'Cancel' button for online chess

Sorry, I may be missing your point.  Is deception not a good enough reason to have a Cancel button?  [If the Cancel button is anything like the Abort button in Live chess, I'm confident it has to do with the initial match-up, and possibly useful as late as just after the first move.  If so, perhaps the programmers did not bother making it disappear once it becomes inactive.]

sftac

ps.  You're trying to "take back" moves, in tournaments??  That's a rather large 'odds' imposition on your opponent imo, on the order of rook odds for some rating levels.

Have no idea what the cancel button is for.Can anyone tell me.

Firstly, the Cancel button works properly when one makes a move on the main board, but realizes that it's not a good enough move (for whatever reason) before hitting SUBMIT MOVE. For example, if I move my Queen on d8 to f6 on my main board, and I say to myself, "Aah, wait! That hangs my Queen! D'oh," then I would hit Cancel, and the move would be erased.

However, if I hit SUBMIT MOVE, then the move is permanent and Cancel does not work. I believe that this is an intentional function of the button. Clicking SUBMIT MOVE is akin to letting go of a piece, at which point the move cannot be taken back under any circumstances, even if one hasn't punched the clock yet.

Also, you can contact Chess.com very easily. Just click "Help" in the upper-right corner of your browser. From the Help page, click on Contact Support in the lower-left corner of the page.

Thks whirlwind.If i make a bad move i move it back with the mouse.

That works too. 

The CANCEL button is perfectly located, because it would be used at the same stage as the SUBMIT button.  A potential move has been made on the board.  Now what?  Do you want to SUBMIT that move?  Or do you want to CANCEL it?  You have to do one or the other, and there is a button for each option, right next to each other as they should be.

It's really pretty incredible that someone would think the CANCEL button could be used for taking back moves that had already been submitted.

Well, to be fair, on many sites once a button or link is no longer effective or useful it will disappear or lose it's clickability.  This site has the charm of programmer leaving the Cancel button still clickable, after the user chose the Submit button rather than Cancel. 

So some players will find they do not have a last second reprieve from being hasty with their Submit button clicking.  

A positive way of looking at this is that the site's design allows users to 'make' their move, "see" its consequences (some players really like that aspect, the post-move position is easier to grasp when seeing the move actually made), and still be able to Cancel that move before submitting. 

sftac

ps.  I'd of thought the lesson would sink in the first time this happened, but apparently not for everyone.

Up here in Canada, the weather's been especially fine this time of year.  I recommend anyone looking for a vacation spot, to choose the westcoast of Canada.

sftac

I glossed over all the multi-paragraph posts and now we are talking about the weather. If anyone is feeling particularly adventurous tonight, try to summarize what all has been said in a couple of sentences, less if it's boring and, as I suspect, unimportant.

Good to know my underlings know their place.

 I think we should play the same as the touch move rule in OTB chess, if you notice that you have dropped a piece after hitting the submit button sorry for your luck. ther are tons of times in OTB tournaments where i would like to take back a move but if you screw up and hang a piece learn to live with it. 

This is nonsense, and the source of your misunderstanding.  The two buttons represent the two options available once a preliminary move has been made on the diagram board.  The preliminary move can either be submitted to chess.com and the opponent, or the preliminary move can be canceled.

You made it very clear in your first post that what you want is to be able to change your mind and take back moves that you decided, after knowingly submitting them, were blunders.  That's not how chess is played, with the exception of games specifically designated as unrated "take-back" games.

I have lost numerous pieces, advantages and games as a result of this -- frequently falling back -- relying on the button as a last resort

It would be nice if I could have those moves back, especially the tournament 'blunder'...

Pathetic.  

The most natural function for a button labelled "cancel" is, obviously, to cancel the last thing which occurred. Therefore, if I have made no move yet, I think it would make much more sense from the point of view of designing an easy-to-grasp user-interface to make the button cancel my opponent's last move. In any other program, this is what a cancel button would do - simply cancel the last action; To have the cancel button do anything but that is illogical and confusing to the user.

"A number of times, specifically just now in one of Chess.com's tournaments that I am playing, I have noticed something suddenly after..." [seeing/receiving] "...a move, and then of course, instan" [tan] "eously hit the 'Cancel' button; however, absolutely nothing happens...  I have lost numerous pieces, advantages and games as a result of this -- frequently falling back -- relying on the button as a last resort."

However, the button, much to my surprise, failed to serve its logical purpose; Just think about how many lost games you could have avoided if that cancel button had worked properly? Anybody who doesn't want this glaring problem with the website fixed is a "sheep" who is "not even worth responding to anymore".