Cheaters Beware - You Will Be Caught

The odd time-out may be put down to forgetfulness or personal circumstances that make a chess game unimportant. There is continual debate on other sites about systematic multiple time-outs, where a player starts a large number of games and then loses interest. One site suspends members at the 50 time-out level, though many of us on that site believe the penalty should kick in at 10 or maximum 20 time-outs. I've seen 15 player all-play all tournaments where 10 or 11 show figures of 0/28. That site doesn't kick in with an automatic timeout; the decision to claim is left to the opponent; however, if the opponent fails to claim, he/she is also timed out at one day past double the original move time e.g at 3 days per move, both players would be given 0 points for the game if the person entitled to claim the win hasn't done so by day 7 i.e. 3 days for the original player to move; 3 days for the other player to claim; 1 day grace. I prefer the automatic guillotine on this site, because there's no element of emotional blackmail, where some players feel mean for claiming a few minutes or hours after the deadline. I remember one lady who refused to claim for several days, through kindness. Her opponent consequently was able to continue when he returned to the site. A week or two later the lady went over time herself (same game). Five minutes after she timed out, he claimed without compunction. No good deed goes unpunished.

On that site any game timed out in under 5 moves results in no adjustment being made to ratings, though the win counts for the claimant. This reflects the fact that too little has happened to affect ratings, though it would probably be fairer if at least the defaulter lost the relevant number of points they would have dropped for losing if the game had continued.

In fact, wouldn't it be sensible to penalise defaulters by double the amount of rating points they would have dropped if they had played on and lost. If they would have lost no points, because of the disparity in the ratings of the 2 players, then have a minimum default penalty of (say) 5 rating points.

I just banned 3 members for cheating. If you are playing fake games, or making fake accounts and resigning games after just a few moves, you will be caught, and you will be banned. There are enough people on this site looking at the top players that if you try it, you will be found, reported, and banned. Simple enough :)