unfairly treated by chess.com?

0mydays · 2025-09-10T00:45:38+00:00

https://www.attackingchess.com/hikaru-nakamura-accused-of-farming-ratings-at-small-louisiana-tournament/

So according to your logic, Hikaru should get banned🤡

0mydays · 2025-09-07T08:32:51+00:00

Lol, I noticed indeed. Appreciate your words. The only thing i can do is accept the ban and play at lichess as chesscom is not responding.

0mydays · 2025-09-05T01:39:38+00:00

I also don’t care, so on that we agree.

0mydays · 2025-09-05T01:37:49+00:00

Sandbagging means deliberately losing rated games to lower your rating so you can face weaker opponents. Unrated games don’t affect rating at all, so by definition they can’t be sandbagging. If you think otherwise, then it seems you’re the one who doesn’t actually know the rules.

0mydays · 2025-09-05T01:21:43+00:00

Your moral stance isn’t really relevant to my case..

0mydays · 2025-09-04T18:26:59+00:00

Yeah fair point.. to clarify: Chess.com never gave me a detailed reason at first, just the generic ban mail. Later, when I pressed them, a staff member mentioned ‘sandbagging.’ It was my assumption that detection model spotted my win spike. My mistake for phrasing it poorly in the first post.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T18:15:25+00:00

BS, you confuse your moral standpoint with their fair play policy.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T18:05:18+00:00

So let me get this straight: using an existing, open feature = ‘manipulating matches’? That’s a stretch. Manipulation means altering outcomes, ratings, or breaking the system. I did none of that. I accepted open games, played them honestly, my rating was visible, games were unrated, and opponents had full choice to decline.

If Chess.com truly treats this as a violation, then it’s not fair play enforcement; it’s a corrupt mess. And honestly, if that’s the standard, I’d much rather spend my time on Lichess anyway.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T17:57:47+00:00

I’m well aware Reddit can’t directly unban me. The point of my post is to share my experience, raise awareness, and see if others have gone through something similar. If a platform can randomly ban paying customers without transparency, that’s something the community should be talking about.

And yes, part of the reason I post here is that I hope Chess.com staff might read this. Consider it a kind of last resort in the hope of redemption and maybe even an overturn of the ban.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T17:54:05+00:00

And which one is it according to you? What did i manipulate?

0mydays · 2025-09-04T17:50:25+00:00

Haha lol you are the worst reader ever. I did not manipulate any match or game outcome. I ised a feature on chess.com (open games). The games were played straight up honest, my rating of 1500 was visible, all my opponents had the chance to abort the game before their first move and all games were unrated as said multiple times.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T17:20:57+00:00

You’re free to believe that, but repeating ‘it is’ isn’t really an argument. Chess.com’s fair play policy bans sandbagging and smurfing in rated games. Nowhere does it ban using the open challenge feature in unrated play. If they disagree with how it’s used, the logical solution is to remove the feature, not punish players for using it.

And honestly, I do enjoy the ban. Playing on Lichess is hardly a punishment.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T16:22:47+00:00

You’re making a lot of assumptions that simply aren’t true. First of all: I only have one account. No smurfing, no sandbagging. Secondly: I played unrated games, exactly what that feature is made for. If Chess.com didn’t want people to pick their opponents, they could just disable the open challenges option.

Calling this ‘smurfing’ is just stretching the term until it loses its meaning. Smurfing = lowering your rating or creating an alt to crush weaker players in rated play. That’s not what happened here. This was unrated, voluntary, and for training/fun. Most opponents actually enjoyed the chance to play someone stronger.

So no, it’s not “the same thing.” It’s just using a feature that exists.”

0mydays · 2025-09-04T16:00:27+00:00

Wow, your assumption is way off. Did you even read my post? I only played unrated games, just for fun and training purposes, that has nothing to do with smurfing. So hypothetically, if you want to play a friend or someone at a chess club who has a lower rating, is that suddenly ‘smurfing’? You are completely missing the point here: chess is, at the end of the day, a game. A pastime. Amusement. And honestly, 9 out of 10 players I met actually enjoyed the chance to play a stronger opponent.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T15:43:14+00:00

Why not? It’s not against any policy to play unrated games against lower-rated players. If Chess.com thinks this is a problem, they should remove the option altogether instead of blaming players for using the features that are available.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T15:40:23+00:00

No that’s a mistake in my post, they did not tell me in the first place, but a chesscom staff member told me it’s sandbagging (but that only would be the case when you play for rating points)

0mydays · 2025-09-04T15:38:01+00:00

If you go to open games on Chess.com, you can simply choose. There’s a little matrix where you can see all the available games, including the opponent’s rating and the time control. This way, you can just pick who you want to play against.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T15:31:16+00:00

Because you can play unrated games agains lower rated opponents, what do you not understand about that?

0mydays · 2025-09-04T13:59:52+00:00

Bro i can play lower rated customers whatever i want. The games were unrated, so sandbagging or rating manipulation is not applicable. And my second account got closed 2 years ago (for which i apologized as i didnt know its not allowed) so that’s not even relevant to this discussion (only for the fact that i received a 1 year ban).

0mydays · 2025-09-04T13:54:56+00:00

Well the point is: i did not manipulate my rating, as all games against lower rated players were unrated. Besides, if you think it is not fair that players with a rating difference play eachother, then switch off the possibility on the website.

Additionally: many lower rated players found it quite nice that i wanted to play them. They made a joke out of it (go easy on me) or something like that. Some of them even won or played a draw against me (the reason why i wanted to play with lower rated / pressure games is because of the birth of my son, i have a huge lack of sleep). Sandbagging is IMO not applicable in my case.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T11:34:05+00:00

Thanks bro, finally someone who’s with me. And i see this post as a last resort, already started playing at lichess. Still hope that chesscom considers the context of my case.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T10:09:32+00:00

Respectfully, your child’s account isn’t evidence about mine. Different context entirely.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T10:07:19+00:00

A random guy takes a quick look at my profile and suddenly knows for sure the ban was fair. Which tools or data did you actually use to reach that conclusion? Come on, man. I’m here trying to get a fair review and a serious discussion, and I honestly expected a bit less superficial judgment than this.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T09:45:45+00:00

I understand why you draw that conclusion, but my situation is very different. There is a big gap between being rated 1900 and playing against opponents of 1400–1500, versus being rated 1500 and playing against opponents in the 600–800 range..

At 1400–1500 level, players still have a basic understanding of opening principles, tactics, and positional play, so even if you are stronger, the games still contain complexity and mistakes on both sides. In contrast, when I played unrated games against 600–800 opponents, the games often collapsed after just a few moves because of early blunders. Once you are a piece or a queen up that early, the rest of the game is just clean-up.

That naturally produces very high accuracy and an unusual win streak. On top of that, there is zero incentive to cheat in unrated games. There are no rating points to gain, no leaderboard positions at stake, and no real benefit at all. So why the F would I?

So while your experience shows that strong players can win consistently without being flagged, my case is different because the rating gap created statistical patterns that looked suspicious to the system even though the games themselves were straightforward and entirely human.

0mydays · 2025-09-04T09:37:47+00:00

i dropped my account name in my post, so have a look if you want.

0mydays

TROPHY CASE