Smurfs and Alt Accounts

Lately, I've noticed an influx in smurfing and alt accounts. Unless I am missing something, I thought alt accounts had to go through an approval process.

Did chess.com variants stop monitoring alt accounts? If so, that's fine, but please enlighten me. Seems to border unfair game play and it's getting old.

Many friends have mentioned the same thing, so I know it's not just me.

Thank you

How can you tell if someone has an alt account or not?

Easily. By their moves, Account creation date, rating, Limited amount of games, game play

4PC admins don’t have the same resources as the regular Fair Play team (I don’t know exactly what, but I’d imagine it’d include things like being able to ban from the entire website, IP addresses, 2nd chance account history, etc), and they have a smaller team, so it takes a while longer for accounts to get banned:

On the subject of why there’s more alt accounts, it’s probably just a few ~2300 rated trolls making new accounts just to get to a certain rating, maybe upset some higher rated players, and wreck the rating system (you used to see a singular player in Hyperbullet 4PC making an account every 12 hours, going to 2000, and then self-closing).

How does the alt account approval process work?

https://support.chess.com/article/596-can-i-have-multiple-account

I was a alt player about a year or 2 years ago.

I got a lot of ELO back for people violating ''Fair Play Policy'' so i would say it is not so bad.

Thats for regular chess, not 4 player chess and variants

The thing I always wonder is "who's who?" I can't typically figure it out; others I'm not sure if they're an alt or legitimately a new player

We do. Please always report (suspected) alt accounts via the tool when you see them along with as much info as you can give us as to why you think they are an alt or even who you suspect them to be.

That being said it usually does take some time to check and verify if accounts are (approved) alts or not.

remind me why tf chesscom decided you could have 2 accounts

what is alt accounts

a person's second account on which he plays to troll people and to cause rating loss to them

How ironic that you're an alt and have the audacity to post that