Chess.Com getting sued.

[Brian Towers]

So much easier when you have a picture of the player, sat on the bog, tape still hanging off his rolled up trouser leg, busy fingering his phone.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"You ask what is this 6.5 number, where does it actually come from and how is it interpreted? Well, it's 6.5 innit, everyone know what that means."

That sort of thing happens a lot - I actually spotted a scientific paper, entitled something like "Analysis of AA in....", so I pointed out that "AA" was ambiguous and got the wonderful reply that everyone in their office knew what it meant. Pity the readers of the paper didn't.

[JustinHorton]

An email:

Dear Chess.com

Until recently I operated an account "Justinpatzer" on your site. You disabled this account without warning, claiming, without explanation - and entirely incorrectly - that I was using "outside assistance".

It is my belief that you have applied some incorrect and unreasonable assumptions to a small set of data, quite likely including an underestimation of my level of play in server-based correspondence chess.

I have now received a report on the games I have played in the past twelve months, very kindly supplied - at the request of an independent person - by Professor Ken Regan, who, as you will be aware, is a leading authority in the field.

I believe his report raises serious doubts about the quality of your decision and that it should lead you to reconsider.

If you wish, I will provide you with a full copy of this report.

Yours

Justin Horton

(Justinpatzer)

Here's Chess.com's insultiingly stupid reply:

Hello Justin!

We have received your message about the closing of your Chess.com account. We are dedicated to combating unfair play on our site and we never close accounts lightly - accounts are closed only when we are 100% certain of unfair play.

I understand that you want to dispute the evidence upon which your account was closed. However, to safeguard the effectiveness of our methods, we cannot reveal details about how we detect fair play. Please see the site Terms of Service if you have further questions about your account closure: http://www.chess.com/legal.html.

I fully understand your position and wish that I could grant you a second chance account. But according to chess.com policy, You cannot be approved without an admission of guilt. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I am here for you and wish you the best in your chess adventures!

Best

1. Let's have another go:

Dear Chess.com

Thank you for your email.

I wonder if you could have another go, and this time send me a proper reply to my earlier message. I have asked you to look at a report prepared by a world authority on the subject of computer use in chess, and you have replied by simply ignoring that and sending me a form response.

To reply in this way seems to me to be insultingly dismissive both to Professor Regan's expertise and to the effort he has voluntarily put in. It is also not really acceptable as a response to me personally.

Yours

Justin Horton

2. Tweet to Daniel Rensch

[John Clarke]

Call me old-fashioned, but my hackles rise the instant someone (a) uses my first name in what's supposed to be something in the nature of business correspondence, (b) sprinkles exclamation marks liberally throughout said correspondence, and (c) signs off with the word "Best" (even if, thankfully, without yet another exclamation mark).

On the evidence so far presented, I'm totally with Jus- ... I mean Mr Horton on this one.

[Alex Holowczak]

Call me old-fashioned, but my hackles rise the instant someone (a) uses my first name in what's supposed to be something in the nature of business correspondence, (b) sprinkles exclamation marks liberally throughout said correspondence, and (c) signs off with the word "Best" (even if, thankfully, without yet another exclamation mark).

Did you miss (d), starting a sentence with a co-ordinating conjunction, as in "But according to chess.com policy"?

[JustinHorton]

Call me old-fashioned, but my hackles rise the instant someone (a) uses my first name in what's supposed to be something in the nature of business correspondence, (b) sprinkles exclamation marks liberally throughout said correspondence, and (c) signs off with the word "Best" (even if, thankfully, without yet another exclamation mark).

As I said, like being fobbed off by Eddie The Shipboard Computer.

[John Clarke]

Did you miss (d), starting a sentence with a co-ordinating conjunction, as in "But according to chess.com policy"?

I didn't notice it, Alex, but then I wasn't really looking for errors of syntax. What I was bagging was the faux-mateyness that seems nowadays to have crept into so much of what's supposed to be formal correspondence. I suspect it's intended as an attempt to soften the blow of unwelcome news, but for many of us (as here) it simply compounds the irritation.

While I've got this opportunity, I'll just point out (e) a capital initial in the middle of a sentence ("according to chess.com policy, You cannot be approved .... ").

[Kevin Thurlow]

"What I was bagging was the faux-mateyness that seems nowadays to have crept into so much of what's supposed to be formal correspondence."

I agree. It is especially annoying when they are trying to rob and cheat you.

[Austin Lockwood]

It's a simple but cold business decision; chess.com attracts tens of thousands of casual chess players who don't know much about correspondence chess by perpetuating the myth that they have zero tolerance for "cheating" and that they have the facility to detect it... it's a particularly elegant deception because they wrap the occult nature of their methods into the myth (if we told you what was in the black box, it wouldn't work, so the fact that we keep it secret is evidence that we're taking the issue seriously).

Sacrificing a handful of random victims each month is a small price to pay for being seen to do something, it doesn't matter to them whether or not you really were cheating - what matters from a cynical business perspective is that they're seen to be banning people, the more fuss you make about it, the more visible their policy... you're just feeding them.

Just clear your cookies, reboot your home router to pick up a new IP address, and set up a new account - what's the problem?

The simple reality is that if you play online chess, on any site, eventually you're going to meet a centaur - if you don't want to play against computers, don't play online chess. Otherwise, either play for fun and accept the risk, or play serious CC in ICCF.

Austin

[Roger de Coverly]

what's the problem?

It's the problem of being labelled a cheat.

In my opinion though, chess.com's rules for "one move per day" are unworkable unless you play "closed book", as you would for over the board play. Even OTB you might be in trouble if you had a good memory for sharp lines.

It's all very well to allow you to consult books and databases, your own games even, but they don't appear to understand that said sources aren't "corrupted" by computer analysis and have been for the last twenty five or more years.

[Austin Lockwood]

what's the problem?

It's the problem of being labelled a cheat.

Ah well... that's my point.

Their business model depends on them publicly calling out a quota of cheats each month. They don't need to actually prove anything (their methods are occult), they just need to make their gullible fans believe in that "100% certainty"; sadly, Justin is doing exactly what they want him to do.

If you really want to play on chess.com, and you're concerned about your reputation, sign up under a disposable alias.

[JustinHorton]

sadly, Justin is doing exactly what they want him to do.

This is unlikely to be true.

If you really want to play on chess.com, and you're concerned about your reputation, sign up under a disposable alias.

Well you know, had they said when I joined "we may be quite happy to defame you in public, so make sure you stay anonymous" then that would have been a good time to be tipped off: as it is it's pretty useless advice, and also advice I've already received from a couple of dozen Reddit commentors who thonk they're clever, but aren't.

Incidentally, in my specific circumstances, it wouldn't have worked anyway, for reasons already explained upthread.

[Mark Ashley]

what's the problem?

It's the problem of being labelled a cheat.

Their business model depends on them publicly calling out a quota of cheats each month. They don't need to actually prove anything (their methods are occult), they just need to make their gullible fans believe in that "100% certainty"; sadly, Justin is doing exactly what they want him to do.

It's a pretty poor business model if true. I was looking to become a paying member of the site because i have started using it regularly, but seeing how Justin is being treated here, i've decided not to.

[Phil Neatherway]

Of possible interest to this topic is that I received this message on lichess.org:-

"You lost to a cheater 34 minutes ago
Refund: 2 Blitz rating points"

I have no idea who the cheater was, if he was truly a cheater and how they decided that he was a cheater.

[Jon Tait]

We are dedicated to combating unfair play on our site and we never close accounts lightly - accounts are closed only when we are 100% certain of unfair play. (...) I fully understand your position and wish that I could grant you a second chance account. But according to chess.com policy, You cannot be approved without an admission of guilt.

That's not quite true. My first chess.com account got closed because I won too many games. I contested that decision on the basis that:

1. I'm a CC-SIM who only plays three-days-per-move games against much weaker players, people I know personally who are not regular chess players, because they want to play and it doesn't really take up any of my time. I don't always win, but nearly always: 93% win rate, and no losses.

2. I play very well-prepared openings – pet lines deeply analysed with computer assistance, all stored in dedicated databases, which I use in all online slowplay games. So there will often be a considerable degree of computer correlation at that stage of the game. And given #1, I'm often winning right out of the opening. (Okay, it might be a bit mean to do that against patzers, but that's a different matter.)

3. And (perhaps conclusively) I listed numerous things I'd missed in my games, after having gone through a sample with an engine myself.

They then reinstated me with a new account and a free diamond membership (as a titled player). That was in 2014 and I'm still on there.