Leagues- How to win? Just win 200 games a day.

I see that a lot more than anticipated are already in Stone. More than one million the first week:

/ If you aren't already in Stone, you're not going to make it.

whose to say they arent playing with different people on same account?  i feel it yeah its insane competitive out there, and some people arent self sufficient and dont take on the dangers of the independence of living.  so they can milk from their moms teat all day and play games.  it happens its life 

It depends on total wood players up through Thursday that first week and the number of ties. Looks like ties are having a pretty big impact.

Probably will get close to 1.2 million in Stone by Friday, when the division cutoff is.

But people from the next wood promotion still have a chance. A small chance getting first 50, but slightly better for first 200.

This league promotion is a bad idea for any number of reasons. 

The one I stick on is that it is manipulating and exploiting compulsive behavior in a way that will cause real harm to people. 

Because rating doesn't matter for the process of promoting to higher leagues.

100%. It's a well known dark pattern that's used in all sorts of digital games to coerce people with addictive personalities to play a ton. Sometimes the goal is to convert them to pay-to-win features, sometimes it's just to push activity for ads / more games so it's easier for people to get pairings, etc..  I wonder how many more games were played last week than usual?

Why no Daily Chess League?

You're thinking of it as something that benefits the player, not something that benefits the site.

Just play 10min rapid, it gives 15 point for each win, 5 for each draw

Again, it's not a rating thing, it's separate from the rating system and it doesn't matter what the player's ratings are in the division. You're only competing in the number of trophies, not actual games.

So, you can play the way you normally play and gain trophies and depending on the other players in your division, potentially advance. 

Splitting up by pool and rating wouldn't likely work very well and players would in up in multiple leagues and divisions. Add to that, there would need to be a way to handle crossing rating boundaries. That's a really complex setup. 

There could be multiple ties in a division. So a lot more than 20 could move forward 

You've hit the nail on the head. I think this is happening by the bucket load in fact I've put this question to chess.com and am still waiting for a response

When you  consider that most players win about 50% of there games (high rated players win more than this), and you gain trophies by winning games, it's a simple calculation to work out how many games you need to play to achieve the points required achieve your target.  For example assuming:

* the average game takes 15 minutes (rapid)

* 15 points for each win

* target score 2000

* 50% win rate

So: 2000 target / 15 points / .5 win rate x 15 minutes = 4000 minutes

 which is 66 hours

which is 9.5 hours per day

The scores required is only going to accelerate as you progress through the levels, requiring much more than 2000 trophies

With the attraction of prize money cheats will be coming out of the woodwork like ants from a disturbed nest, even more than the attraction of winning a no prize tournament which always has cheaters rising to the top. The last 2 tournaments I played I reported 2 of the top 3 placings and the one I didn't report was already banned!

So the name of the game is to have as many games played on your account as feasibly possible which encourages the cheats to get their friends to help them out when they're sleeping, or have go to work etc.  If you can get games running 24 hours a day  you're guaranteed a very high tally of trophies. Using the above formulae 5090 trophies, which is the theoretical maximum for the average player.

I've actually put the question to chess.com  asking whether they are monitoring for this kind of activity and banning cheats. I have not yet received a response but am aware that they have 9 full-time staff dedicated to identifying and removing cheats. I think they need to put on more than this to remove the infestation generated by this new league.

I've done some analysis of my own, on the leader in my son's league, who has a suspiciously high score.  I looked at his/her Caro-Kann opening as white and found that their was a clear delineation of his response to the defense by black.  On day 1 he/she responded with the advance variation (every game), and on day 2 responded with the exchange variation every.game).  The player was rated 1500 playing rapid which fits the formulae above.

It seems clear to me that there were 2 players playing on this account.  I don't know how the "Fair Play" team can deal with this type of cheating as there is no engines and no-one being robbed of rating points which can be refunded.  The only losers are the players who miss the cut to advance to the next division.

I call this Tag Team Chess 

“I’ve actually put the question to chess.com  asking whether they are monitoring for this kind of activity and banning cheats. I have not yet received a response but am aware that they have 9 full-time staff dedicated to identifying and removing cheats. I think they need to put on more than this to remove the infestation generated by this new league.”

As with everything else that gets “reported” the stats are manipulated ( as in membership totals).

The Cheat Detection Team consists of but a few senior admins who review cases that are flagged by the software. Human monitoring before and during events does not happen - except in the upper echelon tournaments for the professionals. There may well be 9 staffers on the Team (Danny Rench by example) but they are not actively monitoring this event or games. It’s correct these type events are magnets. One in 1000 are ever nailed to the wall. It’s all about the clicks generated. Actual proof is high near impossible unless the misfits mess up big time

A million+ have advanced ! Several hundred will be banned for fair play violations.

Umm, yeah, obviously.

Or... I guess maybe not as obvious if you've never seen it. I've known about players like @peacemyfriend for many years (currently has played 375,000 games on that account) and I've looked into the playing habits of people who play 24 hour tournaments.

Yes, the top leagues will tend to be full of people with medical / psychological issues

The nice thing is this competition will play out over many weeks. Lots of opportunity for people to report each other.

No doubt the overall winners will be the ones who broke the spirit of the rules the furthest possible without stepping into account closure territory, but the great majority of obvious cheaters will be weeded out long before week 7.

By the way, it's a lot easier to gain points if you're e.g. a titled player.

You enter some random arena, and win >90% of your games. A high win% means high trophies per minute, plus win streaks in arenas give bonus points.

There should be a disproportionately large number of young titled players in the upper leagues.

Well, if you're not part of the first 2 cycles then you're out of the money, also lower leagues aren't very competitive. This means the cheaters you have to worry about won't show up until the end. Most of the childish cheaters will be banned long before week 7 starts, and wont impact people's ability to move up in lower leagues.

well that wood league there was pretty competitive

but it was holiday season

and the first week

i plan to get to bronze after all the people who play a lot are gone lol