Cheaters get bumped up in level quickly and wind up against people who can flag them for cheating Yes, and the other side of this coin is sandbagging. Cheaters

Cheaters get bumped up in level quickly and wind up against people who can flag them for cheating Yes, and the other side of this coin is sandbagging. Cheaters losing on purpose to keep their rating down. Generally this is also pretty easy to detect because it’s difficult to lose on purpose in a convincing way. Just resigning the game in a non-losing position or blundering mate-in-1 is too obvious and easy to catch. Someone playing the top Stockfish line 20 moves in a row and then blundering their queen just sticks out like a sore thumb.