Congratz to everyone who made it to Elite League

REPOST FROM HELP & SUPPORT (Sorry, but a clarification is urgent)

So, any chess.com staff can bother to make an official statement on what the hell is happening? It's been said that simuls are not allowed anymore, however, 1st place in Elite league already has 655 trophies made in 80-90 minutes. IM, titled player, diamond member..... He seems to feel pretty safe while doing it. What should we do?

Meanwhile, you keep allowing the ZERO fair-play arena settings, where high Elo players win 70-99% of time, matched with players even 2000 Elo below them... AND GETTING ARENA POINTS BONUS, ON TOP OF EVERYTHING. Average players winning ~50% of their matches have zero chances to compete.

Besides the disgusting, absolutely moronic decision to change the rules in the middle of the Leagues tournament, you're only handpicking the issues you seem to be bothered by.

Simuls are anything but easy. They're quite challenging and absolutely exhausting after a while. That was the only thing balancing the arena abuse you consider as normal, the only thing giving even the average pleb a fair chance to compete without resorting to actual cheating, like account sharing (to play 24/7) or absolute sandbagging on purpose (1000+ Elo jumps).

I'd choose that over hours of bullet/blitz arena grind every time. Not to mention how I'd throw your website in a cobra pit whenever arena matches me with someone 600 Elo higher than me, while I actually put my precious time into trying to win games and trophies.

I don't give a damn about your cash prizes, but so far for me, the thrill of the competition was, until now, something extraordinary. Now? Uncertainty, chaos, zero communication, lack of professionalism from your side.

At this point, why don't you just pick the winners yourselves if you won't offer the same fair chance to everyone?

If match count is the major factor of winning, premium members can play multiple games at the same time. I don't think any non-premium can beat them.

It doesn't matter anyway. The winner will be two guys playing on the same computer tag-teaming for 24 hours straight. It can't be stopped.

Report simul players until there's a technical solution in place preventing trophy accumulation for those games.

And Simuls don't balance out arenas. Not only do strong players have a bigger benefit in simuls, many players are much stronger than their rating indicates, due to simuls causing rating drops for most players doing them. So they eventually end up getting easier pairing (if they're already not).

Hopefully the fix comes out soon.

Yeah, Simuling is against the rules. But they haven’t developed a system to detect it.

The technical solution is still in progress. 

Yeah, Simuls definitely IMBALANCE the field. Your average schmo isn't going to be able to do a bunch of simuls without having a mental breakdown, whereas Hikaru could take on 100 people at once and win every game.

Not to mention that simuls are pay-to-win. Only people with paid memberships can do simuls and the event was advertised as anyone can win.

I quit the league when it first came out. Because playing chess for that kind of competition would harm my progress.. quantity would be over quality.. I don't want that to happen.

People are like crazy now.. they play day and night, non-stop.. hehe. with all my respect you are all out of your mind imho.. tausands of dollars.. big dreams.. but bitter reality.. who is gonna win you think? someone anonymous.. not you

You don't seem to observe anything wrong about 70-99% win rates of very high Elo players in Arena (some lovely 20-30 win streaks too). You also seem blind to the arena ''fair'' matchmaking.

In Crystal, some people at the top had 2500+ trophies only from arena bonus.

Considering the arena matchmaking, it looks like you people scream ''abuse'' only when the wrong people seem to be winning the competition.

This one was 1000 trophies harder:

https://www.chess.com/leagues/crystal/JV26jbwt

Not yet. Champion wont start until the week after since you need 50 in a division, so the people who are 1 week behind will still be grinding.

How do you even do simuls? I'm a gold member, not diamond, so I'm guessing I can't anyway? 

Why is it unfair for a chess competition to favor titled players over significantly weaker players? 

I understand why it's personally frustrating for you, but...

After a game has started, make a move, and seek a new game.

Sometimes it blocks you temporarily... I think it used to be that you couldn't start a new game if it was your turn to move in any game, but I think it's a little different now.

I don't know if gold can. I assumed any paying member could but I don't know.

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In "live" you have to turn the option on in live chess settings. In "play" I think it's automatically possible to play simuls.

Additionally, there's software that can have two people share the same computer and each be working in different windows. You could have several people doing simuls on the same account and collecting all of the trophies.

Whoever wins this thing is going to figure out the most efficient way to skirt the rules.

So, when a 2400+ Elo player enjoys the arena trollfest and wins 20 out of 20 matches in Bullet arena against 300-1800 Elo players, it's cool. He's a titled player, therefore he's entitled to smack low rated players in order to win trophies while competing with the average Joes struggling at a 50% win rate, but with all matches against SIMILAR Elo opponents. You don't see a problem here? Anything? The clue is... ''fair play''.

I don't mind titled players win 60-70% of matches against similar strength opponents. However, arena is currently an allowed abuse.

Eh, from your point of view, I guess it's like that joke about getting free money from the government. Cool and awesome if you're rich, but trashy if you're poor.

I know chess.com has been pretty incompetent with leagues, not understanding (or not caring about) multiple basic ideas, but I don't think they were so stupid as to not realize titled players would clean up in arenas.

This is all a marketing / revenue thing right? It will make for a nice promotional photo at the end, to have a list of names with titles beside them, meanwhile having a "legendary" 500 player is kind of laughable.

I see you got 8700 trophies last week. That's really impressive. You're not even making good use of arenas... oh, I see you started playing simuls. Well anyway, hope you can get to champion, good luck.

a blitz player going from 1400 to 900 would get thrown out, maybe a 1900 going to 1400 could happen, playing faster to get more games in is good but your still relying on the skills you have mastered over years and not thinking mindlessly.

They are having trouble figuring out ways to keep simuls for counting as points. On a scale from 1 to 10 in difficulty, this is about a 1. Does anyone really think there's a way to stop super clever people from figuring out ways to collect trophies. I'm not even sure they can stop a dumb bot from playing since their anti-cheat software is designed to detect best-moves from high rated bots. If you throw a 1500 rated bot in there, I'm not sure they're capable of detecting it.