As Chess.com’s Fair Play team is shutting down more than 100,000 accounts every month for violating fair play rules, the platform is now considering new measures to combat the constant battle against cheating in online chess.
A new blog post titled Breaking Down 100,000 Closures A Month, by IM Kassa Korley, Chess.com’s Senior Fair Play & Communications Advisor, offers a look at the trends behind these closures and the efforts of the 30-person Fair Play team.
While only a small fraction, 0.3% of monthly active users are closed for Fair Play. The raw number of closures has grown as Chess.com’s user base continues to increase.
“Players that cheat sour the experience for players that are not cheating,” Korley noted in the post.
Players that cheat sour the experience for players that are not cheating.
—Kassa Korley
A revealing insight is that new accounts make up a majority of closures on the site. In fact, nearly 40% of closed accounts were no more than two weeks old. Korley noted how the median number of games played before account closure has dropped to 52 games, a 17% decrease since December 2024.
This suggests that Chess.com’s internal screening and autoban mechanisms are catching bad actors faster than ever, sometimes after fewer than 10 games if statistical anomalies raise red flags.
New accounts are now being screened more frequently to detect inhuman levels of strength or unusual playing patterns. This involves generating regular “checkpoint” reports that analyze not only games played and rating earned, but also strength of play and over 100 other gameplay factors.
85% of accounts are being handled automatically through algorithms, which is essential given that 20 million games are being played on Chess.com daily. “This enables the team to focus its efforts on more complex cases that don’t get autobanned and require further analysis,” Korley said.
As a response to the high number of new accounts being closed, Chess.com has made some changes and is considering additional measures. One idea is to require new accounts to play primarily against other new accounts before being allowed to compete against established players. This could limit the impact of cheaters on long-time users, but might also lead to longer wait times for new players looking for games.
“This idea may have some cons, but the pros seem pretty obvious,” Korley said.
You can read the full blog post and take part in the ongoing poll on whether new accounts should only play against newer players before being able to play more established players.