Here's a curious thing...

One of the things I keep an eye on in the team-match leagues I help to run is player removal at the registration stage. It's sometimes done in order to manipulate teams and make them stronger by removing the lowest rated players.

In fact I've been surprised at how very unusual it is for admins to do this, at least in the tournaments I help supervise.

But I just did a second sweep of a set of matches that are due to start in a few days and had a program failure I haven't encountered before. It was for this match:-

KOTML S34 R1 Squadron Commandos vs Waldesrauschen

On the previous sweep of teams I'd collected this list of players for the Waldesrauschen team:-

[0812leonliu,a-marinho,arthurlee2021,av1224,bananapeelthegm,bigsoccer12,cvijad,eagle_268,gnomenreigen,myauno,pripor,raison88,rocknmetalforever45,rookside_castling,sammli,stavan2004,sulaluka,tired_of_ignorance]

All matches in our leagues must have the 'Minimum Games' setting set at 10 games and this is the case in this match. But the player @stavan2004 was detected as missing on my most recent seep through and that prompts a check of the player's "timeout_percent" figure to decide whether or not the removal is allowed (we permit the removal of players with rates at or above 15%).

That's when things went pear-shaped because the following endpoint has no "chess_daily" field!

https://api.chess.com/pub/player/stavan2004/stats

{"chess_bullet":{"last":{"rating":1372,"date":1658770331,"rd":246},"best":{"rating":1372,"date":1658770331,"game":"https://www.chess.com/game/live/52509094135"},"record":{"win":1,"loss":0,"draw":0}},"chess_blitz":{"last":{"rating":1404,"date":1658947200,"rd":248},"best":{"rating":1404,"date":1658947200,"game":"https://www.chess.com/game/live/52685966885"},"record":{"win":1,"loss":0,"draw":0}},"fide":0,"tactics":{"highest":{"rating":818,"date":1658770352},"lowest":{"rating":802,"date":1658770358}},"lessons":{},"puzzle_rush":{}}

My question is - how is it possible for a player with no history of Daily games to enter a match in which the Minimum Games setting specifies ten games?

That's curious indeed. My best guess would be that the api somehow gave you a wrong name. (i.e. the player never was in the roster)
    
    I tried to look at what you are saying but this player is not in the player list both on the site and in the api. I suspected it was someone who tried to join but got rejected, but actually that player is not even a member of any club. You could try to find out with the admins of Waldesrauschen if they removed that player at some point, but this seems unlikely to me.

Very odd. @stavan2004 only joined C.C 25th July and has no clubs listed.

Possible joined Waldesrauschen, then the match. Subsequently removed from club and match.

However that doesn't explain how they min 10 games was bypassed.

That member just joined 2 days ago. Was the first check ran before that? If so could just be a case of a changed username and a new account under that name was created.

Yep, that's what happened. The original account was closed and the name changed, so the original account was permitted to be in the event.

Name change issue strikes again

Have stored the player_id to check against?

Possibly but the name had to have been part of the match endpoint or my program wouldn't have captured it in the first place, so that raises the question of why a seemingly random player became included.

Yes, my previous check ran on the 23rd/July, so before the account was closed. That explains what happened, so thanks for clearing that up.

I've already made an edit to trap that event but I imagine I'll see it only rarely.

Wow that's a cautionary tale.  I think my scripts would be victim to the same issue

I have to say when I heard the explanation from Martin_Stahl my initial reaction was what, it's possible to close an account, erase its entire history then open a new one with exactly the same name?!

I hadn't considered it because it seemed so unlikely that the site would allow such a thing.

I have come across closed accounts having name changed so the original name can be recycled. You have to ask staff to do it and it's not something that happens often.