Ungentlemanly conduct

There have been about four occasions in the last month when I have managed to engineer a winning position, only for my opponent to sit there, unmoving, as the remaining minutes slowly tick away to zero. In all cases they have had good connections, and at the end of the game the message "XXX may have violated our Fair Play policy - it has been noted and they may have their account restricted" has appeared.

I assume that this is some sort of a dummy-spit or vindictive time-wasting, but interestingly enough it seems to be very new new behaviour on Chess.com - I can't recall anyone doing that is the past three years.

Has anyone else noticed this recent trend? And do the miscreants get a bollocking from Retguvvie?

yeah it has happened sometimes, it just shows their egos are too fragile to just resign and say 'good game'

"bollocking" is a term for a stern reprimand...

The timed games are a mystery to me. I have only one working hand so I don't enjoy speed games. A game that has long time left and poor position should be a win for the stronger position.

for a dude with the the name choke-the-chook, it's odd that you're bothered by "ungentlemanly conduct".

and as far as letting the timer run off, this isn't a recent treand mate.  as long as there have been clocks in chess people have been wasting time.  you're new to the game then?  thicker skin might help you. (especially if you're gonna be choking your chook a lot)

I want chess.com to have an option for choosing to avoid players with bad reputation, not just for the above mentioned, but also for rudeness and general bad behavior. I ask for a checkbox under account settings for this option. Thanks!

It should be a peace of cake right? None of the programmers have anything else to do, and things like 'bad'; 'reputation', 'rudeness', and 'general bad behavior' are as well defined and amenable to objective categorization as the laws of physics as they were at one time understood using classical mechanics modeling. :)

yea that's annoying when ur opponent just suddenly "disconnects" when they r losing...u could always go on youtube to wait it out lol

Blocking works :) Then you can live your life here in peace..or should I say.. in "pieces". 

I was hoping Chess.com would use their database (or gather information) of 'bad' players so encounters with them are minimized. Blocking is a viable option for opponents you've played before, however, I don't want to have ANY encounters with those kinds/types of opponents with 'bad reputation'.

Recap: I am suggesting a checkbox option to prevent starting games with undecent/bad reputation opponents.

(This way we can have 'flamers' playing against 'waiters', for example... and the rest of us would get along just fine.) =]

Easy (and only) solution:  stop playing.

If you're so delicate, you might also consider unplugging your phone and never leaving your house again so you don't have to encounter anything you find unpleasant.

And if you want to increase the chances of having enough chess.com staff members to try to program your request, get a paid subscription.

Stop playing is kinda extreme, perhaps only playing with friends is slightly less severe. He could start adding good people as friends (to build up his friend list) and then just challenge them when he wants to play

I don't blunder, I bollock it up. 

OP, don't let it bother you. My current pet hate is when other players refuse to accept draw offers despite it clearly being so. I got so irrate with one chap, I forgot my move order and actually bollocked up my endgame gifting him the tempo and therefore win. My own fauly, but it's an ungentlemanly dubious tactic if you ask me. Nevermind!

Thanks for the comments, RetGuvvie98, and apologies for presuming an enforcer role for you - your contributions to the Tactics Trainer are insightful and patient, but you clearly don't suffer fools either, and I could just see you having a quiet word with the anti-social element.

Good pick-up (if rather aggressively put) from Ilikeflags regarding my name. All I can say in my defence is that that's what happens when you ask for suggestions from your 17 year old son without bothering to consider the alternative meanings. I'm actually trying to have it changed, but my first choices have already been taken. 

Excellent suggestion, RetGuvvie98. I shall implement this morning.

This is the reason I only play 10 minute time controls. That is enough time to think about my moves a bit, but not so much time that I'm stuck waiting if my opponent is rude. I could also play 10/5. Or maybe 5/10 would be good.

Yeah, a 10 minute game with 40 moves is 15 seconds per move. So 5/10 would be even more time than that, but get around the waiters. I think I solved the problem. I'll go try it out.

It is done often by members with free memberships; what does it hurt them.  They can always signup under a new name.  I have had it happen often and always by does that don't support the site with a membership.