Solitaire collection events cheating

I have noticed that my group of players almost never reach 100 no matter what time of the day I start playing.  It usually ends up with about 97 players on average.  I also notice that 15 seconds is added to every game that I play.  I will play the first game in 30 seconds for example.  I immediately show the leader board and it shows my time as 45 seconds.  I have seen the top player of the top 100 list is usually around 10 minutes for 30 games.  This is not possible.  I was thinking it might be players with gaming machines where they can under clock their CPU which would make the game slower.  I didn't see the cheater posts until today.  I have one #1 finish about five 2nd and 3rd place finishes.  My #1 finish was over an hour.  I guess that I got lucky and player with non cheaters in my group of 100 players.  I'm trying to get my second #1 finish and it is getting harder.  My averge finish is 16th place and my average time is about 2.5 hours.  I keep my statistics in a spreadsheet.  I have several long duration times as I have fallen asleep while playing several times and end up with times of 8 or 9 hours which drives up my average time.

I played yesterday and when I finished, I was in third place in my group at around 1 hour and 8 minutes for 30 challenges.  Both of the people ahead of me came in with a time of 45-48 minutes, both in the top 100 at that point.  I eventually ended up in 4th when another player finished in 1 hour and 7 minutes.  But when you get those people with the super low times in your group, you won't finish first.  Luckily, there are so many groups that the odds are often with you.  To improve your placement, you need to have a strategy for each of the 5 challenge types, and refine that strategy over time by figuring out where you get stuck or lose time, and trying to come up with a way to avoid those.  Sometimes, challenges are unusually hard, but finding strategies to refine your play will bring up your placement with practice. 

I have no idea what the additional 15 seconds is from.  I never check my times til all the challenges are complete so not sure if it happening to me or not.

I play the games when they come online. I am a normal retired person and I can finish the set of games somewhere from 1 1/2 hours to 3 hours:  If I play constantly. Which is what I usually do. I don't understand how I end up in the top 30 most of the time with 100,000+ people playing either. But, it does make me feel good.

Still going on no matter what anyone says.

There is an easy solution, which may bring even more profit to MS: they should organize a live tournament with some $ rewards. Let us see how they play. There may be cheaters, but I never considered that, I was always too impressed by the possibility that there are some really good players and wanted to see how these brilliant minds look like, as an inspiration. And a cash rewarded public display of their skill may resolve all this.

There is a workaround for those who want to be objectively ranked among non-cheaters: there are 3 leaderboards, and one of them is "Friends". You only have to go to some social platform, make friends with like-minded people, non-cheaters, trust them and add them as friends. That scoreboard would give us a clue about best times for non-cheating players and about human limits. It may be a good idea to have people of your age in your Friends list.

But even the leaderboard as it is now gives me a decent estimation. In a group of 100 I always have to beware of those with more #1 places than me. At the end of the day, final group leaderboard is fairly reasonable.

Sometimes there is a bug. In May 2018 I have sent MSC a message via Facebook about finishing first game in 41 seconds, but leaderboard was showing 1:38. They resolved this and now it seems to be OK.

I am currently 11/7/11 (#1/2/3 place) and I also experienced an improvement of my skills. In the beginning I never thought #1 would be possible for me. Then I did it a couple of times. I have made my place in the upper part of the board and was stuck there for months. Recently I tried to be more focused and in last 10 events I had 2 third places, 3 second places and 2 first places, holding a first place in the current event, 8 hours before it ends. I am 55 and knowing how good teens are in gaming, I think it is quite possible that there are some young players who can solve everything in the half of my time. If we only saw one on Youtube, like that Chinese kid solving 3 Rubik cubes in the air, while juggling them...