How to fix the bad "fair play" policies.

It's no secret that Chess.com's attempt at fair play policy is anything BUT fair. The complaints about the poor implementation is everywhere.in these forums, and I have to imagine fill the support tickets with confused and angry customers.

I'm not going to get into all the problems and poor judgement excersized by chess.com in the unfair play policies. Instead, I am going to suggest a USEFUL and fair policy that should achieve the goals of punishing ACTUAL abusers, while protecting e interests of the game.

First, the problems of live online chess:

1) Disconnections. Actual disconnections are fairly rare, but hey do happen.

FAIR PLAY ISSUE: abusers just disconnect in lost positions instead of resigning.

2) the rules of chess allow one to take AS MUCH TIME AS NEEDED to consider a move, within the limits of the total chess clock time.

FAIR PLAY ISSUE: Abusers will just stall in a lost position without resigning.

Best solution:

Chess.com A

READY has a chess engine for analysis. So use that for. Adjudication purposes.

If someone disconnects, and is behind by 3 or more points, automatically adjudicate a win for the remaining player.

At the same time, if someone is equal or ahead, but taking time to consider the position then DO NOT force a forfeit, as you are now unfairly doing.

Get it?

If you are going to force forfeits or abandonments, then you should AT

LEAST consider the position and balance of power.

It should be OBVIOUS that people that disconnect or stop responding with a point value of -3 or less are being abusive. But people that may be taking time to consider in a stronger position are NOT.

YET THE CURRENT CHESS.COM policy penalizes people in strong positions taking time to consider,mand does NOTHING to stop abusers.

Abusers just create new accounts and keep on a using. Don't you get it?!!

Similarly, if an opponent has ONLY one move, that move should be automatically FORCED.

IF ONLY ONE LEGAL MOVE REMAINS, there should be no delay, the single legal move should benforced.

FINALLY:

If player A is taking too long to move, player B should have the option to send an alert to player A every minute. If player A fails to respond to three consecutive queries, THEN and only then, player B can force N abandonment.

It should NEVER be up to the SERVER without some player input.

All for now.,

You know... I've taken a look at your profile, seen the threads you create and I wonder, why are you still here?  It's obvious you have angruu management issues with this site, yet you still continue to play here despite that.  Why?  Just rage quit and save me all the trouble of reading your whiny ranting.

Well, I can't say how I really feel about him, can I?  That contains many naughty words.

Speak for yourself. I like reading threads like this one.

   "Similarly, if an opponent has ONLY one move, that move should be automatically FORCED."           No opponent has ONLY 1 move.  They have the physical move on the board, and a 2nd option to resign at any time. 

wanmokewan: ad-hominem fallacy.

I do not need to look at the OP's profile to know that this topic deserves attention and improvement by the chess.com team.

@Macer75 I've edited my post to say "me" instead of "us" :P

@Artfultheory The OP openly says chess.com is run by idiots.  Looking at his suggestions, those who disconnect have 2 minutes to reconnect before the game is adjudicated with a loss to the person who disconnected.  Yes, it's a pain, but you were already committing that time to the game, so you're getting a win anyway.  As far as stalling in a losing position, that's within the rules of chess.  It could happen in a tournament.  The person doing so would obviously be very rude and probably be thrown out of the tournament, but they could do it. 

Edit: As for taking too long on a move and the server declaring the game abandoned, how long does that actually take?  I've never seen it happen.

I agree that the current fair play algorithm has both false positives and false negatives. It doesn't do enough to stop this annoying practice, when it's so easy, as a human, to see when a person has intentionally abandoned losing games.

My suggestion is, leave it to the community to identify this. Put games to votes. When games are abandoned, they are surely already flagged as-such in your records. Add one additional state to this field, or an additional value: A peer reviewed "poor sportsmanship" flag.

It is probably often entertaining to view the end games for such abandoned games. Offer the community the opportunity to review this category of games and rule on them. When an individual player receives a specific number/percentage of downvotes, take a more severe action than you are currently comfortable automating with the current "fair play" alorithm.

wanmokewan: "The person doing so would obviously be very rude and probably be thrown out of the tournament"

exactly. action should be taken. 

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/premium_members/live-chess-web-defectssuggestions

How do you deal with abuse of the feature?

wanmokewan: please explain the scenario you imagine; how does abuse of a statistically valid sample occur?

Can I ask for clarification on what you mean by "peer" review?  Give me an example.

Edit: Just read your edited post.  And I need to eat dinner.  I'll be back.

Why stop at forcing the last move? Why not force the last 20 moves, because a 800 rated player will see the same line as a 2500 player, or how about "calling in a friend" aka Stockfish which automatically plays out the situation? I think your ideas are good but you're not seeing the full potential of your great ideas.

wanmokewan: to clarify, my suggestion assumed that community members are only permitted to rule on the games randomly offered to them.

perhaps they are further offered a certain maximum number of games (e.g. 1) belonging to any specific "abandoner". it is easy to see how this, in conjunction with other metrics (e.g. quantity/ratio of total downvotes) could yield a highly reliable result.

wanmokewan: regarding my edited post, I believe it says the same thing as it originally did, merely clarified to ensure you understood my question is sincere, rather than an attempt to argue.

So instead of addressing his argument you attack his character. You would make a great politician!

Say you and I play a game.  I lose, and you decline my rematch.  To get back at you I click that our game was you being a poor sport, if I'm understanding what you're proposing.

@Rogue_King I admit I was jaded by his other threads and even his blog post "chess.com is run by idiots".  His other threads got thrown in Off-Topic as well. 

wanmokewan:

1: how would you mark a game as abandoned for poor sportsmanship that was not abandoned at all, but actually won?
2: why would a person be allowed to pick specific games or players to vote on?
3: why would a member ever be allowed to vote on a game or recent player they had played? 

Your "slippery slope" argument is fallacious, in that it demonstrates flaws that need never exist in the original suggestion.

I'm not suggesting that having the computer play forced moves is a good thing, but your rebuttal is silly.