Also don't spam the button. It is annoying
PSA: Don't spam your partner with requests for material at the start of the game.
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Fair enough. But I think that makes a lot more sense if you're partnering the same person rather than bouncing around in the pairing pool. When someone asks me for pieces I have two choices: ignore them, or change my thinking about how I play the opening to consider opportunities to trade. Sometimes, sure, trading helps me too, and sometimes there are options to trade which don't sacrifice my position, but regardless it means I can't just play how I would normally while keeping an eye on your board to see when something will actually make a difference. In the beginning, I want to focus on playing fast, keeping things solid, and getting us a time advantage 8-12 moves in. That's harder if I have to also consider my partner's preferences from the get-go. The only exception to all of this is if my partner is playing against a hard core sacksitter, in which case it's reasonable to ask me to try to hold Q/N/whatever.
Only very rarely do I see my partner going Nf3-Ng5-Nxf7-"need knight need pawn more trades", and usually I retort with "develop your other pieces". In the case where my partner doesn't know English, well...
Aug 27, 2018
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#5
There was a guy who spammed for a bishop because it wins a pawn. Then, while my teammate was spamming for a bishop and not moving, my enemy was stalling because he was up on time. Then, he finally played a move and his time went from TWO MINUTES TO TWENTY SECONDS! Can you believe it? And when he finally moved, he played a terrible blunder that gave the enemy the queen and then when the person I was playing was about to flag (1 second), my teammate resigns!!! This guy needs to put up his Partner Game, and step up his game (that player was a 1400!!!).
A request for material tells your partner that they should consider altering their play in order to grant you an advantage. Trades in the beginning of the game do not actually grant you an advantage. There is a newbie belief that trades are always good because dropping pieces rather than using the ones you already have is fun. Just play your own game. Don't ask for stuff unless it's definitely going to give you an edge rather than just make it more fun for you. Spamming your partner for stuff off the bat reveals you to be a newbie who thinks it's all about your board rather than the team. Even worse is when "gimmie stuff" spam is accompanied by wanton sacrifices, further shafting your partner. My personal rule of thumb is to block anyone who does this (because chess.com has no mechanism to control who you play with other than block).