Technical problems during tournament - What you can do!
Dear All,
Coach Lauren asked me to summarize some tips and tricks on what you can do when you face any technical or weird issues during an online tournament.
Let's go through the basic best practices:
When there is an online tournament, you can register, i.e. aka click the JOIN button on the bottom right corner, up to an hour before. This means that the Join button is green and clickable up to 60 minutes before the tournament.
Do I recommend really joining the tournament 60 minutes before it starts? No. No, because you can have an accidental restart, or close of the browser, or any other mishap and that can confuse you and the computer.
What I recommend is to start getting ready about 30 minutes before the event starts: log in to chess.com, make sure you know the password and know where to look for the tournament. Locate the tournament page.
Click on the Join button about 15-10 mins before the event and by that time you should plan on staying at your computer and staying active. About 5 minutes before the event starts, make sure to stay on the tournament page. Do not solve puzzles, play with someone else, or just browse your emails or news. Just stay at the tournament, chat with others in the tournament chat. This will ensure that the system detects you as online and ready to play, and thus will pair you.
Once you are paired, your game will pop up and clocks will start right away. Please make sure to focus on your game, and think through your moves and actions.
If you click on the draw offer or resign buttons, the system will ask you for a confirmation. Make sure you mean it.
There is also a withdrawal from the tournament button on the tournament page. If you click it, it'll pop up a warning message asking to confirm. Make sure if you click it that you do understand that you are withdrawing from the tournament and you will not be able to re-enter.
There are always instances where the browser accidentally closes, or internet outage makes the browser frozen. The most important thing: don't panic!
Make sure that you know that with calm and quick actions, you'll be able to get back to your game, and only lose a bit of time. Here is what you need to do:
1. If you lose the internet: make sure to reconnect as soon as possible or you join another internet source/hotspot. Once you are done, simply click refresh the page button, and the game should be up-to-date.
2. If you lose the browser for any reason, make sure to type in: www.chess.com/play/online OR simply navigate to the online play part: hover over the pawn&hand icon and click on the PLAY word. Your game should pop up and be up-to-date.
3. If it seems that you are online, and your opponent or your time is ticking, but nothing happened for unusually long, make sure to hit the refresh button: this will ensure that your device is not frozen or nothing "funky" is happening.
While I know these do not cover all the scenarios, I hope that the general advice is clear and easy: Don't panic, refresh and your game will pop back up.
Any questions, or any issues to investigate/follow up, please feel free to email me at judit.sztaray@chess.com!
Thank you for your interest, and your active participation in the tournaments!
Judit Sztaray
