Annoying Player

I just played a game.  We got through the opening and the guy just stops moving, 15 seconds into my game.  Then he disappears.  Awhile later, he shows up again, and then disconnects.   I had to wait 8 minutes or so to so as not to lose for aborting or abandoning the game in case the guy returned and moved.

Is that a scam?  Do they reset some timer by disconnected and returning?  Why did it go so long without him moving?

I often see the message that people may have their accounts restricted, but how often does it happen?  Sometimes people make mistakes, forget about a game or start something and then get distracted, but I get the feeling this guy was trying to mess with me and the system.

Very frustrating and *HUGE* waste of time.  Glad it doesn't happen too much or I'll stop subscribing.

I have never had this issue

if he is trying to mess with you, I'll say it worked.

Well to sit around for 8 minutes for no good reason.

I play chess for the challenge not to just sit around being jerked around like that. There really needs to be some mechanism in place to limit that.  I am frequently left hanging 4-5 minutes by people who just give up and run away, but 8 minutes is a pretty damned long time to be on hold.

A win is a win, while waiting read a book etc. 

I don't come to chess.com to read books.  I come here to play chess and party my damned fool head off.  No but seriously, while books might help me play better, nothing will help me get enough sleep consistently to make it matter. 

I have to think there's some way of sniffing out the jerks who play games with disconnect to waste people's time.  What's the deflection about anyway?  You think there's no room for improvement?  I mean have you really thought about it, or you just like protect the status quo?  You think this is the best tradeoff achievable?

I'm not sure how you can avoid them altogether but the best thing I can think of to do when you do run into them is to post a note on their profile warning others and then block them so you don't have to deal with them again.

Suggest not always assume bad intentions. Maybe the guy had trouble with his internet connection and was much more frustrated than you.

AGREED. I looked over your stats and you have played several thousand games here, so why not just forget about one annoying opponent if the vast majority have not been annoying or irritating?

What nation was this person from? Many 3rd-world nations have bad connections.

yeah this does possibly sound like a case of a bad connection. It's usually pretty obvious when someone disconnects or times out out of spite.

Like what Spielkab said, we got no ideas wht was the opponent intention is. Enjoy the win. If his intention is to be bad then block that person and don't play him again. lastly if you cannot wait for the game to finish, maybe chess isn't for you.

I don't think its polite to call countries "Third World" these days.  The proper term is "Developmentally Handicapped/Retarded Nations" I think.

One time I lost a game because we had some lightning storms, and our power briefly cut out. However, I made a point of posting a note apologising for the disconnection later on that persons home page. If you are disconnected by accident, I think on principle you should apologise/explain later.

Much more PC. I'm sure it's appreciated.

Thanks for reminding us that bigotry and ignorance still thrive in some quarters.

I have a poor connection, it is no advantage. I can only play 30 minute games live, when I get disconnected the chess board goes blank, which is torture. You get frustrated if your opponent wastes a few minutes of your life, I am going MENTAL on the other end. Some people wait for the disconnect to make there move. I've lost won games on time. Its a combo of crap computer and poor signal in the area, I'm not a millionaire so a new computer is out of the question and I can't do much about the signal in the area (bar moving which I don't fancy).

Believe me I know how it wrecks the head, but I wanna play chess. I'm not sure what advantage is to be gained from disconnecting, but I havn't gotten any.

Mike_Akin aka annoying bastard

I find the title of this thread over the top. You cannot accuse your opponent of anything here. He did not insult you. He does not deserve to be called this. I have normally no technical issues, but have also had a couple of games where for technical reasons I got into a similar situation. It can also not be excluded that he had to deal with something in real life.

+1

This happened to me a lot of times. One time a guy made me wait almost 20 minutes. The game wasn't declared abandoned. We had just started the game but he had only 10 minutes on the clock. And he moved AFTER 20 MINUTES.

They probably had to use the restroom.