# Fair Play

One rule matters more than all the others: **play your own moves**.

## What counts as cheating

Using a chess engine during a game. Consulting an opening database, a book, or
another site mid-game. Asking another player for help. Letting someone stronger
play on your account. It makes no difference whether you did it once or every
game, whether the game was rated, or whether you won.

Deliberately losing, arranging results, or playing to move someone's rating up or
down is also cheating, even though no engine is involved.

## How we detect it

Games are examined by statistical analysis: how closely your moves match an
engine's choices, how that varies with position difficulty, and how long you take
to find hard moves compared to easy ones. A single brilliant game proves nothing
and triggers nothing. A consistent pattern does.

Human moderators look at flagged accounts before any mark is applied. Nothing is
decided by a script alone.

## What happens when an account is marked

The account is closed. Its games stay visible, since they involve opponents too.
Players who lost rating to a marked account get those points back automatically —
you do not need to ask.

## If you were marked and did not cheat

False positives happen and we would rather correct one than defend it. Appeal
through the [appeal page](/appeal). Explain what you use to play, whether anyone
else has access to your account, and anything about your games that looks strange
from outside. See [Appealing a Decision](/page/appeal).

## If you did cheat

Say so in the appeal. A closed account stays closed, but an honest admission is
what separates being allowed to start over later from not being allowed. Denying
something the game record shows does not help you.

## Playing well is not suspicious

Improving quickly, having a strong opening repertoire, blitzing out theory you
know, winning a long streak against weaker opponents — none of that gets you
marked. Play your own moves and there is nothing to worry about.