For the love of God, Do something about timeout abuse!

Ok, so we have all played with the guy who disconnects as soon as his hanging queen gets taken, and makes you sit and wait for the abandoned win.

But I just played a jerk who disconnected and reconnected THREE times over a period of seven minutes (out of ten) and never made a move. If I could reach through the internet and throttle him, I would.

Chess.com, YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THESE PEOPLE! A rating system, a per move time limit, or something!

Flama you did this in one of our games lol

What a coincidence - I was just thinking the same thing about you. 

No no no. I have never, EVER deliberately disconnected, or stalled. Ever. I'm here to play chess, and I take my losses like a man. I think a cursory review of my loses, both live and online, shows that I resign when appropriate.

Now, my connection is spotty once in a while, depending on god knows what. But I always come back and finish. I do not have a single loss by abandonment. Hell, I'd be stunned if I have more than three losses on time in live chess out of somewhere like a thousand games.

it's been suggested that each player have a "sportsmanship rating", or something like that. 

I know. I'm all for it. I understand staff doesn't want to be full time sportsmanship referees, but I think they should implement the rating system. Let users filter seeks to weed out people with bad ratings.

why do you think the guy that disconnected and reconnected 3 times in one game did it in purpose?  Why would he reconnect?  Maybe his anti-virus software updated itself, maybe his wireless internet got cut off by his wireless phone (mine does), maybe any number of things.  Did you win?

Eventually yes. And I know that it is possible for disconnects to happen. But his connection seemed to be running fine before I took his queen, a rook, and a bishop, and lost nothing in return.

And it isn't just this issue. We all run into the abusive chat guy. It would be nice to be able to avoid poor sports.

I think this is something we just have to live with when playing online. People are at work, have bad connections - or might just have to log off so you do not hear all the bad words they say when you take their queen....

My self I do not have any timeouts, but we just have to respect that some people do get them. If they get a lot they will not be able to join tournaments, that will be their loss.

Take a coffee and enjoy another game while waiting for the strange once! (But I didn't understand what God's love had to do with this... does he have lots of timeouts?)

abusive chat guy is a different issue.  And I do think if the guy reconnected twice in the game that the disconnects happening after the material lose was a coincidence.  I don't see why he'd reconnect (or how actually, when I've gotten disconnected from a game it just reconnects me to it automatically).

"If I could reach through the internet and throttle him, I would."

Fine sentiments, indeed. If only I get get my tiny pincers through the connection... oooh! they'd get a tiny pinch.

I was using a different site to play live chess, and the disconects were much worse, I had 2 or 3 in about half a dozen games.

The "other" chess servers out there  allow you to setup matches with disconnect-and-you-lose! clauses and minimum ping responses. That ways, you remove reasonable doubt (poor / erratic internet connections)  and can be sure you're truly dealing with a timeout-jerk.

Though sitting on a move is harder to police online.  In OTB tournaments, the TD can declare a result if somebody's stalling out of spite.

we are planning to institute sportsmanship feedback soon.

Awesome. Thanks! I, as always, appreciate the way the staff keeps making the site better!

ive been disconnected, so many times playing live chess that i only play online now. but when i do get a disconnect i lose imediatly!

 -_-

How are you progressing with the sportmanship feedback

I think there is a simple tech solution to this. At the end of each game give the winning player the opportunity to rate their opponent for sportsmanship. This is because it's usually the player that loses that gets abusive or runs down the clock. Unless you never lose a game you'd have a star rating out of five and in brackets would show how many ratings have been cast. e.g. 3.5/5 (256 ratings). You would see this rating at the point of deciding whether to accept a challenge and could set a preference for whether you want to play only against players of a rating of 'x' and above. Come on chess.com techies. This isn't a difficult piece of functionality to write.

The sportsmanship feedback idea is good (I think playchess uses something like that, though I'm not sure), but it's probably open to abuse as well.  When all is said and done, the only way to really address this issue is to ignore or, better, mock, the abusers. I've occasionally been recording my blitz games here and have captured some "smack" here and there, perhaps others that have done the same could band together and we could create a video montage featuring the rudest chess.com players?  Perhaps set it to music as well. :)