Title pretty much.

Long story short, I got paired with this guy who has yet to lose a single game. I aborted the game because I found the account incredibly suspicious but came back to check his history a couple of days later, out of curiosity. Well, he's still rolling with his undefeated streak.

This ain't any speedrun account and smurfing is not allowed, and those are the only 2 explanations I can find for such a streak tbh. There's no way that a normal 2k~ player could have such a performance tbh, expecially considering the positions reached in many games.

The sad part is that I've had to abort multiple games vs suspicious accounts and APPARENTLY (just a feeling) I've started to get matched vs more and more of them by doing so. For istance, a big chunk of my recent matchups have been vs newborn accounts (literally 0-2 days old), many of which play perfect chess or are blatantly cheating (suspicious time usage and engine-type of moves). Be aware that I'm not saying that any new account is suspicious, but some of them are literally painted green and with super sus games.

Is there a secondary *punishment* pool for aborting games? Or is it just my personal feeling and a bias overall?

Am I somehow forced to play vs accounts that legitimately look fishy just to avoid being matched with more and more of them?

If so, it's kinda annoying considering that the cheating/sandbagging detection of chesscom seems to have huge holes, hence forcing me (or anyone else) to just take the L by playing against engines and hoping that they'll be punished (and the elo refunded).

Fellow chesscom players, am I alone on this boat?

How does this not get you instantly banned?

Is this impressive at my level? 😃

Mine has to be the smothered mate there’s something ridiculously satisfying about a king being completely trappad by it’s own piesces ,I’m curious about your favorite type and what makes it so satisfying for you

I went from 1004 to 914 in the span of 5 days and won only 2 games. One because of abandonment, and the other due to them blundering their queen. I have been missing obvious forks, skewers, and pins that even a 400 elo player would notice. I'm tilting horribly and don't know what to do.

Does anyone else find that the environment you’re in, the device you use etc significantly impacts your gameplay? Because for me, it definitely does. I’m going to caveat this discussion with a disclaimer - I am autistic so I’ve probably unconsciously tricked my mind into the following 😂

I’ve noticed that I seem to play my best games when sat on my chair with a keyboard and mouse - being able to calculate moves by dragging arrows etc and it feels like I’ve got a wider scope of the board. Sometimes I overthink it, and miss a few things but who doesn’t - especially at 1150! (I peaked at 1300 and fell off tremendously).

On my iPad, I’ve been playing alright, nothing special. Usually when I’m on the train or if I’m at cricket, I tend to play decent chess.

However, on my phone I very rarely get settled and struggle to concentrate. I’m usually lying in my bed and it makes me feel tired. Smaller screen, less to look at, I feel tempted to see any notifications that come up on my DnD, naturally means more blunders and shocking games!

Sometimes I won’t want to open my laptop and play chess, and I’ve got an urge to whip out my phone and play after seeing a reel or a TikTok (otherwise I’d go on my laptop all the time).

Does anyone else go through this? Or is it that you always stick to one device no matter what? Or you’re consistent on all of them?

It took around 2 years of on and off learning the game. Took a couple of multi month breaks. Does this seem like a normal time frame? Also what study tips helped you reach a new high around this elo when you were here? Trying to keep improving!

This bot is so fun to play against and it throws a lot of quotes at you.

Hint: Magnus has never beat me

I started playing these many days ago, even my yt algorithmn has changed and I keep seeing more matches on my recommendations.

i don't get why this is the best move. if i take the queen with the bishop, the king will be in check so i can just take the rook too. so the rook isn't protecting anything, i think this move should have been blunder

I can't conceive of why I would be muted from the subreddit for submitting this appeal? I don't think my original post broke any rules, but the fact I got muted for SUBMITTING AN APPEAL is infuriating. And they muted me from messaging them, so I can't even respond? Like what the fk.

One of my friends on chess.com, this is genuinely crazy.

Listen, I know, I hear you, I just need to get good BUT HEAR ME OUT.

I don’t think you should get paired with someone whose ELO ceiling is far higher than yours. I JUST worked up to 988 and was playing against a 975. However, the 975 USED to be 1200. The game felt a little lopsided because he played with 85%~ accuracy and I played at my usual 65%~.

I know this is probably just complaining over a loss, but watching both Levy and Hikaru say “wow, the ELO ladder is a lot more difficult than it used to be,” while I’m just trying to get to 1000, makes it feel like somethin needs to get revamped. Thoughts?

He's played since 2021, but was more like he played a good bit (mainly rapid) in first year. Then played chess very sporadically up until like late Summer 2025, with said sporadic chess being mainly blitz. From there he beat guys few hundred elo above him and started doing blitz, eventually beating a 2400 in an online tournament, and drawing an FM and CM in seperate tournaments. Those resulrs came around Dec 2025 or Jan 2026. Few months after that he beat a CM in blitz, and then from there had (without glaze) too many wins against 2000+ to remember them all, but I do recall at one point he beat a 2500 blitz, and won a 7 game series against an NM, and in peak days was beating 2300+ players back to back in blitz while having a peak blitz elo of 1800. Around summertime this year he started to pivot more to rapid, and beat a 2200 and 2300 while being around 2000 rapid himself. He also has not been banned for cheating to my knowledge, so hes almost certainly legit. Im just confused how he does it as his advice he gives out is usually fairly simplistic, revolving around principles, composure, end games, and analysis usually being looking at only key momenrs of games (in his definition, where eval drops by 1 or more or the move feels like something easy or interesting to fix) and liking to trade down to and end game if position demands it.

It keeps on happening in my games and idk how to defend it.

I'm curious how people here actually handle opening preparation and memorization.

For those who have their own opening repertoire:

• How do you review your openings?
• Is there something in particular you find annoying about your current method?

I'm doing some research into this and would be really interested to hear what people think. Thanks everyone :)

Edit: If anyone would be willing to help out I’d appreciate it if you answered this 1-3 minutes google form for my research. Have a good one :)

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc7mH6W4YOkk6FphBvB-caqINxCwtDuEXUa_0BgdUrx-a8xvA/viewform?usp=publish-editor

I'm currently 1900 rapid chess.com, I haven't got a lot of OTB classical experience, I've only played in 2 tournaments with a rating of 1500. Right now, I'm just reading the Woodpecker Method 1, and 100 endgames you must know, and trying to go for 100% accuracy 30 puzzles a day in Chess.com but it takes a lot of time so I usually do around 15 and get around 85% accuracy. I'm just going to keep this as a long term goal but I think these books will help me quite a lot (I know im not ready for them know but I hope to be so soon): the Mark Dvoretsky's complete endgame manual, Grandmaster preparation series, The art of attack, and Pump up your rating. What other actions would you guys recommend for improvement?

I used to assume that better analysis of every lost game would naturally lead to faster improvement. I'm no longer convinced.

Most middlegame positions never appear again. Even if an engine or coach perfectly explains why you lost, that specific explanation may have little chance of becoming useful in another game.

What actually repeats seems to exist one level above the position:

• Missing the opponent's forcing moves
• Releasing tension too early
• Overlooking pawn breaks
• Attacking before completing development
• Recognizing tactical ideas too slowly

This suggest a different model: a game is not necessarily a lesson by itself. It is one piece of evidence about how you make decisions but alone it cannot reliably be used as a lesson.

The useful unit of analysis might be a recurring decision opportunity. When your opponent has a forcing continuation, how often do you detect it? When a pawn break is required, do you search only for piece moves?

The challenge is avoiding conclusions that are technically true but practically useless. Calling every blunder "piece safety" or every missed tactic "calculation" doesn't tell the player what to change. A useful weakness should be specific enough to train, frequent enough to matter and supported by multiple positions.

Instead of saying:

You missed five tactical opportunities.

A stronger diagnosis might say:

In nine positions where your opponent had an immediate forcing threat, you continued with own plan six times. This happened most often when you already had an attacking plan.

That describes a decision habit, its trigger, and something concrete to practice.

This is the direction I'm experimenting with in ChessLogix: treating individual games as evidence and looking across them for trainable decision patterns. Less of an obituary for each lost game, and more fo a longitudinal diagnosis of how the player thinks.

When you review many of your games together, which weaknesses can you identify with real confidence? And which common labels (calculation, positional understanding, or piece safety, etc) are too broad to be useful?