Feature suggestion - opponent by nationality

Hi there, I for one am fed up of getting absolutely destroyed by people from third world countries who have nothing else to do but practice chess all day. I would like to only play people from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia etc.

Is it possible that we can search opponents by nationality? Or, alternatively, can we have a feature to not play opponents from India, Indonesia, Malaysia etc?

You can always challenge individual friends to a game and make your decision based on nationality.

However there are plenty of strong players in those whitelisted countries you mention as well and your rating or winrate is not going to significantly change as a result of choosing opponents on nationality.

That's so racist and elitist, you should be banned for promoting hate.

The site isn't going to add filters based on self-chosen or actual nationality.

You need a crutch to have a chance at equal outcome when faced with competition from the third world? Sounds reasonable. I'm with you buddy.

No he is actually claiming disability benefits.

Please reconsider. Poor Patrick needs all the help he can possibly get and more. Perhaps also give him an extra knight in the middle of a game one in a while.

You realise the flag icon has zero meaning right?

You can modify the flag to anything. I could be in Japan and put my flag as Germany, it doesn't mean anything.

Please don't accuse me of racism, it is a true fact that somebody whose only physical possession is a chess board and who has played 8hrs a day every day of their childhood is going to obliterate someone from a first world country who has to go to work and owns a TV etc.

If anything I am complimenting these players, I don't stand a chance against them. I'm not insulting anybody.

Yes of course there will be good players from developed countries, but overwhelmingly when I come across a player with an Indian flag I know I'm going to get mercilessly crushed, therefore I don't want to play Indian players any more, that's just my preference.

It would be a good feature to allow players to tick/untick certain flags they want to play, and it doesn't harm anyone to enable this feature.

Ratings describe past performance. If their rating is in your seek range, it doesn't matter how often they've played, their overall strength is within that range if they have sufficient recent games played on site.

People are focussing on the wrong thing here, such a feature would also be useful to find friends in your home country or to play only European members etc.

or you could just resign when playing those people so you can show your weakness right away

You will always be matched with people of your rating. 1400 from UK is the same strength as 1400 from India. In fact, your proposition would lead to rating of people in one country possibly representing different skill level than that same rating of a person from another country. In short, the problem that you are talking about doesn't exist and not only that, but your proposition would create it.

People play chess because they like it. In most of the world people work 8 hours a day, assuming 8 hours of sleep that leaves people with 8 hours a day that they will spend how they like. Some people spend some of that time on chess because that's what they like to do. Playing chess is correlated with being good at math, many mathematicians and engineers play chess in their free time.

But let's be real, there is only 1 reason why anybody would have this opinion. It is because he is butthurt that people from poor countries are better at chess than him. He is a racist who can't stand being outsmarted by poor brown people from India. Maybe he is not a racist, maybe he hates poor people regardless of race and feels superior to them. All of you who read this post know that. His post doesn't make any sense in any other interpretation, x rated player from Europe is the same strength as x rated player from anywhere else on the planet as long as we are talking about chess.com ratings. The only other interpretation of this sentence "Hi there, I for one am fed up of getting absolutely destroyed by people from third world countries who have nothing else to do but practice chess all day" is that he believes that somehow a 1400 rated chess.com player from the third world is stronger than a 1400 chess.com rated player from the first world.

Please show more respect for the op. He has a TV.

You would understand too if you had a TV.

Just got whooped by another Indonesian. All I want to do is not play these players, but if I resign I'll fall foul of the chess.com rules. PLEASE CAN I BLOCK INDIANS AND INDONESIANS

His proposition would make ratings differ from nation to nation. Right now a 1000 chess.com rated player from one country is the same strength as a 1000 chess.com rated player from any other country. His proposition can lead to this no longer being the case.

Isn't the same as if I block these players, though? I usually block Indonesian players after they have wiped the floor with me once. So I will never see them again.

There are countless of Indonesian players, you can only block small percentage of them and thus, it will have no effect on you being paired with Indonesian players in the future. Even if this wasn't true, being able to block players from countries in one click would make it easier to do so and could lead to separating the rating pools between different countries. As it is right now, a 1400 rated Indonesian is just as likely to beat you as a 1400 rated Brittish person.