league rapid simuls again

[adding to my last post]

Which is why you try to think of these things before the competitors do. That way you have sensible rules and the power to enforce them.

Invariably you wont think of everything, but it seems chess.com thought of practically nothing.

No need for sensible rules when you have to power to enforce whatever you want. No obligation to give out any aforementioned prized even. I mean, chess.com will give out the prizes that they said they would, no doubt; no one is evil or immoral here. And leagues is no risk/high reward, so nice enough for chess.com to offer the prizes in the first place 🙂

But still, we must play to their rules, no matter how inconvenient and arbitrary they are/appear. 🤣 They are entirely permitted to make up rules as they go along. 

Again, I'm sure the rules made up were with the intent of making the competition more fair. It backfired... dramatically... but good intentions nonetheless 🙂

yeah but the rules are extremely vague "intentionally playing only lower rated players is banned", for example

You need sensible rules because a poorly run competition has the potential to hurt their bottom line, because it harms their reputation. Ideally they want it go so smoothly and not do anything ridiculous like change the rules more than half way through.

Leagues are not no risk. You have to play more hours a week than you would working a full time job.

As for making the competition more fair by banning simuls, sure, that might be true. That's a nice way of looking at it... either way they're a bit inconsistent, but sure, even if it were true that they're incompetent, it doesn't necessarily mean they're not interested in fairness.

Since it's impossible to play only lower rated players it's a nonsense rule, and you have to apply a lot of interpretation.

It seems they're trying to say you're not allowed to exclusively play opponents who are far below your skill... for example by lowering your rating... even though being paired with people far below your skill is exactly how arenas work for very high rated players.

Same reason why they banned variants (you couldn't get variant points after a while). So, why did they ban variants but didn't ban simuls???

There is nothing Fair nor Equitable regarding this league promotional gimmick - that is offering huge cash prizes.

Ya... I'm trying to stay optimistic here, but leagues just seem like a product and promulgation of greed, with the cash prizes being somewhat of a smokescreen 🙄

as @llama47 pointed out in #105, it isn't really 0 risk to compete; people have expended serious time in hopes of winning... and now the "win condition" of simuls are out the window, as well as some other flaws for which simuls were thought to be a sole remedy for, such as IMs/GMs inadvertently playing lower-rated players in arenas, and shared accounts playing 20+ hours a day... 😭

Kills me not to stay optimistic... but ya, leagues didn't turn out to be the most pleasant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It did fill up because I was in it, but I refuse to play against simul players and looks like some others do too.

How, you was playing early third to last.

Im done with chess.com. No one takes the blame and they don't enforce the rules. Bye!

I think I posted from the very first day when leagues came out that this whole thing was going to be a clown show. I couldn't imagine that any contest that emphasized quantity of play over skill or randomness (like a lottery) was capable of being constructed without thousands of people leaning hard into hatching schemes to bend the rules in order to artificially inflate playing times. Players tag-teaming the same account just can't be stopped. For that reason, I chose not to participate.

I took chess.com at their word that it was just about playing time, but it seems that it's not. If titled players are not being punished for deliberately choosing to play against weaker players, but others are, this whole contest is a SHAM. Average players were told that they should have as good a chance as anyone if they just grinded it out, but they don't.

What an unbelievable train-wreck.

Looks like the technical fix for simuling is here, at least I can't do it.

kind of hate the fact that i even was participating in the amazing leagues

My assumption is that this league was derived by chess.com to get people to play more chess. It was addicting to see the standings and to see that if I won 1 more bullet game I would increase in the standings. It worked.

I imagine multi-tabling users (I was multi-tabling 20 60 minute rapid games for 4-5 hours a day) and I assumed this gave chess.com what they wanted. My rapid rating did decrease significantly because I was playing bullet chess against people thinking a long time, and there are many many smurfs with very low ratings.

I'm assuming the reason they took it away in the middle of the league is because people complained about it.

But now it's going to backfire on chess.com because I'm going to go from playing massive amounts of chess to very little.

@titlequest84 - the reason is transparent if you know anything about marketing psychology. Fortnite is a huge money maker, even though it's "free" because studies have shown repeatedly that people who are "engaged" (that is who play a lot), are much more likely to spend money on upgrades. By focusing the contest on playing time, they are inducing player engagement, and selling more upgrades. It's as simple as that. Playing hundreds of mindless games while your brain is half-fried is not pleasurable and doesn't cause addiction. I'm sure there are a lot of people grinding away at this very moment who are hating it, but are continuing thinking they have a chance of winning a prize. They've got no shot. The contest is rigged against average players. It's actually cruel if you think about it.

Here's a crazy idea.

Simuls, although obviously being a problem strictly related to this leagues tournament, were actually not hurting the essence of it. The way the tournament is designed requires quantity over quality. You got what you asked for.

The abuse part was coming from the absolutely hardcore people playing 15+ matches at the same time, wannabe super GMs, strictly for the purpose of gaining trophies. Of course they couldn't keep the pace of their natural rating, leading to an unnatural decrease, too big for the notion of fair play, which you call sandbagging, for fair reasons.

Well, guess what? 

Playing blitz at a bullet rate just to perform as many matches as possible, for the same reason (trophies), is leading eventually towards the same direction, same way simuls did it. 

Rating also decreases and these people will eventually slide back towards their normal Elo, once this leagues tournament madness is over.

Banning simuls was good and bad. Good since the extreme abusers, bad because you did it in the middle of the tournament, creating a black hole of chaos.

A middle way would have been better, like limiting the max number of simultaneous matches (5, for example). Some people can do it without severe sandbagging. It's a challenge, it's exhausting, it's also enjoyable.

Meanwhile, you keep ignoring the arena matchmaking rules, which allows high Elo players to do exactly what you don't allow everyone else. You created a window of abuse, allowing only who you want to bend the rules.

As I previously asked, why don't you just pick the winners and be done with this?

Ingrate, prejudiced incompetents that you are...

Yep. Arenas are pure BS. You get bonuses for wins but in normal matchmaking, it's almost impossible for players to accumulate bonuses. Even if you're 2500, you'll be matched at people your own rating and you won't be able to rack up the points. If you join an arena, you completely bypass all of this and can literally win every game.

Bonuses should be based upon the quality of the win. If a 3000 rated player beats a 600 rated player in an arena, the bonus should be scaled. It's a boot against an insect and the bonus should reflect that, if we wanted to be fair. The chance of a 600 beating a 3000 based on elo is 1 in 1,000,001 (this is the actual number), so the bonus should be one-millionth of what you get from beating a fellow 3000 rated player.

But that ain't gonna happen.

Once you realize that nobody can be top 20-30 (to not overextend with my assumptions and accuse innocent people) without at least partially bending the rules, you'll understand how poorly you organized everything.

Assuming you played chess for once in your lives, then you should have known by heart the most common ways people will cross the line with, at least weeks before launching the tournament.

I refuse to believe everything is handled by simple employees who have absolutely no passion for chess.

No, it's not.