Players may abort games for any number of reasons. Each such instance is individual. People who have faced five game abortions in a row may think that they have found a trend; they may think, "What is going on? Why does everyone abort?" In fact, each player may well have a legitimate reason for aborting. The reason may or may not be that he had been assigned Black. Unless the player overtly states his intent, it can only be inferred.
Also, players may decline rematches for any number of reasons. The most logical one is that the player doesn't have any more time to play. The fact that the player had played White may be immaterial. Personally, I seldom accept rematches because I want to play a large number of different opponents, before I replay past opponents.
Basically, unless a player states his intention to be unsportsmanlike, these issues are not necessarily indicative of poor etiquette.
Good day chess players. I would like to know what everyone here thinks about what would be considered proper ettiquette, not so much for the game itself, which, obviously is governed by a strict and immutable set of rules, but for the correct way to conduct oneself either side of the game. I often see behaviour, which, initially at least, would totally baffle me, however once I started to realize how much some people care about their rating, it made slightly more sense. The rating, to me, was always nothing other than an incidental consequence of being able to play online, against a great number of opponents, spanning a broad spectrum of skill and experience. I have now come to realize that, to lots of chess.commers it's the rating itself which is the be all and end all, and tragically the game itself is nothing more than a means to an end. I have seen this manifest in several ways, from the instantly aborted games (Now, I can understand this, if there is a huge discrepancy between the skill levels of both players as it would be a waste of one or both of their time.), when both players are of a similar rating, but the opponent, whenever he was not assigned white, would simply abort. The other thing which really causes indignation on my part was those who would play one game when assigned white, but then refuse to play the next game allowing their opponent that advantage, thus meaning they competed over an even playing field. Surely the whole thing about chess is that it is a game which enables a true battle of will, mind and skill in a completely even medium. It does not, for example introduce any elements of chance, unlike poker or scrabble. So it is in mind of this that i am a bit confused by the actions of what seems like a sizable proportion of the users of the site in trying to use these little tricks to gain such an advantage. Surely this is utterly conterproductive to the true point of chess, which surely above and beyond any opponent, those who come and go, is that it is a enabler of self knowledge, a process of self improvement. Maybe I would be in the minority with this view and lot's of you also see chess as a cutthroat business where the rating is king, either way I woulkd like to hear as many other view points as possible ranging from benign agreement to raging consternation.