Actually, I believe mebelalalana 's suspicions do have some serious weight to them, considering that they do this sort of thing at the sister site ChessKid.com so that people are not waiting for a game. Artificial but true.
I warned staff a while ago that this place (live chess) will turn into a ghost town if they don't fix the current issues.
Very simply, they could introduce a pools section so that would get people playing, like they have at ICC. They could offer prizes tournaments (of course, with policing at the same time). Introduce a champions league in live chess. Team events. They could delete the abort button. Or if you really want the abort button, make it so that BOTH players have to agree to abort.
These are just some examples, there are many other ways to get people playing chess and not sitting on their inflated ratings looking in the mirror.
I have met a player I suspected of using a program. This was not due to his play style, but due to the fact that his typing speed was impossibly quick and his comments were repetitive. Furthermore, he wouldn't acknowledge a word I said. He would simply disregard me and state irrelevant comments. Perhaps he suffered from Hyperfingerretardation, but idk...
It's not a question of people using programs, but chess.com placing computers in place of human players so search times are not long.
This would make sense in a place that didn't have 10,000 players on at any one time, but not here where the social footprint and complete playing record leave a pretty easy trail to follow....
Yahoo! Chess (RIP), and funorb.com chess (RIP) would need such a system, and they obviously never did that. Chess.com wouldn't, and I wager it's pretty evident they wouldn't want to....
Oh I understand the question entirely. I do apologize for my unclear point. I was implying that perhaps this "person" I was playing was one of these chess.com bots we've been discussing. I figure that would explain, at least, the program-like behavior.
Point taken.
I think I'll lower my defenses a bit. I took your post as off-topic. Maybe it is, but there have been worse, and without the context of the OP's first reply in the thread, your post is on-topic....
I'll drink some water, resign my position, and return with a clean board....