Is rapid even playable on this site?

- takes ages to find a game

- I got paired  some obv cheaters, with a rapid rating round about 1000 points higher than their blitz rating.

- in my game history many many opponents are already removed

yeah if their rapid rating is 1000 points higher than their bullet/blitz, just abort lmao.

I would never waste time on rapid chess online.

Could also be they don't play alot of blitz. Some don't do well with the low time controls

I only play rapid. And I get opponents pretty much instantly ?

I play both... some... With me (I'm 59and there is a huge difference between my blitz play/level and my rapid. Coming back to chess after many years..... I forgot what Blitz chess does to my overall chess skill... It Retards it drastically. Blitz ruins my vision of the board, makes my calculation ability lazy.. I start playing by intuition... Several months ago I realized what it does... and now only sparingly do I play Blitz. Rapid, or Classical improve my chess... I can tell because if and when I do play the occasional blitz ... My technique is much better.

George Koltanowski (A GM who was very influential to me) stated "Stay away from skittles is stunts your chess growth... for me, this rings true

and I never have a problem getting a rapid game (in fact more people play Rapid than Blitz online)... and last... Same amount of people cheat in Blitz and Rapid or slower time controls. I cheater is a cheater... the time control isn't influencing the reason to cheat.

My answers to each of your bullet points below:

- It will take "ages to find a game" the higher rating you get (especially in rapid). This is because there are less people in the world to play against around your rating. chess.com has over 100 million members, but how many are rated around your current rating of 2100 rapid? The global average chess rating is roughly 700. It takes longer to get a game because you have to wait for someone near your rating to be looking for the same time control exactly when you are searching. I know from my higher rated chess friends that this gets "worse" as you continue to gain rating because you'll have less and less people to play against around your rating; that's one main reason many titled players gradually shift to playing more blitz and especially 3 min blitz. It's generally easier to get a blitz game pairing than someone who wants to play a much longer time control game.

- I checked your game history and you haven't played someone closed for fair play since month. It's currently March 6th, 2025 and your last opponent closed for fair play was February 9th. You did get unlucky facing many more of these opponents in the month of Janurary, but I wouldn't say that it's a huge problem.

On a related topic, I recently made a video discussing the truth about "accuracy" (CAPS).

a rapid rating 1000 points higher is like gukesh having an otb blitz rating of 1800. laughable and anybody would have no doubt if somebody have an otb classical rating of 2800 but could only get 1800 in blitz.

You have a good point. I stopped playing rapid on this fkn website years ago. Everyone's turns into a genius in that time control after reaching seemingly hopeless positions.

At 1900 rating I get paired quickly and have no problems like you mention.
Its definitely a case of a small legit player pool at your rating due to how elo works and that foul players go upward in rankings which combined make legit players switch to quicker time controls making it worse.

nope

I'm 2k and I have not experienced any of your issues. Maybe your points are more valid 2200 elo+.

i play rapid alot get games istantly and for a while my rapid rating was over 1000 higher han blitz because i dont spend lots of time on low time controlls i jst dont like it

Yes. I play rapid only, other time controls suck. And as you can see, I get normal opponents, most of them are not cheaters, some wins, some loses, and I find opponents pretty quickly, almost instantly, maximum within 10 seconds. I really like this website, and rapid 10 minutes games

In my opinion, 10+0 is perfect time control, because it allows you to think about your moves normally, you don't have to hurry with your moves, and you have a decent amount of time. Also if you're in a losing position, but you have time advantage, then you can think about strategy of just surviving, and flagging the opponent. But if you're in a losing position, a d with less time, then it's pretty much game over

yes it is

its because there are loads of 1300 on this site who want to play games so you get paired quickly, but once you get to higher ratings it becomes harder and harder to find opponents, which is one of the reasons 2300+ pepes rematch so much

I don't have any problems with pairings, rapid might have more cheaters, but there are many more innocent people than cheaters ( I hope).

Same here, though my brain is a little younger.

I have recently switched from 10|0 to 15|10 and I like it much better.

Fastest I may still manage is 5|5 I think.

>"is rapid even playable on this site?"

yes