There has been a cheating scandal, and a relatively significant one but chess.com in keeping with their lack of transparency policy are officially not saying exactly what type of cheating it was.The match between San Jose and the Las Vegas Desert Rats initially ended 8½-7½ in Las Vegas’ favor, but then two of the Desert Rats’ wins were overturned for reasons of cheating. Not only did that flip the result of the match, it also flipped which team won the last playoff spot in the Pacific Division. If the original result had stood, then Las Vegas would have made the playoffs.
The adjusted match score was Las Vegas - San Jose 6.5-9.5. The original match score:
Las Vegas 8.5 - San Jose 7.5
Gareyev 3-1
Liu 2.5-1.5
Troff 1.5-2.5
Stopa 1.5-2.5
It is likely that only one player was involved so we can speculate that it was either Gareyev or Liu that lost two points in order to generate the new score. Elliott Liu has been accused of cheating in the USCL previously over the following game.
http://uschessleague.com/games2015/liuatoufi15.html
It was felt that 17. Qc2 was the type of mistake only made by computer engines on low-depths as it allows black to push ...g4. Rational players who have just played the lengthy Nd3-Nf2 maneuver to prevent ...g4 would not move the queen away. Even club players who wanted to do so would play h3 first. However, without any comments from chess.com this proves nothing.
There are also chess engine correlations analysis for the four players:
GM Timur Gareyev (FIDE 2617, FIDE rapid 2615) : 387 undecided positions, correlation scores : T1=43.9%, T2=67%, T3=78.3%, blunder rate = 3,88%, acl = 16.77
FM Elliott Liu (FIDE 2284) : 285 pos, T-scores : 42.6%/57.2%/68.2%, br=5.26%, acl=17.26
GM Kayden Troff (FIDE 2511) : 675 pos, T-scores : 39.6%/63.2%/70.7%, br=4.44%, acl=17.26
GM Jacek Stopa (FIDE 2453, FIDE rapid 2511) : 191 pos, T-scores : 39.1%/60.1%/79.8%, br=5.24%, acl=16.88
Whether they were used to identify the culprit is again not known.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments ... ss_league/
http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?p=4596