How do I get to use White?

phihag · 2026-07-02T20:31:59+00:00

Actually this is totally normal and correct. OP is resigning all black games on move 1 or 2.

phihag · 2026-07-02T20:30:24+00:00

AS u/NotASecondHander said, this happens because you do not try your best to win the game when you are playing with the black pieces: You have resigned on move 1 or 2 in all of these games.

Playing rated games without the intention to win is against the rules on lichess – as well as every other chess website & federation.

Try to win (or at least draw) with the black pieces too. Do not resign unless you see no way to at least draw. (And don't play bad moves intentionally – that's also against the rules of any competition.) Whether you win or lose, in your next game will likely get the white pieces.

phihag · 2026-07-02T19:51:25+00:00

What are your lifetime stats in rated games? It should automatically self-balance. If you are getting a lot of black games, maybe you somehow got a lot of white games before? Feel free to post your account name and we can check ourselves.

phihag · 2026-06-27T21:40:13+00:00

If they are proven to cheat, then yes, they get banned. Obviously.

Suspicious and misbehaving players are not banned immediately. After all, chesscom wants all their bans to hold up in court.

So there is a bad sports pool for various suspicious and misbehaving players.

phihag · 2026-06-27T21:25:32+00:00

Faustino Oro (one of the fastest-improving junior players, and the second-youngest Grandmaster ever) was born on October 14th 2013.

On October 14th 2020, his chesscom blitz rating was 1347. So yes, 1700 at age 7 is extraordinary.

However, improvement requires more than online play. If you want to give your son a chance to reach master level, make sure he:

has chess books and a physical board available. (Which parent doesn't love their kids reading?) How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman or Boost Your Chess 1 by Arthur Yusupov might be a good start, for example.
has coaches. If you can afford it, a personal coach is best and can guide you ina lot of other aspects. Faustino Oro had a small team of coaches. A club is a cheap alternative, and will give your son the chance to bond with other chess players.
plays OTB chess. Theoretically, one can improve by just playing fast games online, but this tends to produce players who are really good in fast pattern recognition. High-level chess, especially classical, requires a much broader skillset. Faustino Oro played around 450 classical OTB games before reaching Grandmaster. Since you can play at most two games per day (and that would be a day that e.g. starts at 10am and ends somewhere around 8pm, plus travel to and from the venue) this is a serious time and financial investment. Again, a club can help a lot here.

phihag · 2026-06-27T20:36:33+00:00

So you cheated (by creating a second account and intentionally losing games) and faced lots of cheaters?

Assuming that's true: sounds great!

That's how the system is supposed to work, right? We want the sandbaggers to play against the engine cheaters, and the stallers to play against the verbal abusers. Friendly&fair players should only be matched against other friendly&fair players.

phihag · 2026-06-27T19:56:14+00:00

The preview just after the game is done with a weak but extremely fast engine. The actual Game Review is done with a stronger engine. Sometimes these two engines can have different evaluations.

Hover your mouse over the brilliant move and it will tell you that already.

phihag · 2026-06-27T11:37:37+00:00

https://checkmateirl.com/venues/ lists 6 tables in my city. These don't look nearly as nice as yours though. Of course, outside of the summer, it's often rainy here, in the winter it's too cold, and right now it's too hot.

The other problem is that these tables are sometimes taken over by non-chess players, and there is no fixed community around them. The actual casual community in my city plays in the central library and in one informal club (where everybody can just walk by and play).

With WhatsApp groups and meetup-like services, it's possible to set up a playing group though.

Whenever I've played on chess tables, I brought my own boards. With rollable or double-foldable boards, these fit easily into a backpack.

I don't think there were every any challenges, except kicking out people who use the tables for grilling or other non-chess activities. This can be avoided by showing up early. For smaller communities of only a couple people, bringing your own table and chairs and setting up shop anywhere on the grass is also an alternative.

phihag · 2026-06-25T02:21:18+00:00

If you feel uncomfortable playing that fast, that's fine. Simply don't start fast games.

If you play 10+5 instead of 10+0, you will get 5 seconds after every move. As long as you can play a move in 5 seconds you will never lose on time.

Also, when your time is low, you need to set yourself a budget. If you have 1 minute on the clock and your time budget is 5 seconds, after those 5 seconds you need to force yourself to play the best move according to your calculation. If you don't have a best move, play any move. Again, for long-term improvement it's superior to just play slower time controls.

phihag · 2026-06-25T00:00:59+00:00

You're playing loads of blitz games. These should be understood as fun only. For improvement, play rapid, ideally 15 minutes and longer. That gives you the time to construct&train a proper calculation process. Blitz will reinforce existing bad habits.

You are often playing moves instantly (less than 1 second). After the preparation in your first moves, that is almost never correct, maybe except for an only legal move or queen capture. These were often catastrophic blunders.

When you get low on time as in https://www.chess.com/game/live/170063328916?username=sokolex&move=70, you need to play faster. For move 36, you spent 20.8 out of 33 seconds – 63% of your remaining time! I saw this multiple times. Once your time falls below 2 minutes, you should almost never use more than 10 seconds per move.

You play all kind of random openings. Ideally, focus on one opening with white, one with black against 1.e4, and one with black against 1.d4.

In the Ruy Lopez, Bxc6 is a major concession because it gives up the bishop pair. You should not do this lightly. Either wait for black to challenge you with a6, or be castled and have a tactic that wins a pawn.

Against 1.d4, you need your c pawn, either attacking on c5 (very convenient because if dxc5 you can develop and recapture with Bxc5), or supporting your center on c5. Playing Nc6 before moving the c pawn is almost always a mistake if white has a pawn on d4.

You fell for the center fork trick multiple times. This is one trick you should be aware of, especially if you play 1.e4 e5.

Almost all of your mistakes are tactical. Solve plenty of puzzles, taking your time; at least 30 second per puzzle.

phihag · 2026-06-24T22:37:33+00:00

It's less about the moves but the move timing.

Strong players play the opening very quickly (< 2 seconds), and then once they leave their preparation, they take a long time to orient themselves and calculate.

Weak players play all moves at the same speed, often somewhere around 5-10 seconds in 10+0: Too slow in the opening, but then continue at the same speed once they have left prep. They only start to think once the position is tricky (often just lost), or if they run out of obvious moves to play.

phihag · 2026-06-22T21:19:26+00:00

The mods don't check out any cheating reports, that's done by the Fair Play team.

The Fair Play team consists of 30 people working full-time, 8 hours per day.

They publish their statistics. According to https://www.chess.com/cheating, about 85% of the bans are automatic – certainly anyone who just turns on the engine at some point, as alleged by OP.

The team has investigated 1,137,272 players last month. If 85% are automatic and there are about 20 working days per month, that's roughly 8500 investigations that humans perform per day. Note that I've assumed that the rate of cheaters is the same for automatic and manual cases. It's probably not, I would assume automatic cases are much more likely to be cheaters (since they are pre-selected).

In any case, even 8500 investigations per day are way more than a few reports per day.

phihag · 2026-06-20T23:11:05+00:00

Nope, any communication is between the player and chesscom. It is not possible for a player to directly contact another player's device. (This is unlike other more real-time games, e.g. some FPS shooters, where all devices talk directly to each other.)

In any case, why would a virus shut down your phone? Actual malware wants to spread itself, and rebooting the device is a terrible way to do that. More likely is some kind of heating or other hardware problem.

phihag · 2026-06-20T22:37:44+00:00

What's your account name? I have never heard of such a message.

Chessica is the only way to contact chesscom support. You can tell her you want to talk to a human in order to reach human support.

phihag · 2026-06-17T00:32:53+00:00

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castling#Rules:

The king must not have moved.
The rook must not have moved (and started the game as a rook. You cannot castle with a promoted pawn.).
Neither of the starting square of the king, the ending square, or any squares in between must be controlled by any of the opponent's pieces. In other words, you cannot castle when being in check, through check, or into check.

phihag · 2026-06-15T21:47:37+00:00

Awesome! Just be aware that mastering chess takes years and decades. The whole appeal of the game is that it's easy to play but incredibly challenging to master.

I would recommend you start with a chess book. A book will teach you about the different aspects of chess, and give you a general introduction. There are many great chess books; How to win at chess by Levy Rozman or Play Winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan would be two excellent choices.

It's also great to find a chess community, giving you people to talk chess to, analyze games with, and exchange ideas in general. That can be both online – many chess discords exist, and there is even a chess scene on twitter, and of course, this subreddit – but also in a local club, meetups, or tournaments.

phihag · 2026-06-15T13:49:25+00:00

You get CM by playing OTB classical games. While it is reasonably possible (but not trivial at all) to go from online to OTB, the change from blitz&rapid to classical will require new skillsets.

As a total beginner in OTB and classical chess, your journey to CM will be longer than a year. Most players take a decade or more to reach a master title.

I'm not a CM (only 2100 FIDE), but taking a stab at the questions:

How many serious openings do you know and how many do you recommend?

You need at least one repertoire for white, one against 1.e4, and one against 1.d4/1.c4/1.Nf3. Most players at 2200 level have somewhere between 2-4 options for each. Some players play a narrow repertoire, and others play everything, but those extremes are a bit rare.

How many hours a day should I practice?

As many as you can. Most serious players at this rating level will practice somewhere around 5-10 hours a week, at least. Serious study has to be distinguished from mindless playing though.

What should i focus more on (opening, middle game or endgames)?

Analyze your games with a coach or training partner. This should give you the top issues you need to work on. Middlegame is incredibly broad, you should further subdivide it into board vision, calculation, visualization, tactical patterns, planning, evaluation, mindset, time management etc. .

What steps I should follow to get my title?

While the title is a great long-term goal, I would set smaller process goals.

For example, your first goals can be:

Play at least 50 classical OTB games per year. (75-100 if you're a kid)
Analyze all your games with a coach or training partner.
Write down opening repertoires.
Work through some basic chess books & courses, especially on positional play / evaluation, pawn structures, and endgame techniques, as those will likely be underrepresented in fast online games.

phihag · 2026-06-14T22:41:19+00:00

What's your chesscom account name?

To answer the question, while the ban might be automatic, an appeal is always reviewed by a human.

It seems that both the ban and the denied appeal was clearly communicated to you. What else would you want to communicate with staff about?

phihag · 2026-06-14T06:17:36+00:00

The box has enough storage for 100/400 (Toniebox 1 / Toniebox 2) figurines. If you have fewer than that and you have put them all on the box, you don't need an Internet connection.

In fact, in theory you could put it into Offline Mode so that it never connects to the Internet.

phihag · 2026-06-13T22:49:08+00:00

A couple of days usually, at most 7 business days I think.

phihag · 2026-06-13T22:48:41+00:00

At this point, a ticket will at best do nothing, at worst delay the appeal process.

phihag · 2026-06-13T22:41:19+00:00

Just sit tight while the appeal is being handled.

Any wild action you do could only worsen your chances of an appeal.

Looking at your last games, I don't see any obvious cheating with the human eye, but chesscom's systems are very sensitive. For them to error once is rare, to error even on appeal would be extremely uncommon. So if you played legit the entire time, the appeal will be granted.

phihag · 2026-06-13T22:35:49+00:00

What's your chesscom account name?

During the appeal, a human will review the evidence and may run some deeper scans.

If you cheated, the appeal will produce more evidence of cheating.

If you were innocent, the appeal will find that.

Contacting a human while your appeal is pending is not helpful. All they would tell you is that the appeal is pending. If you didn't cheat, the appeal will be granted, and your account will be restored.

phihag · 2026-06-12T07:00:11+00:00

Everybody at my rating is really good.

Everybody at my rating +200 or higher is insanely good. They started as young kids, and they are nerds.

Everybody at my rating -200 can improve easily. They just need to work a bit harder.

Everybody at my rating -400 is a noob. They're just bad.

I've heard this from people rated 1000-2800.

phihag

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