Cheap Wins

A person should be allowed to have the right to refuse a win credited to their online game record (along with a ratings adjustment) if their opponent loses on time in less than 5 moves. I had one opponent run out of time, but to me this is  a "cheap win" as the game was only in the first couple of moves with nobody making any blunders.

You obviously didn't read my post correctly. I never said I used the engine to make moves. I only used it to give me an assessment of the position. I never used it to look ahead, give me a move hint, or play out possible lines. 

You are crystal clear now, correct, that such engine use is considered cheating, against site rules, and strictly prohibited?

That's your opinion. I have chessmaster 10, when you load a game, you do not have to have the "Thinking Lines" showing fully. You can minimize the box to only show the plus or minus rating of the game. And yes, I realize using engines are not allowed now in any form, which is the reason I redid my account. I am only playing my games now with no help whatsoever, no computer help, no books on the openings, no Game Explorer, etc. I am playing pure chess as if i was playing OTB.

The Game Explorer is explicity allowed in Online Chess. As such, it is intended to be used. I see no need to prohibit what the site allows, but this is your choice.

Also, I believe books on openings are also permitted in Online Chess. (Anybody: if I am incorrect in making this claim, please correct me!)

I disagree, it's practically sandbagging.

Your right whirlwind, they are allowed. But I am (by choice) not using them. I don't feel it helps me if I play the opening moves that are written in a book of on the Game Explorer. If i do that I feel as if I'm only playing from the point that the "book" moves are taken off from. Correspondent chess has always allowed you to use books (or in this case the Game Explorer).

Then I should amend what I said earlier. I now can see a reason not to use what the site allows.  Well put, sir! Thanks for the insight.

well let me put in my 2 cents worth here. If I'm playing a OTB game under FIDE rules and I lose by running out of time it is counted against me as a loss ( I assume). Furthermore if I'm playing a game on this site ( without any type of help ) and my opponent runs out time it should count as a win for me, again as per FIDE rules. So where is the confusion here ? ( now I think I'm confused  lol ) 

I wasn't saying that if your opponent loses on time it shouldn't be counted. I'm saying in some correspondence games, if it only goes 3 moves or 4, and your opponent loses on time, that I should have the right to not be credited with a win (sort of like an aborted game). I want to earn the win, not just because my oppnent couldn't make his 4th or 5th move before the clock runs out.

If you let me know who the opponent was and which game link, i can remove the points for you if thats what  you want.

If a person times out more than 5 games it shouldn't be affecting their opponents ratings.

well now I'm more confused --- and I need to post more sense  lol. I assume that we are playing chess by a approved set of rules ( eg. the FIDE rules ) otherwise we will soon be playing " Polish Poker " and make up the rules as we go along. Perhaps people are suggesting we play chess as per the rules of checkers ???

Well, it's still chess. The rules of Chess.com just don't perfectly harmonize with FIDE's rules. The site makes certain, usually subtle, modifications to make the game more suitable for online play, that's all.

reading the hot topics while i'm waiting around for some opponents to make moves, so if i may opine:

why 5 moves? why not 6 or 7 etc... it opens up a whole can of worms and creates extra work for the staff to deal with what i think are trivial requests.  if an opponent agrees to a time controlled game and does not make a move in the alotted time then it is technically an earned win for you, regardless if you think it is or not.  besides which, the rating points one can earn in this way are rare and thus are really immaterial.  if you play a lot of games, then your rating may go up by too small an amount to matter.  if you play very few games, the ratings fluctuate by a larger amount at the beginning and the rating shown is not important either because of too few samples, so it's not indicative of anything that has to do with the reality of your current playing strength.

Thanks for you posting here Teocaf, I was very glad to read your logical thoughts on this little matter in our discussion. Very good reasoning I must say !!!

I wouldn't want my "Best win" to be an obviously lost game that I just won on time. I see a lot of them on here, where their opponent had the game won absolutly, but for some reason timed out. I'm talking about turned based.

I had an opponent die while playing correspondence chess.  I refused to accept the win on religious grounds.