to cheat was that big, that I stopped playing loa before Mr. Hyde could take over. Now with black hole it would be a good time to start again.

speaking of chess please check out...

http://www.stanleyrandomchess.com/Comparison-of-Online-Chess-Sites.php

Thank you

not to mention...

www.amateurchess.com

Speaking of missing-don't miss renewing your subscription to New In Chess magazine before rates rise effective 5-1-12.

5-1-12 has passed, hasn't it?

... 7 years ago :)

That's supposed to be May 1st, 2012 (I believe), which is rather close anyway

In the U.S., the standard is month-date-year (which is different from most of the world) so 5-1-12 equals May 1, 2012

Yet, NiC is Dutch

I hesitate to mention this, but the ISO standard for dates using hyphens is YMD. Dates with slashes are hopelessly ambiguous, but there's still hope for dates with hyphens as of today, 2012-04-28. If you want to use MDY or DMY, go ahead. Everybody does. But please use slashes. Or dots. Or spaces. Just not hyphens.

End of soapbox.

My turn, then. This is a big peeve of mine, too.

I've had to use Canadian "standard", American "standard", and European "standard". It's stupid.

The solution is simple and perfectly logical: always use the ISO 9000 standard, 2012-05-01, even if others do not. I use a date stamp like 120501 for file name versions, and they thus list alphabetically as well.

how do you know they are cheaters?