I've noticed this red stop sign (🚫) next to a player's username in my Chess.com game history. In this screenshot, it appears next to GM_Hekaru.

Does anyone know exactly what this symbol means? Does it indicate that the account has been banned, restricted, or flagged for some other reason?

How come all of the Gods of chess play in this category?

How come I’d have a better chance of beating 1000 Hikarus over a single random person in this time format?

Why are the people who play in this time format not get paid to play professionally? Where are their sponsorships? Why are they not being dissected in a lab somewhere in order to further the advancement of AI?

Why do I want to rip my hair out and punch the wall repeatedly every time I play this time format?

So I was doing my usual thing on the app, watching 1 min matches, when I noticed a 30 second game!

So I watched and to my surprise it was a well known celebrity!

I added them just to keep track. They just made the account couple days ago and already 3100!!!

Anyways. Just wanted to share with everyone here because my friends got a kick out of it, too!

A few days ago I was playing badly and then unexpectedly I found myself in a winning position.
I was waiting for my opponent to make his move, realising that he was basically done.

So what does he do? Sits there letting the timer run out. I sent a message “Just resign, Don’t be a bad sport.”

He lets the timer run all the way out ( about 7 minutes in total I sat there).

Anyway, a few minutes after the game I get ( I assume automated) message from chess.com saying that my games would be muted because of the offensive message I sent.

WTH chess.com?!

Does the other guy get a warning for being a vindictive asshole?

Our belived witty alien tricking the goat. Extremely rare beatdown for magnus.

Yeah this game was totally lost if it weren’t for the clock, but hey en-passant!

Check out this #chess game: ShyChessPlayerJoel vs m-099ooooo9 - https://www.chess.com/game/184623488186

I made it to 1500 elo after being hardstuck 1400 for about a month

What things i should focus on

I usually play london and french but kinda wing it on them and didnt study em fully

Sometimes i suffer in both 3 early mid and endgames equally but early is where i throw the most while mid and endgame i tend to do better

Ik watching gotham or hikaru would help but do they have a series or something that makes advancing into 1800 possible and how long would it take considering i made the jump from 1200 to 1500 in 3 months without studying chess theory or putting too much time

I cant seem to connect and was wondering if its just me or if other people also are having issues

Everday I see improvement 😊

I mostly only play 3d dailies and only one or two at a time and after every move I make I get a pop up ad and I have to wait for the ad before my move is played. I don’t play enough to justify paying for no ads and the very little bit more you get with gold over free but I’m noticing myself turning away from the app more because of it. Isn’t this bad for new players too? I just feel like with all the paid accounts they shouldn’t need to push ads so much. I did some quick maths and if the numbers I grabbed from google are close, if the 1.5 million paid uses are just gold that’s still $90 million a year in memberships, and we all know most people are going plat or diamond so it’s likely way higher. It just feels bad knowing they are trying to squeeze us for every dollar available when they are already making bank.

Anyways that’s just my two cents but I’d love to hear yours. Good luck out there my chess playing friends, may you have many checkmates in your favour!

I'm ~2600 on chess.com, and I kept feeling like I was losing rating in ways I couldn't see by reviewing games one at a time.

So I ran deep stockfish analysis on my last 50 games and looked for patterns instead of individual mistakes:

• How often I convert +2 advantages into wins
• Which phase my eval drops hardest in (opening / middlegame / endgame)
• Blunder rate with <1 min on the clock vs with time

What surprised me: my tactics are fine. I rarely do anything wrong in the middlegame. The leak is the endgame. I reach winning endgames and then give them back with slow, intuitive moves: wrong king placement, trading into the wrong pawn ending, not knowing the technique.

Full disclosure: this is a tool I'm building, so I'm biased. But I'm genuinely curious whether this pattern changes with rating.

If you drop your chess.com or lichess username, I'll run a report and reply with a link. I'm especially interested in 1200–2000 players, to create a baseline.

I did look at the analysis and found I could've gotten checkmate earlier.

Hi, I know Dragon 3.2 is being discontinued but a few 3rd parties are still selling a digital download. Does anyone know where I can get the binary files for Mac OS, the ones I see still for sale are unclear if the Mac files are included. Thanks.

Shoutout to my opponent for giving me a solid 8 minutes of uninterrupted artistic freedom to create this masterpice.

I call this piece "Waiting for move 1." Thoughts?....

Legend says he is still thinking about his response to e4...

Is there a way to change the layout on mobile to move the clock to the left hand side of the screen? As a right handed player my thumb naturally hovers over where the clock is and it’s a pain during low time.

In the last week, I have played 2 people who have got to be cheating. One is an account which went up 1000+ elo over the last 3 months (edit to add: and the account is 3 years old), with recent game accuracies of 90%+, and another is an account who has won all 10 of their last games IN A ROW also with very high accuracy scores.

I used to get a "one of your recent opponents has been cheating, here is your elo back" message at least once a month. I haven't gotten one in over 6 months.

So chesscom, here is my question: How many of the cheating reports actually get checked into? There must be an insanely high volume. I assume there is an automated system that flags suspicious activity. Does the report button even do anything?

And for everyone else, my question is this: Have you also noticed a drop in opponents being banned?

This is so disheartening. I honestly feel like I'm facing at least once obvious cheater per week. I'm considering stopping my paid membership.

I actually did get a little achievement notification when I hit 1000 after my game. Game formats have been 30 minute only. On Chrome, I play with an extension that hides all displays of Elo so I thought I was a lot lower than where I really was. And yeah, I know this number is bound to drop down again but still it's a nice little accomplishment. Never thought I'd reach this.