Here is something I cannot understand.  Quite a few of my open game offerings are accepted, only to be aborted by the acceptor before the first move.  What is the point of doing this?  If you don't like the game conditions or the user, can't you decide before you accept?  The only thing this accomplishes is to make someone go through all the effort of setting up a game for nothing.

If you do this to get dibs on games before anyone else can, and thereby giving you the luxury of deciding if you really want to play them, please refrain. If that's what you want to do, set up your own games.

Agreed! This poor behavior is being added to the list of things that lowers one's "fair play" score - which will quickly result in the offenders' range of playable opponents being severely reduced.

http://support.chess.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/171/0/fair-play-policy

Thanks.  Do you have a way of knowing when this happens?  My listed challenge disappears before I ever get to see who accepted and aborted.

Sometimes the green dots are close together and I end up in a game I didn't ask for. If it happens to me, I imagine it happens to other players as well.

Additionally, if a prospective opponent disables chat as I enter the game, I abort immediately.

I will accept a game, and the opponent will not move leaving me no choice but to abort.

And then there are those people who draw out a game for 15 extra moves in a hopeless situation, only to resign one move before being checkmated.  What's the point??

To me, this is worse sportmanship than the battling on against all hope.  After all that, at least let your victor have the satisfaction of a mate.

Figuring out how to set up the settings is not obvious or intuitive imo.  So, I imagine many players are not aware they could alter their settings so that they are not even seeing seek ads that are of no interest to them.

sftac

ps.  Solution?  Educating the membership.  One way would be to have an 'alt' label (visible on 'mouse rollover') remarking on the setting adjustment procedure.

Or as remarked, institute a 'fair play' policy that will harshly penalize "offenders" (those who could not figure out or notice the site's settings for viewing useful seek ads).

pps.  On occasion, I'll abort a game because I'm not hearing 'sound' (which I find invaluable).  So, I'm wondering how frequently I can get away with this before I'm flagged as meriting the "fair play" approach? 

Is triggering this cripple function based on proportion of games played that are aborted?  eg. up to 1 in 100 games is o.k.  Or is it cumulative?  10 times in total that are aborted will trigger it regardless of how many millions of games played.

Does this apply to games I abort when being a chess greeter? Sometimes I might have it set to 5 or 10 games, left it a day or so and they've not moved, so I abort to I can play someone else willing to actually play a damn game.

If this does affect my score, then they I won't bother being a chess greeter.

I post seeks only for players with more than 50 games in a rather narrow range of ratings.  No newbies will be seeing my seeks.

Aren't greeter games unrated?
Anyway, aborting before both players have made a move does not affect your rating.  And I think it's reasonable to abort after a few days waiting for that first move.

My gripe is when experienced people abort a few seconds after accepting a game -- so quickly, you can't even see who's done it because the game disappears.

What type of game?  I've always seen who aborted the game in Live Chess.

sftac

Online chess.  When a game is aborted, all traces of it disappear.  It's expunged, as though it never existed.

I didn't mean score as in rating, I meant as in how your account is flagged

"If your account is flagged for breaking this policy your account will be restricted."

So if you're allowed 10 aborts, and I've used them on greeter games, what happens? Thats what I meant :)

Someone mentioned "close dots" for seeking games ...

... that phenomenon occurs in the Seeks-List, as well, where a list of the open tables are grouped from top to bottom, but that list moves every time games are accepted and every time tables are created ...

I have often clicked on the Play button for a praticular table when the list suddenly moves, exactly when I'm  clicking on the table I want, and then I find myself in a game I don't want, so I abort and go back to the list.

Sometimes I will see that the table I just left has lit up yellow on my Seeks Bar and when I go back, the person is asking me why I aborted their game, to which I reply: "Oh, sorry ... the list moved."

And then it's all to the goodness.

Gotcha. Thanks.
I would hope our expert programmers might not count aborts if they are unrated games, or if the game is over (e.g.) one day old.

I read this with interest: I almost aborted a game!  ( I don't yet know what consequences it has.)  I didn't want to be a jerk: my problem was not finding the game controls easily enough to specify an appropriate opponent, & the site picked someone far better than I.  That seems unfair to him & I'm sorry. Now I'm in a game, he's going to be bored, and has no upside. Should I abort? Resign? That doesn't seem fair to me, either...

If you accepted a game that he's created, it was up to him to set the ratings range for his opponent. You must be within that range (because you could see the game in the list), so if he gets bored it's his fault.  You might consider sticking with it, though, because you could pick up some pointers... and in the very unlikely event that you win, you could boost your rating!

It takes two.  Your opponent's free to size up the situation and abort or resign if deemed appropriate.  If you're focussed on entertaining your opponent, you'll weaken your game (imo). 

I suggest just play your game.

sftac

Two of the three games I just created were aborted before the first move... before I could see who accepted them.  I just don't get this behavior.