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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18257 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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Chess.com has now concluded the Super PogChamps series where content creators play each other in a tournament to find a winner. Each content creator is teamed with a higher level player for chess coaching and game preparation. The Super PogChamps series is slightly different from the normal PogChamps series because the players are not beginners but much stronger. The previous PogChamps 6 series was marred in controversy when Dr Lupo was caught blatantly cheating after he blundered his queen in the opening (https://www.pcgamer.com/games/drlupo-admits-to-cheating-in-usd100-000-online-chess-tournament-faces-brutal-backlash-from-reddit-dude-went-from-whats-a-horsey-to-i-can-see-15-moves-ahead-in-2-minutes/). Though, I think the consensus position is that Dr Lupo cheated in other games previous to the queen blunder but it was less obvious.

Samay Raina (1728 elo) playing from India early in the morning was a surprise winner in the Super PogChamps series after clean sheeting the group round 10-0 and then overcoming two stronger players Andrea Botez (1997 elo) and Sardoche (2039 elo). Apparently, Samay might be considered under-rated and had been previously rated ~1900 in rapid on chess.com about 6 months ago. Also, its important to note that the coaching and preparation can make a big difference in a players performance when they are not at the elite level because with the correct prep you can be playing the first 10 moves or so as good as an elite player would. Samay Raina is also heavily involved in promoting chess on Youtube to Indians so you would expect he would face strong incentives to not cheat because the reputational cost would be significant if he was caught. He has also donated the prize money from his PogChamps win to a chess charity so he has not directly benefited financially from his PogChamps win.

For prize events chess.com has a special anti-cheating software called 'Proctor' (https://www.chess.com/proctor) which it can require competitors to install and run on their machines. However, it looks like for PogChamps there was no requirement for Proctor to be used according to the Proctor web page (this might be incorrect but its to the best of my knowledge). I'm not sure what steps were taken during the Super PogChamps series to stop cheating. It's possible that chess.com still required a live feed of multiple camera angles and a screen share and this would have made it almost impossible for someone to cheat.

The opening play in this first game from white between Samay and Botez showed some unprincipled decisions from Samay causing his position to blow up (https://youtube.com/watch?v=uzUyXmK_u-w&t=14885). For example on move 3 he exchanged the bishop for the knight and according to the engine this gives black a small advantage in the opening. Generally exchanging knights for bishops is not considered good. However, sometimes the position will demand that such a thing should occur. It's not completely terrible here because while white concedes the bishop pair black has doubled pawns but i think the idea is very dubious unless it was specific preparation. I think it was unlikely it was prep because a few moves later white plays d4 destabilising the knight on c3 which could be now be pinned to the king by black with Bb4. Also, there is now no dark squared bishop for white to help break the pin because it was previously exchanged for the knight! Botez ended up wining this by converting the position to a rook end game up two pawns and then was able to eventually promote a pawn and win the game.

In the second game Samay is again caught out in the opening and quickly loses a pawn (https://youtube.com/watch?v=uzUyXmK_u-w&t=16650) but this is more due to Andrea playing a sharp line and Samay making a tactical error rather than a positional mistake like in the first game. The position becomes complicated but then Andrea makes a huge blunder that Samay was able able to take advantage of and after all the trades be up a rook. In Samay's defence c5 which is the move that made the blunder from Botez possible is considered a bad from the engine and a player at his level should be able to find the tactic that wins material after Botez made the blunder.

The second game feels a lot like the games from this person (https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/144499596120/review) who was banned for fair play violations. This person that was banned for fair play often makes weird moves in the opening that normal strong human players would not do, then play a bunch of normal moves (not top engine lines or anything very strong) and their opponent eventually blunders and they are able to capitalise and win. If you look at this cheater's games I feel they are very weird but its not obvious the player is cheating. Maybe some of the moves have 'inconsistent' strength but I think that is expected at the rating level this player was playing at. But maybe the cheating is more obvious to someone who is a stronger chess player. And when you play someone like this, unless they make a very non-human move your take-away from the game is I was better then I blundered and I lost it doesn't even come into the picture that your opponent may have cheated.

When it comes to Samay's play in the Andrea game he might be weaker in the opening but because he has stronger tactical vision in the middle game he is better able to create opportunities and capitalise on his opponents mistakes. For example in the third game Andrea missed multiple opportunities that would have likely won her the game if she took advantage of them. My guess is its probably impossible to know if Samay cheated in PogChamps if he did because it was not in a blatant way and there is probably not enough games to identify subtle cheating.

Is this in the right thread?

The term "pogchamp" is culture war-loaded itself but not in a way that seems relevant here.

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