Leechers of chess.com

I have noticed a great number of players on this site who can be best described as leechers.

These people have live chess settings with minimum rating close to their own (say -50 or sometimes even higher than their own rating), and extremely high maximums (like +500), thereby garaunteeing that they only get paired with stronger players.

This practice is not only selfish, but detrimental to chess.com. I feel it is not properly recognized as such by the community, hence the rant. 

As everyone knows, the way to get better is to play stronger opponents. But for every weaker player getting a learning experience, there is an opponent who is graciously volunteering their time to provide it. 

A healthy live chess pool is one where everybody plays both higher and lower rated opponents, allowing everyone to get better. 

Leechers, on the other hand, are a disgusting waste product of the "what's in it for me" society. They try to step on as many good samaritans as possible, without giving anything back to the community. If everyone on this site acted with such a lack of basic human decency, then you wouldn't be able to get a single game in live chess.

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Although I know chess.com will never implement this, I would like to be able to see my opponent's rating settings when I am paired. This way I can continue to help out the honest players lower than me, but squish the leechers before they take my blood.

Discuss

I guess I'll count as your "good samaritan" in that I welcome opponents of all ratings to play chess with me and some of the time I'll even annotate the game and exchange it with them afterwards for learning purposes. However, here is "the catch"...

I usually play unrated with all of my chess.com friends. 

Not only does this protect myself from "leechers" and dishonest players (usually), but it also makes the game "less pressure" and most of my opponents are much lower rated and so I'm trying to be as friendly as I can and keep the game casual.

As for rated chess, "leechers" don't really bother me because their rating won't increase much by being overly selective of opponents...in fact, they are only hurting their own long-term improvement by not "risking" their rating and not playing actively. 

It was not "leechers." It was the Glicko system adjusting your rating.

You had been away from playing on Chess.com for almost a year. It is natural that your ratings might have been inaccurate.

By losing 7 out the 10 games you have played, you confirmed this and your blitz rating fell by 100 points.

When you haven't played in a long time, the statistical measures determine that the confidence in your rating accuracy will have  dropped.  Therefore, rapid adjustments up and down are made after each game until the measures determine that your rating is determined to be reasonably accurate.

It was not "leechers."

https://support.chess.com/article/210-how-do-ratings-work-on-chess-com

My problem was not losing 7 out of my last 11 games since I just played badly against opponents of the same rating. My problem is with leechers who take advantage of the system and punish us hard-working blue-collar workers of the chess community. They REFUSE to play in the same pool as their class C counterparts and play against higher-rated players. They are disgusted by their own kind and do not want to associate themselves with them and waste the time of players who are better than them. While they lose minimal rating points and learn from playing a talented young class A player like myself, I have to WASTE my own time beating these waste of space class C's. I gain 5 rating points from playing someone I can beat in my sleep. I wish chess.com forced you to post your height, weight, squat/bench/deadlift, address, face, and net worth so I can see what kind of people would do such a thing. DISGUSTING. 

I don’t have a problem with lychees. They are high in iron and taste great in bubble tea.

Well, I've had the settings of -25 +infinity for a couple years now, and I don't feel that I'm leeching off of people's ratings.

Higher rated players can and will abort against me. When I get someone lower rated, I usually don't abort unless the challenge was made by mistake. I don't know about you, but most of the people I get are my strength, and if they're stronger than me then I will win less as a result. I'm not gaining rating any faster -- just playing slightly stronger players. Saying that I have some obligation to play people below me seems to hold me to a standard I did not agree to when joining the site.

Even though they're stronger than you and will most likely win, you are WASTING their time. At your rating (2000/2100), there are probably a decent amount of players you get who are close to 2200 OTB the national master rating. They play online to PRACTICE and PERFECT their skills by trying out new openings, gaining experience, and sharpening their tactical eye. By playing someone they can beat blindfolded you are wasting their time. You have a moral obligation to play against players of the same rating.

Here's a hypothetical: what if you played against someone who was 2190 OTB? Thanks to your settings they played against someone who they can beat with pawn odds and essentially wasted their time. They could've played against someone in their skill range, learned something from the game they played, used that OTB, and gotten their national master title. But congratulations on wasting all their time. They have spent YEARS trying to achieve that title and is 1 win away from their goal but you took that away from them. That one blitz game you played with him, he could've been playing someone his level and actually LEARNED something. They will die titleless because of you. Thanks.

Meh you don't know what you're talking about.

"say -50 or sometimes even higher than their own rating), and extremely high maximums (like +500), thereby garaunteeing that they only get paired with stronger players."

The argument contradicts itself, if you`re playing -50 you're not playing someone STRONGER.

Also, no offense, but reevaluate your math. With a large pool of players even if every single member has that above mentioned setting it wouldn't matter because of the vast amount of players on this website. It would only affect the extremes. Super high rated players >3000 who play weaker players anyways and <200 who let`s be honest are still learning and makes no  difference to them.

I have lost against players 500 points lower and won against players 500 higher, so even if it`s rare it can still happen, especially in blitz

Everyone gets to choose their own settings and you can always abort games if need so.

Playing weaker opponents is part of playing competitive chess and you can always learn something from it. Whether it's a better way to convert a winning position, or practice playing with the initiative when you gave pawn odds (even if it's an easy win, you can always analyze later and see where your opponent defended wrong and how he could have taken advantage of the pawn odds you gave/might have given them).

Also your extremely radical hypothesis is so exagerated that it hurts to read and therefore should not be taken seriously and I can promise you it's not one game against a weaker opponent that is going to stop someone from becoming a titled player.

It seems you're frustrated with something else and haven't figured that out yet so you redirect it here with this rant that makes no sense.

If they don't want to play me, they can abort. Some have, and some will. Keeping my settings so I play people that were my level less than a month ago isn't going to hurt anyone.

if you don't want to play people who are lower rated than you, change your settings so you don't get matched with them. Besides, even if you have them set to -25 +500, you're still going to play people within 1-200 points of your rating most of the time. I have mine set to -25 +400, and mostly get people less than 150 points higher. 

Ok never mind I looked at the rest of the op's posts, it's a troll which I fell for lmao

Where do I sign up to become a leech? A woke modern dictator has to find more acceptable forms of bloodshed.

Thank you. Chess is first and foremost a sport. Sports are supposed to be competitive and to be competitive then you need competition. There's no competition in destroying 1600 players.  It's simply a waste of time and frankly, it feels like charity work. Why do people watch the NBA? Because it's the highest form of basketball competition. I don't buy the league pass to watch the Boston Celtics beat a college basketball team or a WNBA team. I watch them so I see how they perform against the best athletes in the world. If a college basketball team had the chance to play against the Bucks they would. However, it's not in the Buck's best interest to play against Jimmy and his rag-tag team of 2.0 GPA atheletes since it's just a waste of time. Playing against 1600 players is just charity work.

Can we get a "skill issue" in the chat?

I’m very confused.

Weren’t you or are still a 1600 rapid player at one point crushing 600 players?

Wait, I willingly played rapid to beat 600 rated players. I wasn't just playing with my friends. Good work detective! 

Huh, struck me as ironic and hypocritical.

I trust they were competitive, educational and entertaining games.

It just doesn't work that way. Setting it at -25 to infinity doesn't mean you'll generally be playing higher rated players. I have mine set to any - any and, excluding tournament play, I've not once had a player more than 100 points higher or lower.

This isn't Lichess, bud.

And the idea that you can boost your rating by playing higher rated players is false. You'll gain more if you win, sure, but you'll win less often. Duh.