How to check a chess game for cheating

Start with the moves, not an accusation. A chess engine can help you examine a finished game, but engine agreement alone cannot tell you whether your opponent used outside assistance.

A useful first check

1. Wait until the game is finished. Do not use engine analysis during a game in progress.
2. Open the actual game. Find it by Chess.com or Lichess username, paste its game link, or export and paste its PGN into ChessCheatScan.
3. Review both players. Compare the engine's preferred moves, average centipawn loss, and the positions where the strongest move mattered.
4. Inspect the difficult decisions. A long sequence of forced exchanges tells you less than several quiet positions with many reasonable choices. Open the move-by-move report instead of relying only on the headline score.
5. Consider the context. Short games, familiar openings, forcing tactics, and an opponent's mistakes can make strong play easier to find.

What a checker can and cannot establish

ChessCheatScan produces a separate suspicion score for White and Black using engine comparisons and a rating-adjusted statistical formula. A high score means the game deserves a closer look within that model. It is not a calibrated probability of cheating. A low score does not rule out occasional assistance.

For example, a player who finds four obvious recaptures has matched an engine four times. A player who finds four difficult quiet moves has also matched it four times. Those counts alone do not describe the difficulty of the choices. Review the positions and sample size.

Reviewing several recent games

Pro users can queue their latest 5, 10, or 20 available games from the username lookup list. Scores are saved beside each game, so you can compare the individual reports later. This is a batch of separate game analyses, not a combined player verdict or an account-wide cheating probability.

What to do if you are still concerned

Use the platform's report system and include the relevant game. Avoid public accusations based on a scan. Chess.com describes a fair-play process with information and review beyond a public game report; ChessCheatScan does not have access to that private evidence.

Further reading: Chess.com's fair-play explanation. Related: Does high accuracy mean cheating? · Our scoring methodology.