is this cheating or beating the system ?

I have a friend with a red NM next to his chess.com id. He resigned the first of two games. In the second game he put his Queen next to my pawn, I took the Queen, and he promptly went on 'vacation'. He has done the same thing in other games he is playing. Is he trying to wear me down while I wait ? What happens when his vacation time expries in 52 days?

[Gone far enough see http://www.chess.com/groups/view/cheating-forum - Moderator]

When  he uses up his 52 days of vacation he will have to move according to the proscribed time control or he will lose on time. This is an unfortunate aspect of "the system". If he is doing this just because he is losing/lost and not for some legitimate vacation purpose than he is being extemely unsportsmanlike.  This happens a lot but there is nothing you can do about it, except in this case you can call him out on it, since you say he is your friend.

Doesn´t postponing the inevitable and wasting all that vacation time hurt more than a simple loss, though?

Re: I have a friend

No you do not.

Re: Vacation

When vacation expires the game clock restarts.

Re: Cheating

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/chesscom-policy-on-cheating

"Fixing games results (through intentional loss or multiple accounts) is also cheating."

Actually, I have looked through your game and can't believe he really played 13.Qc3. That must have been a mouse slip or something.

And why the hell did he resign that other game when he was just about to win the exchange?

Edit: Ok, something's clearly wrong here. I've looked through other games he lost. He was always winning, but then suddenly out of the blue committed some unbelievable blunder. This hast to be intentional.

Baffling indeed...

It looks like he is sandbagging by resigning in positions where he obviously shouldn't. What kind of NM hangs his queen to a pawn like that?

Edit: Maybe somebody is just posing as NM Evan Sandberg. I looked him up and he really is an NM, but who knows if it is really him?

Seems so - he did this in at least four other games I just went through.

Is vacation infinite?

The site asks for proof before giving away Diamond membership.

http://www.chess.com/members/submit_title_proof.html

They are probably more careful about the documentation after having to close the account of "fake Hou Yifan" very early on.

Ok, I checked further and he seems to do this in ALL his games (turnbase and live chess) that he loses. There was even a draw where he had set two rooks en prise ...

Also from his openings (and some games he won or was better when resigning) one can see that he IS a really good player, so he's probably not an impostor.

I think a permanent vacation is something else entirely.

One possible reason for the guy's mishaps:

Thanks for the comments all.

TadDude: I was really writig in an indirect sort of way putting this subjet out there without screaming or taking a 20' high billboard in Times Square "I THINK XYZ IS CHEATING".

As I suspected, most were able to infer from my post the correct info and some even researched him further to find this is not a once-in-a-lifetime situation.

I still don't undrstand how purposefully losig games is good for anyone.

It wasn't very hard to infer since you only have two games going, and only one of your opponents has an NM title.