Feature suggestion - opponent by nationality

But I just don't want to play with them.

Your only choice is to play, abort, or directly challenge members. If you abort too often, it's play or resign.

The site isn't going to offer a way to block self reported or actual countries.

Rating is good at predicting future results. If your opponent is rated about the same as you, then it's a coin flip. It doesn't matter how much they've studied chess or where they live, so this topic makes no sense (other than a thinly veiled racist trolling attempt).

Then you're an idiot 🤷

So take your pick.

Just because people have doubted me and raised points that there is no disparity between nationalities, I went through all of my recent games and here you can clearly see that Indonesian players are better than everybody else. I don't know if it's because they are cheating or what, but I don't want to play them any more. Also for those saying people can lie about their flag, yes it's true but most people don't. So why do I always lose to Indonesian players? I don't really care, I just want to avoid playing them. Because for all I know chess is a national school subject in Indonesia, or they all share cheating software, but I know I don't want to play with them (at least online).

Stop acting like a 5 years old. If you play chess online you will play against players from all nations. If seeing that a player is from a certain country has a psychological effect on you, you may like to try the focus mode https://support.chess.com/article/859-what-is-focus-mode-how-do-i-turn-it-on

I don't think it's psychological, because you will see in my OP that I wrongly accused Indian players of being like this, but from my statistical analysis actually I do win games against Indian players. The problem for all of this is Indonesia. Either there is prolific cheating from this country, or I don't know what, but every time I play someone from Indonesia they destroy me, in a way that is not matching with the other players of my rating.

Your last 7 games against players with an Indonesian flag have all been higher rated than you... lol.

(sometimes not by much, but it's funny considering you're complaining about poor results)

That's too small of a sample size. Even if Indonesians are disproportionately better at chess than the rest of the world, a 1400 from Indonesia is just as strong as a 1400 from anywhere else. May I ask how you got this data, I don't see a way on chess.com to get my stats based on the country of my opponents.

I counted it manually. Logic would say you should be correct, but the stats prove otherwise. 

    Kind of makes one wonder: why have the flags at all? Why not have an icon for your religion or your favorite color? That would be just as inappropriate.

   Chess.com asks for "no religious or political debate". But they encourage that debate by allowing members to display a political symbol, namely the flag of a country.

Your sample size is tiny. Go play a few thousand games first and then come back.

Looks like you should stay away from the Uruguayans too. Why not just eliminate all the flags that win? Honestly, the only reason I look at the flags (yes, I know they may not be truly representative of the players home) is because it’s one of things that first attracted me to CC. Playing people all over the world is enjoyable to me. Just think how many members are from another world but CC doesn’t have their flag available. Being of higher intelligence, maybe they all choose to play under the Indonesian flag.

Sample size makes the statistics provided less than useful.

Here are my results (on blitz where I have the most games)

My stats don't indicate that Indonesian players that I've faced are anything out of the norm. Though I apparently do poorly against Russian players.

Most of my games are played in tournaments/arenas, which has some impact, but I wouldn't expect that to be significant.

This is certainly very interesting. Maybe Indonesians dominate at the lower rating levels? I haven't heard of many professional Indo players, but it seems like their average level is certainly good enough to beat a 1400 with ease, every time.

When you play someone near your rating, it's a coin flip. If the numbers are enormous (in coins or evenly rated chess games) then it will go to 50%. When the numbers are not enormous you can have one sided results.

Flip a coin for 10 minutes without stopping and record your results... you might be surprised that it's quite easy to get 6 in a row. Depending on how fast you flip, you're likely to get over 10 in a row at some point in those 10 minutes.

Maybe just play the Pina Colada song backwards six-hundred and sixty-six times and all your losses turn into wins.

A flag of a country isn't political.

    Well, I suppose you can make that argument. But if that were the case, why are we having this discussion right now?

    Some people, whether rightly or wrongly, have issues with the politics of a given nation. And as we can see, over and over again, some members post comments about those politics. From what I've seen, as often, as not these discussions degenerate into angry arguments replete with loads of expletives and other nasty stuff.

   And what is a flag doing there in the first place? As you yourself pointed out, a member can put any old flag next to their name. So it's meaningless. What does a flag have to do with chess, anyway?

    So why give them the opportunity to get offended in the first place? Let's not be naive about this. Some people will read into that symbol all sorts of nefarious ideas. Admittedly, folks who have problems with the image of a flag may not be the brightest people in the world. But there's no requirement for Chess.com members to not be stupid (if there were, I'd have been thrown out years ago). All I'm saying is: this website could maybe avoid a lot of problems and controversy by simply removing the flag icon field. If a member prefers showing a flag, they could use it as their picture.

    I agree with all that. I still don't see what a flag has to do with chess.

      BTW, I wonder why this thread hasn't been locked yet. Isn't this discussion too political? Maybe the mods are on coffee break or something......