Why it is pointless playing rapid chess online

 People say Kramnik is paranoid, that he's past his best. That all his talk about facing engine cheats is the sign of a failing mental state.

                                                many people claim that Big Vlad has lost his marbles. 

All of this ignores the simple truth- that Kramnik is a far stronger player than most of these posting on places like Reddit, Twitter, Youtube and other sources where he is widely ridiculed. Some people might claim that isn't important. I would claim that it is, because the stronger the player the greater the insight.

In reality Kramnik has worked with engines for many years. He played a match against one in Bahrain, the fabled "Brains in Bahrain."

I have discovered this myself- when you work with engines a great deal, you get a sense of when something is "off."

Also importantly, I have played many types of players over the board, just as Kramnik has done (he obviously has even more experience than me of this.) Whenever I dab my hand at rapidplay online, I tend to face players with quite low blitz and bullet ratings but can hold their own against me at rapid.

I made the point in a Youtube video just recorded

that I have experience of playing such opposition in rapid tournaments over the board, and the standard experience is to wipe them out fairly quickly. Yet at rapidplay online, they routinely outplay me. Draw your own conclusions.

Sadly. this all leads to a paranoia that makes playing chess online an unpleasant experience. You don't know where you are, you don't know who you are facing. 

This is an example of what I'm talking about. What is surprising is that mr VRCMarco hasn't been banned from chess.com.

His bullet is incredibly low- yes, he has only played 30 bullet games, but someone who plays so accurately at rapidplay shouldn't be rated at 1616, even after only 30 games.  That's a 1200 point difference between his bullet rating and mine. That's over twice as much as the difference between myself and Magnus Carlsen, yet during the rapidplay game I felt curiously helpless. 

I reported this opponent in the hope that Chess.com might do something about him, (or her) but with little hope that anything will be done. The problem is this seems to be some kind of smart cheat.

Here Marco took on e3, rather than the obvious Nxh1, which presumably brought the accuracy score down. He is not foolish enough to play the top move everytime.

I feel there are radical steps that Chess.com need to take, to eradicate these "Smart cheating" issues. 

• Employ anti-cheating officers who go around peoples houses to check them when they play. If you are a regular big money winner in events like Titled tuesday, then you have to agree to sign up to this. The problem is the cost- people play Titled tuesday all around the world.
• Force everyone to play on Zoom. The issue with this is that you will discourage people from playing on chess.com at all, as many chess players are very shy and don't want to appear on Zoom.
• Look more closely at players who have radically varying ratings, like Mr Marco. If your rapid is 2400 and your bullet is 1600, close the account. Or at least ask the player to play more games at quicker time controls and observe them closely.

There aren't any easy solutions to this current online mess, but what is clear to me is that sites like chess.com aren't going far enough, and I think that is what Kramnik was trying to get across with all his allegations.