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Forced (3 day) matches - No way to exit without resigning???

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ChessScimitar

It's possible I've missed something here, my apologies if the solution is obvious.

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FIRSTLY, A THANK YOU

I have quickly began to really enjoy Chess.com and I find the UX generally excellent, (which is unusual in this day and age of crappy software). Thank you to the Chess.com team, for reintroducing me in such a dynamic way to the game of chess that I enjoyed so much in high school (that was more years ago than I'm willing to admit). Well done Chess.com team on creating a great community and a great piece of software.

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ISSUE

From what I can tell, because I recently joined a club on Chess.com, suddenly I am being forced to play "Daily" (3 days per move) matches that I didn't request. There also appears to be no way to exit these matches without resigning or every time going into the game and requesting a draw, that the opponent doesn't always accept, and so forth. I also get multiple messages / emails per match. All aspects here are super annoying.

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QUESTIONS

Am I missing something here? Chess.com website / app UX is typically excellent, but this one just baffles me a little.

  • Did I miss some announcement when I joined the club? It seems odd that I can "accidently" enroll in something that forces matches, and that is as annoying as this.
  • Did I accidently turn on some setting? Can I just turn off a setting to stop these forced matches?
  • Do I just leave the club? Will this issue happen with all clubs I join?
  • Basically it's not clear how I should deal with this - Advice welcome.

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JUST SHOWING SOME LOVE

I'm loving Chess.com, so the following is just me saying, "Hey guys, as a new guy to the platform here are some UX that might need a little attention?" This is me just showing my love (lol), I hope that's ok.

  1. So, unless I've missed something here, I think there is a flaw with the forced matches, etc. thing (as outlined above) - Might be worth fixing? It's odd that clubs can just force games on you.
  2. On the mobile app I am often getting the "match started" notification. When there is no active match happening (and this started happening well before I joined this recent club). So this is a little buggy and annoying, again might be worth addressing.
  3. I also noticed the notifications are a bit wonky. Like a lot of people I like to keep my notifications clear, and I'd suggest that in general the notification function and it's various journeys are messy at best. Happy to go into a little detail if you like.
  4. Does Chess.com want us to report individuals who instead of resigning, just leave the game, leaving the other player just sitting there waiting for the game to time out?
  5. Lastly, I think there's an opportunity to make the initial orientation to the platform a lot easier, and to on-board newbies in a way that I think would significantly increase Chess.com's "sticky rate" (i.e. how many new signups hang around long term, and spend money). Yeah, I know you've already got a massive user base, and probably the largest by far in your sector, but long term it wouldn't hurt to be even better, right?

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Anyway, thanks for listening to me in this last section, let me know if you'd like to discuss further. When I do find that rare piece of software that isn't a trainwreck, I like to give back a little, is all.

Martin_Stahl

If you joined a Daily match in a club and didn't withdraw before it started, you'll have to play or resign.

There's nothing that can force you into a match.

ChessScimitar

I didn't join any daily matches - And I wouldn't, as I don't have the time for those kinds of matches.
Anyway, I figured out which club had me in daily matches, which event, and how to remove myself from it. It's quite a few clicks to get there, so I certainly didn't accidently enroll.