[Dr_Birdbrain]

I don’t understand this sentiment.

The rating of a player will reflect their strength, regardless of whether they are an unaided human, a full computer, or a human with some heuristic to consult an engine. Whatever the player is doing, their rating will reflect their average strength, and the website matches us to players of similar rating. Whether or not a player is pure human, pure engine, or centaur, we get matched to a player that we have a roughly even chance of beating.

Pure cheaters will quickly skyrocket to the top of the ratings and I will never see them. Hybrid cheaters, who do not have a perfect rating, have a probability of losing because their heuristic to switch to an engine is imperfect, and their rating reflects this imperfection.

Whatever the player is doing, their numeric rating reflects their average strength, and if you have a similar rating you have roughly even chances of beating them.

[ycombinete]

I disagree. The centaur might have a rating of 2150, but they will sporadically play a 3300 rated engine move. This completely breaks the rating system's probabilities.

This is like boxing in the lightweight division, but your opponent can, at will, use Mike Tyson in his prime to hit you in the face.

[V-2]

> Pure cheaters will quickly skyrocket to the top of the ratings

Unless they cheat in unrated games, or discard their account and create another before the rating ascends too high (not necessarily for that purpose, but to avoid detection).