Why can't you figure out how to thwart malicious disconnectors?

I'm sure they loose lots of potential playing members due to the disconnecters.

People that find the site, play 5 games in which they spend 60 minutes waiting, then decide it's more fun to play GTA V rather than chess because your chess playing time is mostly waiting.

It's sorta basic business knowledge that you shouldnt piss off people just after they came in through the door lol.

Not sure why you quoted me to make that point.

But as for business, chess.com seems to be doing quite well.

@Raspberry_Yoghurt - There's no reason to keep dragging long quotations into your replies and cluttering up the thread with redundant and/or unnecessary text. It makes the thread unnecessarily hasslesome to read and crowds out other replies on a page.  It's bad forum netiquette.

Not sure either myself why i quoted you :)

And yeah, they are doing OK and I think that's why they can't be bothered to optimize to get the last 20% of what they could make.

I work in a company like that myself also, at one point company owners can get tired of working their butts off to improve a company, lay back and enjoy the $$$ flowing in as it is :)

So you're saying Chess.com is like Comcast - they have their revenue so to hell what the customers want, since they have a veritable monopoly in online chess? You really think they're just sitting on their laurels now raking it in and don't care? Do you have any data to back that besides anecdotal evidence based on what you've seen in your own company?

I have a solution, tell players to stop making blunders, that way the game can continue until flag fall.

Hey all. I just found this thread. Let me tell you a little about "disconnectors" and others who break our fair play policy: https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/articles/1444922-fair-play-policy

First off, we really dislike these types of people. They play a game, start losing, and then just... let it time out. Or they make a few moves and walk away. Or they close their browser instead of resigning. WE TRACK ALL OF IT. And we mark them as "disconnectors". 

However, it's not always 100% clear when someone does it maliciously, or when their internet cuts off (some countries especially have unstable connections, unfortunately). 

So, we keep a score of fair play violations as a % of games played. And once those people get over a certain %, THEY ARE NO LONGER PAIRED with normal players. They are in their own "pool" where they player other violators like themselves. 

Why don't we close their accounts? Because then they would just create new accouns without restrictions and come back clean and do it all over again. 

In general, this system works really well. Some violators don't like it, and occasionally someone with a bad internet connection gets dumped in there unfairly. But overall it's worked really well. 

However, about a week ago we introduced some new updates to the server that were meant to make the game experience better (by reducing the amount of time you have to wait when your opponent disconnects, etc). And unfortunately, due to an impossible-to-predict bug, it caused a lot of people to get marked as "violators" unintentionally. And a lot of people's %s went up unfairly. And because we don't maintain a history of %s, we were forced to reset everyone's fair play scores back to 0 :(

So, for the last week or so, some people may have faced people who are normally playing in the violators pool, but who were reset back into the main pool. Within the next few days that should all shake out back to normal. I'm very sorry about that! 

Thanks for your support! I'll try to answer any further questions on the topic :)

Let me followup by saying that there are a lot of negative posts about how we don't care, how we aren't capable, etc. I'll say this: we DO care tremendously, and we have a wonderful staff working around the clock on making Chess.com better. However, we are not as good as we need to be about communicating what we are doing behind the scenes. That is going to change starting this month. We've just been so busy that talking about what we are doing has taken a back seat to what we are doing. And what are we doing? We are working on the next version of Chess.com - V3 - which will be sooo much better than the current Chess.com. Look for a news post about our progress within the next week. But the current Chess.com is on an old, outdated codebase, and we are working on a new, modern codebase so we can build for the future! But meanwhile, the current site has seen less love (as it's hard to fix non-critical things knowing they will be disappearing in a few months...). 

Anyway, the point is we are working hard, doing our best, and are 100% dedicated to making Chess.com the best we can. All of the comments about Comcast, not caring, fat cat, money, etc are just not accurate. Nobody is kicking back and patting themselves on the back or relaxing into early retirement :) Everyone is working super hard... we just aren't communicating on it well, and are working on an entirely new version of Chess.com that most of you haven't seen yet! (Well, those of you who use our mobile apps will notice the difference - our V3 mobile apps are so much better!)

I appreciate all of your thoughts and insights, and I apologize for my lack of communication lately. I will do better!

wow, that's been long...

OMG we gotta wait a minute or two on bad loserz stop the presses how do we even survive such a tragedy?

We really have become spoiled. Imagine how disgusted the pioneers of yesteryear would be at what a bunch of namby pamby soft cry babies we are.

Watch this for a better explanation:  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E

@erik - The head honcho! Nice! Thanks for the reply!! I'm, (and no doubt the forum readers, are), honored.

In one of my "Comcast(???)" posts, I did realize and mention that you might be deferring fixing fixes in the old system to focus on v3 (I'm an SW eng. too, so I know how it goes), and realized it was just a question. It didn't seem to me like you didn't care, in general, but I wanted to check :-))  

V3 sounds awesome man!  You guys are brilliant, and as I mentioned, disconnectors are pretty much my only gripe. 'Cept I really think there should be an "advanced" preference/option for a 'quick resign' button in the phone app, that *doesn't* require resign confirmation for blitz, on phone app, because in the past, rarely, as I usually play on the computer, I have forgotten to click the confirmation checkmark.  

This is a brilliant site, the new phone app is excellent.  I was just a bit disappointed in the new app that I still had to click *again* to resign, in case I was in a huff or had to flush. As the 2nd prompt isn't blatant.

@Dodger111 - The two minute wait is not the worst thing that could happen in the scheme of things, obviously. But it is annoying, particularly when a chump gets to force me into that position, as I *never* deliberately disconnect/abandon regardless how bugged I was about losing.  

Also, I admit, I'm not the most patient guy in the world, otherwise I wouldn't be so hooked on serial blitz in the first place.

You've got that right!   You are anything but Zen.  You should change your alias to something else a little more appropriate e.g. Now-or-Die, Now-I-Cry, Now-goddamit-NOW. 

Nice feedback! I've passed it along to the developers for their consideration.

Disconnecters are cheaters

@erik and @kirkwood

Thanks for the updates! Excellent work.

man, ignore this scumbag. He is just a troll and has another fair share of trolls working together with him. As you could see, he came to provoke you, you answered properly, and there we go, there was the next scumbag ready to accuse you of being offensive.

it's just two retards that have no life and probably get constantly bullied in their real life. Call him Gayknight. 

Who, you or him?