New Logic for Auto-pairing and Seek Graph!

Great rule. Great change. I love it. People who refuse to play people rated lower than themselves deserve what they get.

Do they not realize that if EVERYONE did what they did, NO games would ever happen?

It is selfish. People should be willing to play up and down equally. I would have gone even farther. If setting parameters, then + and - numbers should be equal.

But I dont really get it: why is it a problem when people only play higher rated opponents?

1) in this vast pool of tens of 1000s of players, the majority plays both higher and lower rated people. So what if a couple 1000 only play higher rated players?

2) one could only play higher rated players, but that means you'll lose often. And if you win your rating increases. That's the whole point of the rating system... I could only play titled players, but I lose everything and slowly my rating decreases. Maybe I win or draw and gain a couple points to later lose them again. Why is that a problem? The whole rating thing is designed that you will level around your personal strength, regardless of the type of opponents you play.

@ElKitch - that's a little like saying "there are 100,000 people at disneyland today. who cares if 1,000 of them cut in front of the lines all the time?" or "100,000 people obey the traffic rules, who cares if 1,000 of them don't?"

sure, it's not such a big deal. it's only online chess. but it's also a community, and one where good behavior should be rewarded. sometimes you play white, sometimes you play black. sometimes you play up, sometimes you play down. it's the price you pay for participating in the system along with everyone else. 

and you CAN play up only if you want. do custom challenges, but then you will wait longer until someone manually accepts the seek. or challenge higher rated friends directly. but if you want to play in the public pool, you play the same way as everyone else. 

Btw not much is lost for me. Just occasionally I've set my searchparamters to higher rated players. I did it when I had the feeling that I had progressed in the passed time and that I was ready for bigger fishes.

The getting matched with equal type players (quitters-quitters and goodconnection-goodconnection) is totally cool. I think it would be good to mention that when people quit their games:

Your play was recorded as unfair play. If this happens to often you will get paired with quitters as well. 

But cutting in front in line hurts people (those who have to wait longer).
I dont really see how people who "only play higher rated people" hurt others?

I do understand why it would hurt others when everyone (or most) play this way. Then no-one gets matched up anymore. But since this kind of players only make up a small percentage I dont see what problem it gives.

Thoughtexperiment: there are 10 players, 1 of them only plays higher rated players. Would this hurt the group? How and why?

because it increases the wait time for them to be matched with an opponent. take the example further and further and you will see how. if 10% of users will ONLY play up, then that increases wait times, and also makes it so that other users will more often play DOWN. imagine if 50% of users only play up. now that means that the other players will take longer to match, and many users will have to play down a LOT more. now imagine that 100% of people only play up. now nobody plays at all. 

Deep, I play 3-2 and this is causing me major issues. The matches take forever. Is there a way to alleviate this?

I meant the 'matching' takes forever.

3|2 is a new time control for us. not a lot of people are using it. it should become more popular when it works its way into our mobile apps. 

I hope so. When will the mobile apps get their update?

5/2 is way too fast for me.  

The problem with 15/10 is you get a winning position out of the opening and your opponent goes and makes a sandwich.  Meanwhile you need to sit there and wait to see if he moves.    

Now maybe he is still thinking of a way out.  I have no right to complain since I chose the bad time control.  I just wish there were some better default time controls that really took advantage of the beauty of time increments.

2/12 is a great time control that keeps the game moving but allows people some time to think for their moves.   I hope chess.com will consider adding it to the standard time controls.  

2/12 is popular at icc. before I left icc and came here, it was my time control of choice

i am now a 1 0 bullet player, and looking for a 12-step program to lead me awy from my horrible addiction. Too old for this, but cannot help myself. I am USCF 1650, turn-based chess.com 1700 plus, but love my bullet. Like heroin. and i SUCK at it, as you can see in my rating.

Oddly, my USCF quick rating is 1800. I KILL OTB in G/30, relative to my slow games. just not online. Go figure!

Is there a way to check how many games a player aborts?

Ya to be honest I havent had to sit there for 20 mins staring at a position where i am 1 move from checkmate in ages. At the start i didnt really like the change but now i can see that it is actually a lot better to play. I just wish that the odd time when i do want to play up it didnt take so long to match but then again you cant have everything.

Even playing at the custom setting of 2/12 I seem to be getting games considerably quicker than before the change.  Maybe because I rarely abort games and I don't care what the rating of my oppenent is.  

Yes, that would be great. Any idea when that might happen?

I've just realised (since I'm new to live chess), that it still pairs you based on +-200 rating points. Is that supposed to be the case?

yes, it's supposed to be faster now.

Apparently there is no Abort button, or "automatic game aborted" after about 15 seconds, or so.

Great.  So you're forced to play stalkers, or forfeit the game.  Delightful. 

The Supreme Court says there is.