Hi Qualifier Teams,
I wanted to go over some of the Anti-Cheating measures and penalties with you all!
As you all know, most of you (except for the people who are streaming) will be in the ZOOM chatroom. There is actually a limit of 100 people in this meeting room, which means that it's possible that not everyone will always be able to be in it.
Below are a few key facts to keep in mind:
1 - If someone is disconnected from ZOOM, or not in it for some reason, this is not a reason to penalize a team or a player. There are lots of weird reasons why someone may get kicked out of the ZOOM room for a bit or have trouble connecting. So if your team is having technical issues connecting to ZOOM, please note what they are, take a photo of the screen if you can, and let us know. Please do not panic. If you email us that you are having a problem tomorrow morning, and we don't reply, it's because we are super super busy running the event. If that happens just go about playing your games as usual.
2 - The Chess.com FairPlay Team uses ZOOM as just one part of their cheat detection method. There is a LOT more going on and we will monitor every single game. If anyone on a team does anything that would violate the Chess.com FairPlay agreement, that team will not be making it to the PRO Chess League, regardless of how they do in the event.
3 - If a team qualifies for the PCL and ends up getting disqualified due to a FairPlay violation, The PRO Chess League and Chess.com have sole discretion of how to award that vacant spot. It may not always be done by simply going down the standings to see which team was next in line.
Please remind everyone on your team to play fair and to use no outside assistance. Unfortunately in the two years of the PRO Chess League thus far, we have had to ban quite a few players for violating the Fair Play Agreement and we know that while the majority of our players are honest, we always have to remain vigilant against those very few players who would use underhanded methods in order to play better.