Something needs to be said....

I recently signed up for a Premium membership on Chess.com

Now here is where I might get out of line.

I am tired of people aborting games, leaving early, disconnecting, or just being rude. Refusal to play, based on my low bullet score. I can't improve if people wont play me.

I pay to play here, if you don't and you refuse to play a paying member, you shouldn't be allowed to play here.

To me, chess.com is like a chess club, the paying members keep this club open and running. I would like to see a rule implemented. If you are a free member, thats fine if you act proper and don't refuse to play games.

This community is pretty snobby I am finding with regards to ratings. If a non paying member refuses 3 games in a day, he can't play here for 1 week or something.

I would really like to open this topic up for discussion, I am tired of paying already because I can never get a game.

I can't even run through positions against the computer because my Java doesn't work even after downloading the most current version.

I am on a Mac, and nothing works.

Can someone please help me, and suggest some solutions to these on-going issues. I thought people came here to play chess, why all the aborts, refusing to play rematches.

It's annoying.

I mean, Id like to play an IM,FM,GM. Nobody here will play.....It is getting bad.

Sorry for the rant, but I had 3 guys abort game in a row and I needed to vent.

Please respond.

Thanks

Are you saying that if you challenge a non paying member, and they refuse they be penalized?!

I totally refuse to play you

Guy expects that because he pays he should be able to play Kramnik or anyone else whenever he feels like it... and accuses us of snobbery.

Penalizing non-paying members will drive them away to other sites, and if you think this is unimportant, you are wrong. Non-paying members have to look at ads, which contributes money to chess.com. And the large number of players contributes to the prestige of chess.com . Treating the non-paying members unfairly would hurt paying members too in the the long run.

The expectation just isn't reasonable.  Among many other reasons, people decline challenges because of their current game load, because of their personal schedules, because they don't like the time controls on the challenge etc., and frankly, rating is also a perfectly legitimate reason to decline a challenge.

I play very few games here because of other time commitments I have outside of chcess.com.  I'd like the games I do play to be challenging and worth my time and effort.  Something I'm very unlikely to get from the time I'd invest in a game against a 1200 rated player.

I don't think your suggestion works, because it would simply lead to many free players leaving.

rated 1388, chances that a titled player will play you are slim. Here on the internet and OTB. If you are not paying them, why would they want to play you? You can consider this snobby, but I don't entirely agree, Would you play someone rated 400?

Also it is probably best for your development to play slightly better opponents 100-200 points above you. That way you will probably understand why you lost and learn from it. Titled players will probably swash you like a fly and you don't know what hit you. If you want to play against a mere OTB A-class player, add me to your friends I will play you if you want when I am in live chess.

Also, while I agree that you won't learn much only playing lower rated players, I believe that it is also very difficult to learn from a game you play against a player who is rated too far above you as well.  I think that ideally, playing up 1-200 rating points (and not much more) is where you're best opportunities to learn from actual game-play lie.

Firstly, its not only the us premium members paying for the site, the free members have to look at annoying adverticements all the time, witch is their way to pay for their use of the site.

And of course FMs, IMs and GMs dont wanna play with you, as they are much better than you, so whats the point. If you wanna play a good player, you must become good or pay (here you can pay to play a GM: http://www.chess.com/coach/natalia-pogonina)

And that many idiots are'nt around here, I know as I play here myself. And why get mad if someone abort a game, it has to be done in the first move, so whats the problem?

Stop whining.

Agreed agreed agreed agreed.

For $199, I can get a woman to...you know...at the risk of sounding inappropriate...put new vinyl siding on the house, maybe clean the gutters and rake the leaves, as long as she is insured.  

 $199. dang that's expensive  .

If you are any good you can get them to do it for free you know.

 I wonder if anybody actually pays that. "Oh sure, I'll pay $99.00 to get slaughtered at chess." LOL.

Jesus man you're making Canada look bad with those kinda ideas

Wow. 

I try and play people 100 and 200 points above me. They decline

They have nothing to gain, but everything to lose with regards to rating points. So they decline.

Right now just for repition I am only playing bullet games of 1 minute on live chess.

The green dots are games people have already started, once you accept and make a move and they abort, its get's annoying.

I don't expect to play GMs either, but I watch their games too. I never see a GM playing someone who is rated even 1800. It just doesn't happen. I never called any GM's snobs either. So please don't put words in my mouth.

Im saying not playing someone purley based on a lesser rating online is silly. The ratings are skewed, especially since you are playing against computers as well.

And the arguement that free members view ads? like maybe a half a penny per add. How many times would they view those ads to equal my 100 U.S dollars.

It just doesnt seem right that repeat offenders especially non paying repeat offenders can simply just abort, refuse or disconnect from games they are losing without penalty.

All im saying.

Why would anyone want to play you?

Ah, well, I can understand your confusion, being north of the border.  See, U.S. currency works on the decimal system, much like your own.  That means one dollar is worth 100 pennies.  So one hundred dollars would be worth 100 x 100 pennies, or 10,000 pennies.

Now, you've thrown an extremely complicated monkey wrench into the equation by referencing half pennies.  You might want to read this part twice.  To account for half pennies, we need to double the number of pennies that make up one hundred dollars. Here comes the exciting part: 2 x 10,000 = 20,000 half pennies.

Thus, if your estimate of earnings per ad view is correct, 20,000 ad views = your $100.  I won't bother explaining this higher mathematics portion, but that works out to about 55 ad views per day over the same time frame as your $100 covers.

Next question?

When someone disconnects, they lose the game and the game is considered won by the opposite side. For games with less than 4 moves the ratings don't change though.

As a rule of thumb, good sportmanship comes with opponents of at least 1200 rating points.

You sound suspiciously like a ... TEACHER? 

(Don't they have any sense in the U.S. ? Aren't we the ones with the pence?)