league rapid simuls again

That could be part of it but I think it is partially related to simuls as well, since that also has players getting pretty exclusively lower rated players. I think they were covering both bases by the wording.

So we don't know if it's against the rules to modify the rating range of your seeks

Don't worry chess.com it's only week 5. You'll figure it out before signing the winner's checks... maybe.

Wait. What? Strong players are allowed to bypass the rules but weak will still get punished? What kind of madness is this? What's the threshold? Do you have to be titled in order to get away with these baked-in shenanigans? You do realize that this is complete poppycock, right? Either let everyone abuse the system or let nobody. Jeez. what a clusterboink.

If I were staff I'd be thinking something like, you ingrates, what you do want from us? We offer you $50,000 and you whine and moan about how you can't get enough medals or awards or whatever they're called. Why are you making it so complicated. Just play chess, and whoever plays more chess will get the money.

What's that? People are playing more chess via simuls? Why is that a probl-- oh, Kari in HR thought that wasn't fair? Well #$%^ this is week 5 why didn't she sa-- ok whatever, we'll make it against the rules. @#$%ing Kari making my job harder... we'll see how Eric likes it when I tell his wife...

What was I saying? Oh yeah, it's really simple, just log into play and seek a-- what's that? People are lowering their ratings on purpose? Why woul-- oh yeah we're offering money. Well don't do that ok! It's unreasonable to try to win. This is supposed to be a friendly little game of who can stay awake for 100 hours straight playing chess to win the $50,000.

You people always making my life so difficult!

I didn’t do simuls after the rules were changed, and also for a few days before that, because I found out that it technically wasn’t allowed and it had gotten a couple of people (at least) pushed back to Wood, although they are supposed to get their previous trophies back. Like you, however, I did not like seeing others in my division simul; 3/4 of the people who finished ahead of me in my Crystal division simuled after the rules changed. I reported them Saturday night (EST) but I’m not sure what will happen. Technically, the rules say you “may” face the punishments so Chess.com isn’t necessarily obligated to act. I’m not sure how many of the 3 people knew about the rule change, but I think at least one might have, looking through forum posts. I think reporting them is a good idea; Chess.com can decide whether or not people should have known about the rule change, and when. Maybe I should have sent them some messages also to try to get them to stop, but I might not have qualified anyway.

I do not believe it is against the rule, but ideas along that line may have influenced the wording. Even with doing that, the pairings are random and you'll get players near your rating as well. It probably is not a huge contribution to league point increases, especially not compared to simuls.

It might be worth getting into a division with simul players if they will all be chucked out later.

Ah ok, so the rule of thumb is as long as it doesn't help you get a lot of trophies it's ok. Unless of course you're really high rated, then getting trophies at a rate literally 2-3x faster than a 1500 can is fine.

Seems the simple fix is to apply a maximum trophy per day limit based on rating. This would also help stop multiple people playing on the same account. Let's say an 18 hour cap per day, and we start at 80 trophies per hour for the lowest rated players, and work up ~200 trophies per hour for the highest.

That seems to be the most transparent application of the current rules. And since practically no one is pushing that limit, it wouldn't really matter.

Plus it would reward users clever enough to play simuls, and other tricks not talked about... you know... the players who showed more cleverness in a week than the people who had a few months to hammer out the details during beta.

to clarify, is playing in arenas banned for people in leagues?

lol, no

Chess.com staff seems to be ok with high Elo players winning 70-99% of arena matches against lower rated opponents (due to inability of finding opponents of similar Elo).

Last week, some of them got 3000+ trophies FROM ARENA POINTS ONLY.

I'm tired of saying it's not fair for everyone else.

Llama, the problem with setting a trophy cap is that multiple people are likely to hit the cap, and then what does chesscom do? Split the prize 1000 ways so that people only get enough to buy couple of burgers at McDonald's?

I'm really interested to see just how spectacularly this whole thing blows up. That it will blow up is a given, how spectacularly is not.

I wouldn't risk it if non titled.

Nah, the tie breaker is rating, because @#$% lower rated players.

Also it would be really hard to hit the cap multiple days in a row due to things like sleep, I doubt there would be many ties. 80 x 18 x 7 = just over 10k, which no one has even done yet, and that was the lowest cap.

The real problem with setting a cap is it would be embarrassing for them. It would mean they had no idea how to make / enforce a good set of rules lol. The suggestion was mocking in nature.

I don't think people care enough for it to blow up, plus they'll do some smooth talking PR BS.

Of the 4 people I reported yesterday (excluding mayo), one have them has been removed from leagues. They were in my division. The titled players remain untouched, even though they broke the rules just as much as the player they punished. Disgraceful.

Yeah, I noticed they only kicked out the untitled Indian guy...

I'm sure they made sure someone who may not understand English well understood the rules... I mean, they've made the rules so clear to all of us...

This tournament was never meant to be fair play for everyone.

This tournament was never meant to give EVERYONE equal chances.

High Elo players are privileged through low rated arena matchmaking abuse, which chess.com repeatedly deemed as allowed, since it was designed like that on purpose.

Apparently, being titled also helps in having your abuse being ignored. Will see if it's only temporary.

He might not have been kicked out for simuling; there is another untitled account that lost 63/63 Rapid games to him. The account that lost those games got closed for fair play violation.