I don’t understand what someone gets out of winning chess games by cheating. It would actually make me feel worse about myself.
Such a person often ends up making an absolute fool of themselves from the perspective of someone with a little bit more self integrity. But maybe it is worth extending a little compassion, after all a lack of compassion is probably how they ended up like that anyhow.
Happened to a good friend of mine up in Seattle. Good fella, incredibly smart, graduated top marks, a bit ostentatious sometimes but you can tell he really wants to do right by others in spite of his sometimes high falutin tendencies.
Anyway.
Lost a game of chess to his blue collar dad, guy couldn’t handle it. Fell into a hole of depression that lasted for at least an entire episode of Cheers
* Overperforming kids (whether smart, in athletics, etc). They don't have to confront failure and work hard like everyone else. They get a lot of praise and self-worth gets tied to it, and it all feels kind of fake/too easy. Then, one day, the work ethic and tolerance of failure everyone else has been learning become critical...
* People raised in abusive or quasi-abusive environments, where success at any cost, appearances over all, etc, are emphasized. The ends justify the means to get the required outcome.
To give the opposite answer, why you should not cheat. Chess is fun if you play against players of similar strengt. Mostly a score of around 50% will be what you get. If you have a 1400 rating, you can have fun games against 1400 players. If you cheat and go towards 2300 rating, you will still have a score of 50% against other 2300 players. But all the fun of the game won't be there, since it is just cheating. You will lose something (fun), but not really win anything within the game itself.
Or simpler said, in a long gone past I got bored with playing Doom. I hunted down cheat codes and got bored even faster.
This is a life hack if ever you find yourself too distracted with a game (for me, Rimworld). Mod / cheat to the point of ruining the game, and you'll likely never play it again. That being said, I do not advocate doing this in multiplayer games.
You can, but the fun will be different because the challenges are different.
The cheaters aren't playing chess, but some other unnamed game
So yes the turnover may be pretty high, but it doesn't make much difference from the perspective of a regular user.
the game might a big part of their life, and being perceived as a good player puts you higher in the pecking order within your friend group
I think something like chess is different; cheating in video games feels more similar to hacking around some software just because you can and it's interesting.
I have no idea why you would do it on a ongoing basis. It would be so boring, all you do is transcribe moves back and forth.
What does winning do for someone when they didn't actually achieve mastery of the game?