A ticket can be opened to support. The reason will only be given to the account holder, so when opening the ticket, included the account name and e-mail address used on the account.
Accounts get closed for not following Chess.com TOS.
https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/emails/new
edit: I didn't catch you opened a ticket.
I understand the TOS and understand that this is some sort of perceived "fair play" violation. As I mentioned, I also opened a support ticket.
As parents, we closely supervise his chess play and know that he's an honest and respectful player (both online and real-life in the USCF scholastic and club tournaments in our area). It just seems odd that the account has been terminated without any reason or notice ... we've never been aware of a single problem in his playing or interactions with other players.
Best regards,
Chris
For anyone who might be reading, we received a very vague and disappointing email from a chess.com representative informing us that our son's account was indeed closed for a perceived violation of fair play policy. The message implies cheating, but gives no specifics. It mentions an "investigation" but offers no details of that investigation. It gives us a chance to "appeal" but we don't know what to appeal.
People who are part of this community should be aware that their accounts can literally be shut down for *any* reason, and that his happens in a very much guilty-until-proven-innocent manner, without warning.
As a parent and person who has payed for this service ($99), it has certainly not been a good experience. And for my son's part, he's just a regular kid who hasn't done anything wrong and is now experiencing what it feels like to be wrongly accused.
Chris
Chess.com won't reveal the details of its cheat detection methods to prevent cheats from understanding how we identify them. Although we have a very high degree of confidence in our analysis, sometimes human error means the incorrect action is applied (e.g. closure when the report does not actually indicate cheating). Appealing just means replying to that e-mail you received from the Chess.com Support team and asking them to verify whether this is the case: if the report does indicate cheating, unfortunately there's not much room for further discussion. If, however, a mistake has been made, they'll apologise and re-open the account in question.
Hope that helps,
David - moderator
@crorrer : you should teach your son to play honestly.
Chess is for people who respect each other.
If your son was cheating, I hope you won't get your money back, though chess.com being very soft with cheaters, you actually might, which is a shame.
Besides, there's a chesskid.com website for young children. Maybe you should consider it.
Thanks for your message, David - I appreciate it. I wasn't really inquiring about cheat detection methods and understand the very valid reasons that this would be proprietary information. Hopefully my son's account problem is just an error, as you say.
My point is only that this account closing process is (a) very abrupt (b) not at all transparent and (c) doesn't seem to give the account holder any presumption of innocence - quite the opposite, in fact.
It seems essential that if someone is being accused of something, they need to know *exactly* what they're being accused of, and at this point we haven't gained any clarity on that point (even after receiving a response from the support team), just vague mentions of "cheating" and TOS violation. From your response, I'm not at all certain that we'll ever get that clarity.
From our perspective on the outside, it's hard to understand. Our son wins some matches, loses others, and we know with 100% certainty that there's no cheating involved. As parents, we monitor his play closely. He's an honest and respectful player (both online and real-life in the USCF scholastic and club tournaments in our area). The games he plays are his own, and his performance in his chess.com games isn't wildly disproportionate to his real-life, USCF rated matches.
Our son has very much enjoyed being a part of the chess.com community and has benefitted tremendously from its many opportunities for learning. We'll certainly be disappointed if he's unable to continue being a part of it.
Best regards,
Chris
Hi Chris,
Unfortunately, the nature of cheat detection is that a cheater will almost always deny it, and trying to argue it with them is both pointless and frustrating. Chess.com actually does give people the presumption of innocence and sets a very high bar of certainty before acting: you can see that in some people's dissatisfaction with what they perceive as tolerance of cheating on our site.
I've contacted our cheat detection team directly about this case, and hopefully they'll be able to give you some more information - I'm assuming they'll be able to look up your son's account details in the ticket you logged about it.
@hicetunc :
I'm not sure how to respond to your comment except to stress that there was no cheating involved on his part. He loves the game, respects his opponents and would never dream of it.
As you're advocating mutual respect, I'd think you might want to tread lightly when giving parenting advice to someone you don't know. I can assure you that if I suspected my kiddo of cheating I would be the very first to remove his privilege of playing on the site.
The money involved is not the issue at all.
I agree with you 100% that chess is a wonderful means of teaching respect and sportsmanship, and it's one of the things we love about the game.
Best regards,
Chris
@david: Greatly appreciated! Thanks again for your help.
Considering that accounts are shut down without any warning or notice, I'm not sure I agree with your point about presumption of innocence, but I truly am not trying to be argumentative. I know that protecting the site against cheating has got to be a herculean task.
Best regards,
Chris
What is his account name?
I'm not sure that it's really any of anyone else's business, so it's probably better not to ask.
@hicetunc :
I'm not sure how to respond to your comment except to stress that there was no cheating involved on his part. He loves the game, respects his opponents and would never dream of it.
As you're advocating mutual respect, I'd think you might want to tread lightly when giving parenting advice to someone you don't know. I can assure you that if I suspected my kiddo of cheating I would be the very first to remove his privilege of playing on the site.
The money involved is not the issue at all.
I agree with you 100% that chess is a wonderful means of teaching respect and sportsmanship, and it's one of the things we love about the game.
Best regards,
Chris
Then what was the reason for the account closure ? It's probably mentioned in the staff's answer isn't it ?
Cheating, spamming, insulting and using multiple accounts are the only reasons I can think of.
hicetnunc, read the thread and you will see that the OP says that very limited or no information has been provided by the site as to why this account was closed. David has taken the trouble to respond but has no information and has contacted the cheat detection team seeking answers. Seemingly your question as to why the account was closed must be addressed to that team.
crorrer, in case you are not a chess player there is really only one way to cheat at chess and that is to use a computer programme (an "engine" as it gets called). What the cheat does is to feed the position on the board into his engine and then makes the best or second best move as indicated by the engine. As engines are much stronger than we are, following that process pretty well guarantees a win.
You can make one or two enquiries of your own. Does your son have an engine or have access to one? Komodo, Stockfish and Houdini are three popular ones but if you did not buy one for your son, look for Fire or one of the other free programmes that can be downloaded. If your son does not have an engine on his computer and does not have access to one from a chess playing friend you can pretty well discount this suggestion of cheating.
Perhaps you now do not have access to your son's games (and results) while playing here but you may remember seeing his results when you monitored his play. It is very typical for a cheat to show a virtually unbroken run of victories. Ignoring the first dozen games when a player here is finding their level, a hot streak of five or six wins in a row is not uncommon, ten or twenty in a row is enough to raise suspicion.
If you have access to the moves your son made and you are concerned enough to spend some time, feed a couple of the completed games into his engine and look at the moves from about move ten onwards. Note the top move proposed by the engine and see how often the move played by your son matched it. I am afraid that if you found a couple of games with a high correlation then there is at least a case to answer.
I'd say forget it now. The cheat detection must be at a level beyond the play of an 11 year old.
He's a kid, dont make him feel worse than he does already, its a good lesson for him.
hicetnunc, read the thread and you will see that the OP says that very limited or no information has been provided by the site as to why this account was closed. David has taken the trouble to respond but has no information and has contacted the cheat detection team seeking answers. Seemingly your question as to why the account was closed must be addressed to that team.
(...)Well, if the cheat detection team closed the account, then it was for cheating. End of story.
If there's another reason, then the regular admins would know.
Thanks to you all (and especially @david) for your help, suggestions, and input. We're working with the support team to get this resolved. This is a very new thing for us, nothing we've experienced before.
The most difficult thing has been getting specific information about why the account was closed. Communication from the support team member we're working with has been vague and unclear to say the least - quite literally we have been unable to tell our son why the account was closed! Through David's help, we're finally starting to get some answers. Beyond that, I don't think it's appropriate to discuss other details here.
One thing I have learned for certain about the cheat detection process: mistakes and human error can happen, and it's wise not to jump to any conclusions. It's not a perfect process.
I'd also like to remind folks that there's a human being at the center of this, too; a kid who loves chess, is an active player locally in real life, and has never been accused of any impropriety in his USCF, scholastic, or any other real-life matches.
Just a regular chess kid who's working hard to be a better player. :-)
I'm confident it will all work out just fine. Thanks again everyone!
Chris
I'd say forget it now. The cheat detection must be at a level beyond the play of an 11 year old.
He's a kid, dont make him feel worse than he does already, its a good lesson for him.
There are lots of >2000 11 year olds
Ok, well if that is the case, his father should point that out.
I'd say forget it now. The cheat detection must be at a level beyond the play of an 11 year old.
He's a kid, dont make him feel worse than he does already, its a good lesson for him.
There are lots of >2000 11 year olds
There is a 11 year old IM..
The diamond level account we opened for our son (11 years old) as a birthday gift has been disabled without any notice or indication as to the reason. A couple of hours ago he was playing, and now his account appears to be locked. No notice, no reason given.
He LOVES chess, plays every day, and this has been a wonderful learning tool for him. I understand that this account could be disabled for cheating or other violations but we know that isn't the case ... he's just a kid who loves chess.
Has this happened to others? I've opened a support ticket but still am amazed that this could happen without any warning. Any advice from other parents?
Thanks and regards,
Chris