this is beyond the beyond and i will not be rejoining unless chess.com fixes  this..i just came on to play a game or two. My opponent stopped playing after 5 minutes in a 30 minute each game after I trapped his queen .... so i have to wait 25 minutes or abort and give away points. this is just too annoying, infuriating and sooo pathetic and classless and unsportspersonlike.  I know one can set up to play multiple games but i have had problems with that setting. And it seems it should be chess.com's job, responsibility to have the system protect players with say a 5-7 minute time limit ... time out in a 30 minute each game. a

ps - I have asked this question both in reporting players right after a game and in trying to contact chess.com thru the address, llink they give and it ackowledged my submission and yet i never got an actual response. I also asked how to upgrade my account in a separate email that was also acknowledged and promised a response in 24-48 hours and never heard back. What gives?

Definitely a very annoying and unsportsmanlike tactic! Haven't run into this personally yet (thankfully). Definitely feels like there should be some sort of auto-abort system, maybe setting up a mouse movement detector on chess.com's end or something. I suppose they could argue it's just a risk you take playing with this time control, but seems like there should be a solution to this.

Players that habitually do that get flagged:

https://support.chess.com/article/627-sportsmanship-policy

There really is no good way to address this without taking away the option for very long thinks, which is expected to happen at some point in your 15 or 30 min career. 

Would it be for the greater good? Perhaps, but it's against the spirit of chess so it will never happen. 

The best practical solution is to make a lichess or chess 24 account or open a different browser and sign in to an alternate chess.com account. 

Take your game with your stalling opponent and place it so it takes up a small portion of the screen, but you can still see it. The rest of the screen is your new (hopefully long time control) game. The risk should be quite low and definitely worth it, as your 1st game is likely quite winning if your opponent is doing that. 

This sort of emotional frustration is characteristic of lower-level play.
The reality is: the opponent is free to do whatever he wants with the time on his clock.
And if he or she lets it runs out, you shouldn't be frustrated because you are winning.

you report the player who did this, and then move on.

expecting a personalized response from chess.com staff is just not realistic. it's not going to happen.

complaining about it here won't accomplish anything.

If you're going to leave the site because of this, good luck to you. but, there is no need to announce your departure.

This is part of playing chess online. It's the nature of the beast. I've had similar experiences here and also on chess.com's competitor's websites as well. We've *all* experienced this. It sucks. Report them, and move on. If you can't deal with it, join a brick & mortar club for real OTB play, or only play friends who you know aren't jerks.

I too have suffered from this, but only in bullet/blitz time frames.  I usually make some sarcastic comment (within the bounds of decency) and then click thumbs down for poor sportsmanship and then block them.  Eventually I will either have no-one to play if everyone does it, or I shall have a subset of the chess.com community who are happy to resign in utterly lost positions.  Good luck on your hunt for a solution.

I have always liked the idea/suggestion that the matchmaking system should favor pairing up people with poor sportsmanship scores (the net thumbs up/down given at and of games by your opponent) together, and vice-versa. Not sure if they've ever looked at actually implementing that, but I think it's a way to improve the experience of those with good sportsmanship. 

The only problem with that is that, even when you have been a good sportsman, played by the rules and then had the nerve to win the opponent can sometimes have a meltdown, accuse of cheating, thumbs down, blah blah...its sad but in a confrontational sport such as this the loser rarely says well played you were a good sport, choosing instead to either move on and forget, or in the worst cases abuse, accuse, register a complaint etc.  The first time I got the opportunity to do the knight/queen mate in the corner where you sac the queen on g1/g8 and force a trapped knight mate the player accused me of cheating saying that I must be using an engine and that i would be reported.  I doubt he was going to give me a thumbs up because I spotted a common pattern, quite the opposite.  Basically, if the game is abandoned, then the abandoner should have an 'unsportsmanlike' count and that be used to pair them.  If you rely on the feedback of players it will never work.  it needs to be their actions that contributes to such a system.

@Robin_A_UK I disagree. The feedback of players definitely *does* work over the long-run. Yes, there are always situations where someone is a sore loser and may tag you as a poor sportsman or even report you for abuse/cheating when you've done nothing wrong. But that happens to everyone and should occur basically at the same pace (given a large enough set of games played) across all users on the site. 

I agree in principle with the idea of excessive abandonment lowering someone's sportsmanship score -- but "excessive" is the key word as some people have poor/spotty internet connections, and this is a problem that is worse in certain parts of the world...

thanks to "big data" chess.com should be able to tell fairly easily whether an account abandons game more frequently than the typical user, and the accuracy of that judgement should increase with the # of games a user has played on the site....

Unfortunately basing a final conclusion off of a single episode (Player X must be a poor sportsman because they disconnected one time vs Player Y) is just not statistically reasonable. It's the long term pattern that gives an accurate picture.

Sportsmanship Policy

Chess.com encourages players to be kind and show good sportsmanship. Our Sportsmanship policy expects that players will not...

• intentionally disconnect during games
• stall to make opponents wait unnecessarily
• frivolously abort games because they don't want to play black, etc. (Note that we have now implemented a limit on the frequency with which users may abort games; please Abort only when necessary. Also see below.)

If your account is flagged for habitually breaking this policy, your play will be restricted, requiring you to wait 5 minutes between games (including aborted games).

How does matching work in live chess?

The pairing logic in Live Chess has one goal: To quickly find you a great match!

When you choose to play a rated game with a specific time control (like 5 min or 2|1), we try to find you an opponent who is closest to your current rating, because this makes for games that are rewarding and fun! It's also the most fair for everyone.

We also try to avoid matching certain pairs:

• We avoid matching players who have poor internet connections with those who have solid connections.
• We avoid matching players who frequently just disconnect or quit without resigning (aka "Bad Sportsmanship") with those who finish their games properly.
•  We avoid matching players who are rude or abusive with those who are kind.

To get the fastest, most fair game possible, all you have to do is select your preferred time-control and hit the button--we’ll take care of the rest!

@justbefair oh, so you already do that. ok, then! I'm glad that's how it is set up. Over time players who show good sportsmanship should get better quality matches than those who do not.

Yay

good

About 99% of stallers and bad sports are rated below 1000.

As you rating goes up the problem almost entirely disappears.

just read all of  your posts and want to thank everyone of you for your

input.  much good thinking shared. much wisdom and experiences and more.

once again all appreciated. not sure i will ever get to 1000 but that's a hopeful

post!!!

thanks again all, be well, healthy.

warm regaards from rural western massachusetts usa - northeastern usa - pioneer valley.

Larry Zydecoskier

this has happened to me too! I normally play 15|10 or 5|5 but recently I played a 30|0 quad swiss tournament... one of my opponents blundered and then made me (and all of the tournament players) wait 25 minutes until he ran out of time... I can't understand why someone would do this in a tournament. wouldn't they want to get on to the next game? anyways, you can play another game in the mean time, but this can be a bad idea in a tournament. If you are in a tournament and this happens, I would recommend to do a physical activity (reading or solving a rubix cube for example). 

I hope this helps you not be board when waiting for a game to time out.   

- @maytheforkbewlthy0u

um... actually your not being inclusive since you only said he/she and that is not respecting other genders

You also misspelled "you're", so I don't really know why you're trying to capitalize on a simple mistake.