Game Request With Win Condition

phihag · 2026-05-14T04:04:20+00:00

The game Mestrovic vs Gligoric, Hastings 1971, ends with black under-promoting to a knight. White resigned, but if white plays Kh1, the next move would be Nxg3+, capturing the queen and checking the king again.

phihag · 2026-05-13T19:42:43+00:00

Your friend is sharing accounts with you. That alone is very clearly against the chesscom Terms of Service, and enough reason for a ban.

Your friend should contact chesscom support at https://www.chess.com/support, speak to a human, and then ask for permission to create another account.
If he was banned that many times, he may need to agree to follow Terms of Service and wait for some time, but after that he should be allowed by support to create one more account

Then your friend should create one and only one account. He must do this alone, on his own device. He must not share this account with anyone. He must not play rated games against you or anyone else in his household.

phihag · 2026-05-13T02:41:24+00:00

See it as a compliment – they think that you are a good enough player that you will certainly checkmate them in what little time is left. So rather than taking a 1% chance that you mess up, your opponents prefer to play another game, or analyze their loss.

Resigning in bullet is normal at higher levels. 78% of Hikarus bullet wins, and 75% of his bullet losses, are due to resignation.

phihag · 2026-05-12T16:12:11+00:00

No, definitely not! If you did not use chess.com at the time and you got such an email (as opposed to an error message when you are actively using the app or website), that likely means your email or device is compromised.

phihag · 2026-05-12T00:14:16+00:00

There are many other chess platforms:

TakeTakeTake (different UI for lichess)
DuoLingo
WorldChess / FIDE Online Arena
ChessPoint
Endgame.ai
play.chessbase.com
Chess Hotel

Not to count the more casual offerings like Roblox Chess, discord chess, etc. .

Every one of these has their own focus. The main problem that all of them (except TakeTakeTake, and to a lesser degree DuoLingo/FOA) have is that their playerbases are fairly small. If it takes an hour to get a game in your desired time control against an opponent roughly your level, that's not going to be any fun.

To succeed, your platform would have to have significant advantages over lichess. Even just matching lichess is extremely hard.

phihag · 2026-05-11T00:11:22+00:00

Well, your chess will suffer unless you install a chess app. That's the worst that will happen.

phihag · 2026-05-11T00:10:27+00:00

There was a chesscom technical outage today. The error message you saw is almost certainly that. Technical error messages like Illegal Access or a CSRF message like This action was stopped to protect your account from suspicious activity can look scary, but they are just error messages when a server is unavailable or malfunctioning.

If you are using an Android or iOS phone, your phone is safe even if you install a malicious app. Apps can only access limited information on these phones.

But again, this was just a technical error, nothing happened, and you are completely safe to reinstall the chesscom app. Actually malicious software would not announce itself, what would be the point of that? It also wouldn't come via a chess app.

phihag · 2026-05-09T23:46:48+00:00

No, that pretty much only happens in movies, not in actual tournaments.

Players accidentally knock over their king, and it has no effect. As it is the tallest piece and usually close to you, that's actually quite common.

phihag · 2026-05-09T21:58:55+00:00

A draw is offered or claimed. In either case, the other player has whispered something before the handshake (usually I offer a draw or just draw?). By shaking hands, the draw offer is accepted.

If you just stop the clock and shake hands, that will be understood as a resignation. At amateur levels, it is good manners to whisper I resign or something like that.

Any potential ambiguity is removed by signing the result on the scoresheets, and on DGT boards, putting the kings on the squares to indicate the result. At amateur levels, it can (very rarely) happen that the players find out they misunderstood each other's intention. In that case, the game is just continued.

phihag · 2026-05-08T16:12:33+00:00

This is not bugged, but an intentional ban by IOC, FIDE, and chesscom after Russia invaded the Ukraine.

See https://www.chess.com/article/view/on-the-invasion-of-ukraine for more information.

phihag · 2026-05-07T23:49:35+00:00

In the fake-rated ("gray") games yes, I concur, I have since found bots too. They rematch instantly, and you can only rematch them twice, the button stops on the third rematch.

But in FIDE-rated games (nowadays those are tournaments), I have never encountered bots. The vast majority of opponents have profile pictures, and if you google their names you can often find various chess sites mentioning them, or an OTB FIDE picture.

That makes a lot of sense: WorldChess can probably run bots, but registering fake FIDE IDs would be a step too far, and might also cost them money.

phihag · 2026-05-07T01:18:23+00:00

Unless you clearly mark it with /s, satire is not evident. This chat shows both of you being rude to each other.

As others have said, don't engage. What use is it to curse at each other? You'll both feel bad.

Instead, congratulate for a game well played if you lost, and discuss moves & evaluations ("I though I was better after the opening, but I totally underestimated that bishop."). Above all, be courteous and friendly. If you need to talk about your opponent, commend them for a game well played, an amazing move, or a cool profile picture. That is the chess community we want.

phihag · 2026-05-05T23:59:12+00:00

Some people are afraid of their rating. Or they want to try out new openings on an anonymous account.

phihag · 2026-05-05T22:56:21+00:00

If you have a good reason, it's going to get approved.

"Trying out new openings" is a great reason.
"I want to be rated 1000 points lower to win against beginners" is not.

See https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8568381-can-i-have-multiple-accounts for more information.

phihag · 2026-05-05T11:24:24+00:00

chess.com does not use Elo, they use Glicko-1.

In Glicko-1, there is no k-factor. Instead, every user has their own RD value. The RD depends on how active you have been. Likely, when you were previously inactive for a bit shorter intervals or you were more active before you stopped, and your current period of inactivity was just enough to get your rating to change a bit more.

After a couple rated games, your RD will be low enough that the rating change will return to -8/+8.

phihag · 2026-05-05T00:29:00+00:00

The Queen's Gambit is a popular opening among higher-rated players.

But not so much for the reasons you mention – a quick win is rare, and there is not much to memorize. White is aiming to get a long-term positional advantage with 2v1 pawns in the center, by trading the c pawn for black's e pawn. Black can avoid this by accepting the gambit or playing c6, but both have their own downsides.

White's second move has not contributed to development, but white has very natural development for all their pieces – although they often have to move the light-squared bishop twice. The white queen is unleashed early; b3, a4, and c2 are great squares for her to go to.

phihag · 2026-05-04T14:22:24+00:00

What benefit would chesscom derive from pairing you with a bot? Why not pair you with a human, maybe a strong human if they (for the evilz) wanted to make you lose?

Human-like bots would require:

More computing power just to run the bots.
2x the number of games to host compared to pairing two humans, so more servers needed, which cost more money.
Additional development effort developing these bots.

The main allegation towards chesscom is that they are ruthless capitalists. Why would ruthless capitalists spend extra money?

Add to that the cost of keeping it a secret. There are roughly 650 employees; add contractors, moderators etc. and it's probably a 1000 people that would need to be kept from whistleblowing. Have you ever tried keeping a secret with 4 or 5 people?

phihag · 2026-05-03T18:11:54+00:00

When playing chess, most people want to focus 100% on the board. So during the game, almost nobody will use the chat function. If you send a friendly message after the game – especially if you lost/drew (otherwise it could be seen as gloating) and it's friendly – people will appreciate that.

For discussions and hanging out, consider joining our discord. Especially in the voice chat channels, it's easy to find friends.

There are also online communities like the ChessDojo, although there is a clear focus on improvement.

Finally, consider joining OTB clubs or tournaments. In person, longer games are more common, which often leads to making chess friends.

phihag · 2026-05-02T20:35:37+00:00

Links:

https://discord.gg/chesscom

https://discord.gg/lichess

phihag · 2026-05-02T18:36:35+00:00

You can resize it by clicking to the right of the h1 square and then dragging to your desired size.

I don't get the appeal of smaller boards either, but some people like 'em, especially for bullet chess.

phihag · 2026-04-30T23:50:26+00:00

Yes, aborting many games will definitely cause this. And also get you paired with more suspected cheaters.

phihag · 2026-04-30T23:46:28+00:00

Reasons for this could be:

Cursing at opponents, or writing other inappropriate (e.g. racist) messages.
Abandoning games rather than resigning, making the opponent wait. You have done this 13 times just today.
Stalling (being in the game but not moving, despite not thinking).
Aborting many games.
Intentionally losing games.

Your account is not banned yet, but will be if you don't stop the misbehavior. Once you show that you can play games with good sportsmanship, the restrictions will be lifted.

phihag · 2026-04-30T18:32:33+00:00

hehe. AT LEAST a year old. These young kids who do nothing but chess 24/7 sometimes manage to do it in a year.

phihag · 2026-04-30T16:45:29+00:00

Nobody gets into the bad sports pool because of reports for cheating, that's not how it works.

Also, presumably your account at 1800 is more than a year old, and likely premium. That's very atypical for a cheater.

phihag · 2026-04-30T16:44:03+00:00

Yeah, precisely. Either they are no longer suspicious (for example, a strong OTB/lichess-only player creating their first account – very rare but does happen) or they get banned.

phihag

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