Ian Nepomniachtchi

Russian GM

“I really want to believe that everyone always plays titled tournaments fairly — everyone and always. But honestly, I’m not sure about that. I have a feeling that not everyone does, and not always. I think some people allow themselves a bit of freedom sometimes.

Chess.com has Proctor and other stuff… But there’s clearly something wrong with it. Back in the day, Chess.com needed to invite everyone to Zoom for tournaments, and there were judges who monitored everyone. They had a broadcast director, of sorts, who checked whether players were cheating. Although it’s clear that back then, no one cheated.

And now, Proctor does it all automatically, and maybe they have one or two admins for each tournament who occasionally notify about the lack of a camera and other such things.

But I don’t know what difference this makes. If someone is a cheater, then they’re a smart cheater — they haven’t been banned yet. If not, then they’re just great, they play stronger than expected.

The problem is, unfortunately, that the truth is impossible to establish. I think that even with Proctor, there should objectively be a lot of people who are simply smarter than Proctor. There are those who fall between the cracks, and they’re not so easy to track down and ban.”