Settings not in the spirit of chess

So I just played this person who won our 10 0 game. I tried to rematch. Doesn't allow. I tried to chat. Only from friends. Why would anyone have these settings? I have been playing chess for nearly 5 decades. Chess is a social game. If you stop a person from challenging or communicating, you may as well just play a bot. I for one do not accept this. Anyone have similar thoughts? If it was a child trying to protect themselves, fair enough, but there should be something to indicate this.

I don't see any point in playing bots. They either kill you or play worse than any reasonable human. The only way to make it interesting and instructive IMO, is to make them humanlike, in which case I'd rather play a human!

I love your idea of "best of # games" btw.

I like to play chess,I don't like to chat,I can find time in my life to play chess,chatting not so much, maybe there should be a box to tick that would indicate if a player was available to chat, that also stated that the player in question was not being disrespectful if he chose not to

I respect people not wanting to chat during games, but there still should be a moment or two after the game to exchange pleasantries, like OTB. E.g. if I win and someone just goes "thumbs up" I'm happy. But I agree it would be good to have finer control over chat, e.g. blocked during the game, but automatically open before first move and after last move. And perhaps an automated message that says something like "Not available for chat during the game." But I still think that settings that block all chat and don't allow for a rematch challenge are not in the spirit of the game. It's easy enough to simply reject a challenge, and in that case I don't expect an explanation. I just acknowledge that a human on the other side of the board has said "no".

Good luck, and good game ,IMO should be a button to click the problem is that once chat is open its difficult to close without offence being taken, if I had the OP,s rating I could chat and bake a cake

Doesn't chat stop when you close the game window?

Recently someone sent me a Friend request because I have everything locked down ,I accepted because our last game was interesting, their message was GG

I prefer to have chat disabled because of the high number of members who will abuse the chat feature with pathetic trash talk or type in a way that makes it plainly obvious they are a kid on a mission to irritate with school yard insults and atrocious grammar. I keep chat on when playing poker because it's a good way for picking up tells but with chess and snooker I need silence during the game and any chat will be perceived as a way of breaking my concentration.

I agree that talking during the game and maybe a little bit of mild, inoffensive trash talk is part of chess as is discussing the game on the conclusion but until this place is vastly improved I'll be keeping chat muted. I stopped using social media because it was a time hog so having chat disabled is just another way of staying blinkered on the task at hand - improve at chess by playing it a lot.

I love the idea of a 'best of' feature and have been meaning to ask about that on the site feedback board. A way to challenge friends to a fixed amount of time slot and games auto start for that duration. See how many 5 minute games we can fit in to the 60 minute slot. Maybe even rotate time controls similar to how the poker games rotate in games like 8-game and HORSE.