Update: 25% of Titled Tuesday Players Now Using Proctor

We recently announced the release of Proctor, our fair play software that helps to monitor players and create a safer playing environment. This software is part of our efforts to keep online chess clean and address the concerns of members of our community, including titled players who participate in prize events. In this article, we'll give you an update on how Proctor is being rolled out, our future plans for it, and some of the data we discovered.

Here's what we'll be covering in this update:

• Proctor Rollout
• Our Future Goals For Proctor
• What Do Players Think About Proctor?
• Technical Challenges
• Conclusion

Proctor Rollout

We started working on Proctor during the summer of 2023. Over the course of the next year and a half, we focused on getting Proctor to a point where players would feel comfortable using it.

On December 17, 2024, we soft-launched Proctor to a handful of players, and we've been scaling that number rapidly over the past months. This past week, more than 25% of participants in the Early and Late Titled Tuesdays played using Proctor.

In total, we are currently asking 700+ players across a range of titles to join Proctor when playing Titled Tuesday and Freestyle Friday—although not all players join every time. At the time of writing, four players have won Titled Tuesday while in Proctor: GMs Jose Martinez, Le Quang Liem, Alexey Sarana, and Parham Maghsoodloo.

Soon, every Titled Tuesday and Freestyle Friday winner will have won in Proctor as we intend to make it mandatory.

Our Future Goals For Proctor

Our vision does not end with Titled Tuesday and Freestyle Friday requiring Proctor. Within the next six months, we intend to make Proctor a requirement for all Chess.com prize events. We're currently working with our broadcast team to pass video streams out of Proctor to make that goal a reality. 

Our main goal during Proctor’s development was its use in titled events. However, we're considering its use for non-titled events as well. In fact, we used Proctor for the Freestyle Grand Slam Paris Open Qualifiers on March 8 and 9, both events exclusive to non-titled players. Untitled Tuesday is another candidate, and we may require all participants to use Proctor in the future.

What Do Players Think About Proctor?

We're confident in making Proctor a requirement for three reasons: we haven't encountered many technical issues, players have been content playing in Proctor, and it makes our events more secure.

Our current monitoring setup (using Zoom) can occasionally result in disruptions. It also imposes additional restrictions on our players (for example, a silent environment to avoid distracting other players). Proctor fixes this, as players only interact with Chess.com staff members or event personnel.

With Proctor, players won't disrupted by other players, and they can listen to music and watch non-chess videos during events. Players have noted in their feedback that they are generally much happier in Proctor than they were in Zoom.

From our perspective, Proctor is also a great improvement over Zoom. It lets us send players messages or even talk to them directly without disturbing others who might still be playing.

Another benefit of using Proctor is that it not only helps us monitor players in real time, but also gives us a data archive we can consult at any time. If there's ever a need to conduct further investigation of a player, we can access data like the images from both their cameras, their screen share, and more.

Technical Challenges

Proctor still faces some technical issues, and we are working to fix them. Players in a small number of countries with internet restrictions may encounter a white screen when trying to log into their Chess.com account while using Proctor. For now, the workaround is to use a desktop VPN client and connect to an access point in another country. We've worked directly with some of the affected players to come up with a solution, and we're confident that we'll find one in the near future.

Additionally, some players on older or underpowered machines run into lag while using Proctor. We don't have a good solution to this problem at this time, and the reality is that the software for Proctor does require newer hardware. While we do hope that everyone can play in our events, security is our top priority, and Proctor gives us that security. When players run into issues, we encourage them to reach out to us directly.

Conclusion

We are very excited about Proctor, and we will keep you posted with updates as we have them. Proctor’s release has gone very smoothly, and we will be transparent with you regarding both our successes and our challenges and difficulties. Chess.com is committed to fair play at all levels of the game, and Proctor is a massive development that ensures the security of our events.

We hope you enjoy reading this update, and if you have questions, please post them so we can get back to you with answers!