A List of the Stupid Things About Chess.com Live

I play TONS of live speed chess on this site. Although I can't afford to be a member, I would like some discussion about a few things.

Now before I get several people posting about how stupid speed chess is, or how it doesn't require any intelligence, or whatever other arguments I seem to see a lot of around speed chess, I want to clarify that this isn't the thread. This is simply about making the game better for everyone and that includes speed chess players.

1. Why on earth would can you resign 4-5 moves into the game without losing points??? This feature is RIDICULOUS in 1 minute chess. I've seen people that try to ninja their opponent's queen in the first couple of moves and literally resign and play someone new if it doesn't work. It's absurd and it has to be changed.

2. The option to play as only white or only black keeps dissappearing and reappearing. At the moment it isn't there, but I thought for sure I saw it recently. I hate this option because I set mine to random and matches me to people who set theirs as white.

3. Similar to #2, people keep aborting all of their games as black and only play as white. I don't like the idea of playing black or white more than ~50% of the time and I don't see why I should be forced to play more black because of them. I'm not sure if solving this problem would be practical or not, the only idea I have is requiring each person to alternately play one game as black and one game as white.

4. This one really isn't as much of a problem, but is the disable chat button really necessary? If you don't like what someone is saying, why not just switch to main chat instead? It agitates me that people are really so concerned about what I might type that they disable chat every time they go into a match with me.

Thanks for reading. If you have any comments or additional problems with live chess, post it here.

Also, PLEASE BRING FISCHER RANDOM TO LIVE CHESS.

may b u r right!! anothr thing is in live chess ,imagine we r playing an about to win game and if there is a powercut or net disconnection,chess.com concludes us as losers no mattr how much lead we r in ......Ive lost nearly half a dozen games coz of poor net connection !!!!

Are you sure you're not merely seeing this effect? You can specify colour when you challenge a specific person - but not when you create an open challenge.

First let me say that I agree with some of what you said, but I'm sorry I've got to call BS

On this this "can't afford" stuff.  You can buy a membership for as little as $2.49/month.   If you can't afford that, how can you afford a computer, or the electricity to use it.  Or for that matter what the hell are you doing killing time on a chess website.  Go get some sort of job where you can EARN 10 CENTS/DAY so that you can afford a membership. 

Okay, so I've sounded off.  I don't really care if you're a premimum member or not, but this idea that there's anyone (not living in a third world country) who can't AFFORD IT IS JUST KIND OF DOPEY.

I'm not one to disable chat, but I can understand that after enough bad experiences one would be inclined to automatically do so ....because, unexpectedly I was insulted during live chess (after it was obvious that I gained advantage).  Your opponent is picked so fast you can be paired with someone so young or rude ... that they insult you for no reason and type inappropriate things.. I have a thick skin but was annoyed so ... like I said, I understand if someone would just prevent the opponent from bothering to behave immaturely in chat.  just saying... you'll live with chat disabled, and the person who disabled the chat is just taking percaution, probably due to past abuse.  Doesn't hurt, helps to focus on the actual game.. make friends later (or elsewhere).

poly .. some people can't afford it.  just get over it. 

maybe they play chess from the public library or something else .. don't bother to assume their reason.  Maybe they've mucked up their credit score and can't get a credit card ...... who knows, maybe their spare 10 dollars a month is going to a child in Africa or South America or whatever and they can't give it to chess.com or any other website.  sheesh.  that wasn't the point.  the point was "no, I'm not a paid member .. but..." dot dot dot. duh duh duh.

(this isn't coming from me because I'm not a paid member, I can actually afford to throw the money for the membership every month, fact is, I just don't like chess enough to invest that money in the site, I probably wouldn't use the extra features even if they were free... so .. yeah... It is just in defense over someone being called on "BS" that they may not be bs-ing about. I'd like to give the person who wrote this blog the benefit of the doubt, and poly it isn't anything against you, I just hope you can open your mind a bit to people who aren't willing to invest in a monthyly membership of chess.com if they can or can not afford it.)

that ain't stupid

Okay, if you really want to know my life story. My mom is about to send me to a very expensive college and I wouldn't ask for something I don't need like a membership to this site.

then, if you don't need it, why are you wasting time here ?

time is money too.  and yours would be better spent studying some course material to give your Mom a better return on her investment - your college expenses - as opposed to piddling around, wasting time and energy on something you don't even want to spend 10 cents a day on.

People need to stop harrassing this guy because I wouldnt bother my mom into paying for a membership if my mom were saving money, making barely ends meat, for me to go to college.  Also, he never said he didn't want to spend 10 cents a day to get a membership, but rather he wasnt in the position to spend the money.  Who knows?  He may be a in a very financial tight situtation right now and would rather contribute that money he could use for a yearly membership towards other things like books.   

Courtesy abort has been around in chess for a long time. It does make some sense in LiveChess because it is quite easy to accept the wrong seek as the lists are changing dynamically quite quickly.

Loomis reinforces your point that color-choice-by-quick-resignation is wrong and should be changed. (Also being discussed here ... unecessary-aborting-in-live-chess).

Well, actually we now DO know the reasons why he can't "afford" it.  The guy's going to an "expensive" college and he doesn't want to trouble his mom for $2.49/month.  That's just weak.  I don't care if he's a paid member or not.  I'm just saying that unless there's a real reason, like physical disability or mental handicap  there's no good reason I can think of for not being able to scrape together a couple of bucks A MONTH, unless, AS HE SAYS,  you just don't really want to do it.   I feel completely vindicated in my opinion. 

Btw the fact that he's not a paying member has ZERO relevence to the actual point of the thread and maybe after he's been in college for a while he'll figure out how to leave pointless information out of his "thesis statement".

maybe he just wants to play chess every so often like me, and isn't as dedicated, time included, to spend as much time on chess as you super diamond members.  give the kid a break, it really can't be so serious, I mean the site is great, and it is good that it gives everyone a chance to play

As a fellow speed-chess devotee (back off haters ;-) . . . I think the entire site here is GREAT and especially the speed chess setup. The occurrence of server drops is VERY minimal and it happens to us all equally. The choosing of black or white has been fixed so that is a NON-issue. The ability to quit after three full moves and not lose points is abused by VERY few people overall. To disable chat is an option given to us as players. Sometimes even the visual display of harmless chatting type is distracting in a game that is often decided by tenths of a second. It's nice to have that option. Additionally, I have had some great friendly chats with people from all over this great world in between games. Thanks for listening!

Hahaha. This is poly's reasoning:

1) Site allows members to either play free for limited privileges, or pay in increasing amounts relative to the amount of privileges you get.

2) Poly likes chess a lot and decides to pay for extra privileges.

3) OP puts other stuff in much higher priority and thinks his money would be better served elsewhere.

4) Poly and OP disagree.

5) Therefore OP is wrong.

You can "feel completely vindicated" in your opinion all you want, but posting poorly-thought-out and heated comments will cause dissenting majority opinions.

seriously, some of you seem to have your priorities a bit "out of whack".  when you are going to college, focus on getting the best return for the money invested to achieve your potential in that endeavor and stop frittering your valuable time and your parent's money on chess and other activities not related to achieving high grades and optimum learning.  If you are struggling (financially) to make ends meet and cannot afford less than 10 cents a day for a hobby  (which is in doubt if your parents can afford an expensive college, but that is another subject), then you are truly in need of focusing on your studies to the exclusion of all else, including posting in this forum.

with all due respect to those who plead "this site is too expensive"....

regards.

I would in no way say that we have our priorities "out of whack". College before chess. Some people don't even want/care about the extra stuff that comes along with membership, because it's not worth the money. Not saying they can't afford it- just that they don't want it. Personally, I only play here a couple times a month, so it's not worth it to me to get it, and others may have other reasons, including that you just made you mother pay a lot of money for college, so you'd feel bad about asking for more money, especially for something that wasn't all that necassary.

I'd also like to point out that poly is a successful troll- we're discussing something way beside the point of the thread.

just to let you know, OP, that your comments have been read by staff. in this case, i don't think they represent any problems that actually need fixing. colors are evened out over time; if someone tries to ninja your queen and then resign on move 2 after you evade it, at least you only lost 3 seconds of time. it's better than the problems we would face if ratings were affected by 1 and 2 move losses.

and the disable chat definitely allows more people to escape being bothered than it itself bothers people.