How frequent do you think is the use of engines in chess?

it seems like a lot of the moves are engines generated. I'm not playing against a human, I'm playing against a machine…NOT Fair. What do you think?

I would not expect a lot of users on this site are using engines. I'm basing that partly on the fact this site is not known for its chess, hence not a lot of glory for one to dominate here. You could run the games through an engine after the fact and see what % of opponent moves match the top engine suggestions.

I agree on most of what you said. But I find that some player seem to be almost impossible to beat…OK maybe because they are good, but I'm always suspicious

I think use of engines is either very infrequent or does not happen. With a 500 elo rating difference you can expect a 4% win chance, and much less for larger differences.

You have to hunt, W A Y Y back, in the forums. This topic has been discussed many times - by me, by many other folks before me. My take - and I'm only going to address engine use in Chess, since this is the Chess forum.

Engine use is fairly widespread, all over the world, in many different Chess websites, and in live tournaments as well. This has been documented many times. It is the reason that there is high security at big tournaments, no cell phones, metal detectors, monitored bathrooms, etc. At websites, such as Chess dot com and others, they use software to match engine moves, and there is a reporting scheme; players are warned, and banned - sometimes for life.

Eykca thinks that engine use is minimal here, since this site is 'small potatoes' in the Chess world. While not a bad supposition, I must disagree. I personally know a former player here who used his engine regularly, achieved a nice high rating, then confessed to me that he felt guilty, and quit the site forever. Nice guy, too - good gamester, in general.

Also, I tried my own experiment in a game, cheating, USING strong engines (but not the very strongest) against a suspected player, and HE BEAT ME anyway. Actually, I resigned in an endgame, down a piece - though actually, my strongest engines, given time to 'think', found a drawing line! But this line was not what I'd call 'human' play, and I felt that my point was made.

As I said - there are many cheaters here. One wonders why … after all, no cash prizes. In fact, no prizes. I used to think that if I played only tournaments with no money at stake, people wouldn't bother cheating. That was not the case. It is not the case here - one can explore the rationale and motivation for cheating with engines - but not what I'm doing here. As I see it, it is some sort of ego trip for certain 'individuals' (and yes - instead of 'individuals', I might have used a more 'descriptive' term here, but I am too polite).

This also happens at my other Chess website - Red Hot Pawn. The issue has been discussed. Most players agree that it is too damn suspicious when players win 99% of their games, even against top competition. (and, this appears to be the case with OUR top player, whose 'name' I shall not refer to here).

I've made this suggestion before: try to play people you know, or players you'd played before, or even beaten before. Look at their win/loss record. If I see 130 wins vs. 1 loss, I won't bother playing that person. If I see 74 wins to 68 losses, I'll usually chance it. THIS IS NO GUARANTEE, but if this individual is cheating with software, then it must be pretty weak software to have lost 68 times!

(meow)

If you want to be sure that your partner is fair, play over the board.
For me a single OTB game gives much more satisfaction than dozens of games played at lichess. Of course OTB also requires much more effort.