How Much Can a Few Engine Moves Help? Quantifying Limited Cheating in Chess

Cheating in chess, by using advice from powerful software, has become a major problem, reaching the highest levels. As opposed to the large majority of previous work, which concerned {\em detection} of cheating, here we try to evaluate the possible gain in performance, obtained by cheating a limited number of times during a game. We develop threshold-based and Bellman-style intervention policies, and test them in a controlled engine-vs-engine setting using Stockfish. A judicious choice of 1 or 2 cheats yields average scores of 0.71 and 0.82, respectively, compared to 0.51 with no cheats. We also introduce a fast, engine-free simulator that enables hyperparameter optimization without running games, closely matching the engine-based optimum. The goal of this work is not to assist cheaters, but to measure the effectiveness of cheating -- which is crucial as part of the effort to contain and detect it.