Must-Read Qualifier Tournament Notice

Welcome to the official GM Blitz Battle Championship Qualifying Tournament Club.

By playing in this event, you are a part of the strongest online tournament ever and a part of chess history. Though only the winner will face Magnus Carlsen on June 23, all of you are competing for the biggest prizes in any single online chess event ever.

Please read the GM Blitz Battle Qualifier announcement for a reminder of the rules and what's at stake.

Because the stakes are so high, let's address how Chess.com will handle any player found to be using illegal assistance and therefore violating our fair-play policies?

In other words, how are we going to deal with cheating?

Everyone in this group, and every member of Chess.com, has already agreed to abide by Chess.com's rules. You did when you signed up! You can also read our fair-play policies here.  

Those legal terms state that anyone we find to be in violation of our rules -- whether for abuse, illegal assistance used in a game, or any other "potentially harmful action" toward another member -- will have his or her account closed, and we are required to provide very little if any explanation.

Chess.com has the most advanced cheat-detection methods in chess. We invest full-time in our systems to stay on the cutting edge.

Furthermore, we have received written confessions from all levels of titled players, including GMs.  As promised to those players, confessions and statements are kept confidential, as it is not our goal to hurt anyone's image or professional standing. I only bring them up now as assurance that we are confident in our systems and will move forward as we see fit to ensure the fairness of the tournament. 

To protect the integrity of the games played on Chess.com, and to maintain the highest-quality experience for our members, we will not hesitate to act during this event, or any other cash tournament (like Titled Tuesdays).

We must protect our members, including the vast majority of honest titled players. 

On that note, you must know that during this tournament Chess.com will not hesitate to do any of the following to enforce fair play:

• Kick players mid-event if we have enough evidence of foul play.
• Disqualify players after the event if we find enough evidence upon further analysis.
• Move on to the next eligible player (using Chess.com's tiebreak system) if the original winner is found to have cheated, or found ineligible for any other reason (that we are not required to disclose publicly). The spot to play Magnus will move onto the next top finisher.

We cannot adjust the results of individual games based on later disqualification of any player. (If someone loses to a cheater, the result will not be changed.)

If your account is found to have broken the rules, and therefore is subsequently closed and disqualified from earning any prizes in this event, you can rest assured that we will work with you (as long as you are willing to be honest), keeping all statements and admissions private.

More important, nobody should assume a player cheated if someone withdraws, disconnects or is somehow removed from the tournament.

We do not want anyone accused falsely. Someone may have a bad connection or quit out of frustration. Please let us do our job, without assuming or gossiping about the process, and we will let you do yours of being awesome at chess!

Thank you for participating in the event. We cannot wait to see who will be lucky (and good) enough to win a spot against the reigning world champion on June 23.

We look forward to watching everyone play and we will be working hard to make sure you are playing in the cleanest and fairest environment possible.

Sincerely yours for chess on Chess.com,
IM Danny Rensch -- Vice President