Just recently a number of thematic tournaments I am in started up their second/third rounds.  Typically we get 1 or more people who withdraw/resign immediately or time out.  Normally you would not gain rating points in this way.  However since the tournament is thematic and starts after several moves are preset it seems to behave as thopugh we had actually started a game.  So the game says moves = 0 but i still gain points.  I gained 22 today alone and have had 8 such games in the last couple of weeks. Doesn't seem right.

perhaps they shouldnt play thematic tournaments if they plan on ducking out later.

Not a thematic issue. Only player moves count.

Any resignation impacts ratings in a tournament game. Your opponent withdrew so all games were resigned.

I also have the same "concern" MM - Concern may not be the right word but I get pissed off when I see my rating increase effortlessly. I live and die by the Benko Gambit and generally join every BG Tourney I can .... but I can't even begin to count the ratings points I've "milked" out of "no shows".

The withdrawers / resigners feed your rating. The actual "no shows", the ones who time out at less than 7 ply do not.

Not meant to be a poke at you. Thematics could be all unrated as points are milked from experimenting players.

 the point is that whether they resign/withdraw or time out having not played any actual moves should not make any difference to rating gain. 

There is no differentiation between early resignation and early timeouts for non-tournament games.

You are concerned about an unwarranted raise in rating. I can only speculate that lowering ratings on an early resigner, in tournament games, deters some who would join every tournament and withdraw from 99% of them when they find they had too many simultaneous games.

If your rating is too high the excess will be quickly doled out to the relatively underrated players you play in the future.

Hi, I think games with 0-1.5 moves which time-out or tournament resignations should not go into statistics or rating adjustment.

 Currently my whole stats page is off because of 2 high level and a couple of lower level no-shows in a couple of tournaments - and even my highest win (and second highest) are now just timed-out games.

I'd like to get high ratings and nice stats - but through playing better chess - this just brings noise into my stats.

Winning on a time-out/no show is always annoying to me. I once suggested ratingchange would be an option to the winner of those games. (So only in case of a timed-out game) You could refuse tot take the points. If this was an automated action, there would not be any punisment to non-showers possible at all, and maybe you might just have made that one brilliant move te decide the game after all. 

Equally annoying I find the fact that my biggest win, and almost everone else's, is a win on a not played, timed-out game. I'd like to have that big fish I once caugt, and really earned, exposed. There's an idea, maybe they should include a favorite game to display on your track-record.

I think the first 1.5 moves are almost all book moves or silly moves - so there's no brilliance to display there. And I think the rating of looser should go down - bur winner shouldn't get rating since there is really no substance to that game...