How Often Do You Play a Cheater on Chess.com and Lichess?

Short answer: On Chess.com, about 1 in 73 games below 1600 was against an account later closed for fair play violations, and 1 in 26 at 2400 and up. On Lichess it was about 1 in 120, counting accounts later marked for breaking its terms. Even against those accounts, the honest player lost only about half the games.

You lose a game to someone who never seemed to miss. Were they cheating? It is a common question, and a hard one to answer from a single game. So we counted instead.

We took real games from July 2026, then looked up every opponent's account months later, on October 30, 2026 for Chess.com and October 31, 2026 for Lichess. That gave both sites time to catch the cheaters among them. Every figure below is from the side of a player whose own account is still open and unmarked.

How often you play a cheater on Chess.com

We sampled 3,002 Chess.com players and took their rated games from July 2026, 266,439 games in all. We picked players so every rating band holds about the same number of games, and took at most 100 games from any one player. A cheater here is an account Chess.com has since closed for fair play violations, its own label for cheating.

A band marked "too few games" had fewer than 2,000 in our sample. Ratings are Chess.com's own. At 2400 and up the pool of players is small, and a few banned accounts played many of that row's games.

How often you play a cheater on Lichess

Lichess publishes every rated game. We took a random sample of 65,000 games played on July 1, 2026 and looked up every player in them. Each game counts once for each player whose own account is still open and unmarked, 125,847 in all. A cheater here is an open account that Lichess has marked for breaking its terms of service.

A band marked "too few games" had fewer than 2,000 in our sample. Lichess ratings run on their own scale, usually higher than Chess.com's for the same player, so compare rows within one table, not across the two.

How many of your losses were to a cheater?

The other way to ask it: of the games you lost, how many were to a cheater? Below 1600, 1.5% of the losses of honest Chess.com players came against an account later banned. On Lichess it was 0.9%.

Every time control together. "Share of losses" is how many of the honest player's losses came against an account later banned. "Lost against one" is how many games against such an account the honest player lost. "Lost against anyone" is the same for every game, to compare.

Why the real number is probably higher

Bans keep coming after the games are played. We looked up every account about four months after these games, and some accounts still open that day will be closed later.

Some cheaters also close their own account before a ban comes. We count those as closed, never as cheaters, since we can't tell them apart from anyone else who left. On Chess.com below 1600, another 0.7% of games were against an account closed for some other reason, or gone. On Lichess below 1600 it was 1.5%. If even some of those were cheaters, the real numbers are higher.

A ban does not mean that game was cheated

An account closed for cheating did not have to cheat in every game. Both sites also flag more than engine use. Chess.com's fair play policy bans outside help, sharing an account, and manipulating ratings or game outcomes. The Lichess mark covers engine use and boosting, which is manipulating ratings.

In our sample, the honest player lost 52% of games against a later-banned Chess.com account below 1600, and 48% of all their games. On Lichess it was 48% against 49%. So one loss to a later-banned account does not show the game was cheated, and a win against one is common.

Did you play one? Check your own games

The free cheater check runs the same lookup on your last 500 games. Type your Chess.com or Lichess username and it lists the opponents later banned, with links to your games against them. It also counts the losses that came down to the board.