World League - wrong things

Hello!

The things I'm talking about in this topic happened some 2-3 weeks ago. Unfortunately I haven't found the time until now to pay attention to them.

Some time ago I reported a cheater, MirceaH. The guy was playing far better than Kasparov. Of course, he got banned. However, "Team Romania" had an unbelievable reaction of supporting the cheater, see here the saga:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/petition-for-mirceah

and they even changed the name of the team for a short period in "team Romania supports Mirceah" (AKA team Romania supports and encourages cheating). In addition, because I reported that guy, I was excluded from the team.

Look: I wouldn't even care if the team would not be called "team Romania", but team "Kakamaka" or whatever. I was simply outraged by the things some Romanian players wrote in that topic and I DO NOT like that the name of my country to be associated with such behavior!! The reactions to this petition were quite harsh, some people - which I respect -publicly said there that Romanian players are a gang of cheaters and cry-babies. I saw Erik posting 5-6 replies in that topic. I wonder what happens if every "national" team reacts in this way for every banned cheater.

I am very unhappy that a bunch of persons, chosen on who knows what criteria, have the power to act on behalf of all the players in that country!! Please believe me that not all the Romanians are cheaters! Can anybody answer me this question: who gives one the right to exclude another person from their "national team"? Is chess.com willing to deal with all the complaints which might arise from this?

To be clear: I'm not very fond of online chess. I don't quite like it since I forget the positions between moves and in fact I play worse than OTB. But that's not the point of this topic.

I think the national teams should be only for WL, everybody will be included automatically in one based on his or her country and somebody is banned from a team when his account is closed by chess.com.

Team's forum & notes must be publicly accessible for every user, not necessarily in the team (I guess this should be obvious why). Often internet and its let's say annonimity means bad behavior.

Other than that each one is free to create as many groups as he wants to - but NOT national teams.

Or maybe better this idea with national teams should be abandoned at all. People have been playing just fine before this world league stuff was set up.

I created Team England before the World League existed.....

I won't address the veracity of the claim that this player was cheating, but that matter aside, you raise some very good points, and these good points apply not only to chess, but to representation in general, including politics.  You are familiar with John Locke's social contract that hopefully exists between the governed and those who govern them?  See the parallel?  I was first to start this national team, so I get to say who is on it.  I was first to discover this land, so now it is my land, and I own it.  In an ideal world, we would all defend those arguments that make the most sense, independent of who else supports or opposes them.  In the real world, so many of us instead choose to close ranks, and not only on Chess.com.  As far as your concern about how Romanians are now viewed, I will mention that several forums have been posted here that classified Americans in a fairly unflattering light.  So many of us just love to make the most of inductive inference -- I have noticed (or been told of) a few members of this group with a certain characteristic, so therefore ALL members of that group must share this characteristic.  Ignorance is all around us, and I wish that there were something better to do about it, but all I can come up with at the moment is not to let it bother you too much.

The rules of the World League are clear, team leaders are not allowed to exclude members for any reason they want. Costelus, I'll message you privately about this matter, I don't see a need for this to blow up pubically.

''I think the national teams should be only for WL'' 

it is this statement that i was disagreeing with, as there is a lot more to the teams than the world league, only about 10% of the games we play are world league, all the votechess , banter, freindships etc are outside of the world league, that was my only point :)

Gumpty, the point is that the intention of WL was for people to meet and have fun. I am very angry to see what is team Romania. And I'm sorry, I cannot be the friend of the cheaters.

Secondly, even if you created team England, this does not give you the right to behave arbitrarily or to speak as you wish in the name of all the players in that team.

I sympathize with you, costelus, and it sounds like the leadership of Team Romania have not been acting up to the standards we'd all like.

That said, let's keep things in perspective.  This is not the real chess Olympiad; nobody is going to be taking a call from Henry Kissinger about the results of a World League match.  This is a fun league on a random website, run by volunteer team leaders, and the objective is just good sport, rather than cutthroat competition.

Besides, if one team is throwing out members -- particularly stronger players like yourself -- for arbitrary reasons, ultimately that's going to be to their own detriment.  It's unfortunate if you'd like to participate and can't, but there are plenty of other opportunities to enjoy yourself here.

I do not know whether I will have time to play in WL (I don't even know how many simultaneous games this would imply). But I am unhappy that chess.com offered an excellent possibility to some people to express their wrong nationalistic opinions and bad behaviors. I wonder why there are no countries involved at ICC :)

i do not agree with anyone getting thrown out of any group for voicing an opinion, i just wanted to make this clear :-)

I just didnt agree with the idea that groups should be made for the world league exclusively :-)

At this time, there aren't any "official" (as in, records kept for the league at large) vote chess games planned. But, there is no requirement that you must play in the teams matches. You may join a team to chat, or to participate in any vote chess games that they may have going. It's completely up to you.

Well, during the period I was in Team Romania, I remember that they had some rules a person must satisfy to be member: a rating >1400, at least 10 games for the team, no time-outs. One could see this if the forum of the team wouldn't be locked. And I also know that some other players were excluded from the team because they did not satisfy these criteria.

As you can all see, World League is VERY FAR from a friendly, warm competition. Thank you, chess.com! Great achievement, indeed :)

No, Team Romania is far from a friendly, warm competition.  (Based on your reports.)  The rules of the World League specifically prohibit team behavior like you describe, so let's be clear about the distinction.

costelus - I take offense at your calling me a cheater.  That is what you are saying, right?  If I play for Team Romania, it must mean, therefore, that I am a cheater and support cheating.  Your overgeneralizations are absurd...

- fabletown

Well, let's clear out some thing here since it's obvious that only one part was speaking until now. The user Costelus was excluded from Team Romania because he didn't met the criteria (some of them already posted by him). The fact that this happened almost simultaneous with the MirceaH cheating accusations were a very bad timing indeed. I hope that all of you agree that any Team has the right to chose some criteria for their members.

Let's see now what most of you were listening (reading) until now from Costelus.

1. Costelus claimed that "Team Romania had an unbelievable reaction of supporting the cheater". Well, this is a lie or at least a poetic exaggeration. The fact that the admin of TR changed its name doesn't mean all of us supported this decision. In fact there were a lot of discussions on this matter on TR private forum. You cannot tag the whole Team only for this (I think Costelus himself was blaming others for this while he is doing it himself).
If you really have time and read the link posted by Costelus regarding MirceaH you will see that there are ups and downs, good guys and bad guys on both sides.

2. If I was the admin of the Team Romania I would have excluded this user for not watching his language towards his mates or former mates.

3. "I wonder what happens if every "national" team reacts in this way for every banned cheater". Team Romania lost another top rank player before MirceaH and nobody had any complain. The complain for MirceaH was mostly because he proved to be a very good player and explained in several occasions his games. His contribution to VoteChess was highly appreciated not only by the Team Romania but also by other teams were he was a member. If you read that thread, you will see that there were non-Romanians that appreciated him a lot and were surprised by the cheating accusation.
Basically Costelus is exagerating again.

3. I don't know how WL is working and I suppose that anybody who declared himself a member of a country should be playing for that country regardless if he is a member of the chess.com team that is named after his country.

4. As you can see from Baseballfan post, Costelus could chose to solve this matter private, but he did not. This is not the first time and the first place he is accusing Team Romania and believe me, his language was not as nice as now. If you are interested enough, I will try to search them and give you a sample, just to know whom we are speaking about. Let's see some quite here, in this thread: "Gumpty, the point is that the intention of WL was for people to meet and have fun. I am very angry to see what is team Romania. And I'm sorry, I cannot be the friend of the cheaters."

P.S.
BTW, I don't think anybody can prove 100% that someone is a cheater.This means that it is better if you don't put the blame on him and tag him "cheater".
Some guys were arguing that a non-FIDE ranking guy cannot beat NMs and such. May I remind everybody that a FIDE ranking is gained in front of the table, with the time pressure upon you and the stress of the tournament. chess.com is far away from this. Guys can have enough time to think about their moves and can even consult a database (which I dislike to be honest, it's like a cheating as well). The stress is not present so much, you are mostly home in your familiar environment. You can get the best of you. Why then is such hard to believe that there are guys that are not facing well the stress and time pressure and at chess.com they are relieved and can play better ?

I did some research in the mean time and I found http://www.chess.com/groups/team_match.html?id=4074 where you can surprisingly find only my replies to Costelus' posts. If you wonder why you cannot see his posts, you should ask chess.com stuff. Somebody reported these posts at Report Abuse and the chess.com stuff decided to delete those posts. I wonder why ...   :)
I hope this is a very good example of what kind of person Costelus is, just in case you didn't noticed by now, being smoked by his words.
I also hope that this is a good example on why you cannot jump with conclusions until you listen more about any matter.

Regards,

I'm a member of Team USA: Northwest, and I can tell you that we're having a very fun "social chess experience" with numerous team matches in progress, including the three divisions of the World League exhibition match against Team Ireland, and matches against the Power of Chess, South Florida, Team Scotland, Team Sweden, and even Team Romania (I'm having an interesting game against my Romanian opponent, who has demonstrated nothing but good sportsmanship the whole time).  We even have a forum in our group where we talk back and forth about our wins and losses in the team matches (I would suggest this for any team as it helps to build camaraderie).  In addition to this, we have two Vote Chess games going:  one against Team Israel and one against the Australian Team.  Hence, I agree with Gumpty that the World League teams shouldn't be only for official WL matches.  However, I think Team Romania's requirements, such as no timeouts, must be rated over 1400, etc., are in violation of the World League rules (except for the rule about having 10 games under your belt, which I believe applies to all World League teams).  It sounds to me as though some members of the TR administration need to be replaced.  That being said, I can understand Costelus's statement about not wanting to be friends with cheaters because in the petition for MirceaH forum, most of the members of TR seemed to be supporting MirceaH, and only a few members of his team spoke out against this.  I think the World League is supposed to be a fun, fairly informal (as indicated by the presence of divisions) thing.

Costelus, if you ever post again, in any other part of this site, any accusation for the whole Team Romania as being "cheaters", I will report you to the chess.com stuff and ask them to close your account. If you have any problems with Team Romania admins or some of the members, please solve your problems with them, without making statements about the whole Team Romania.

enough