Dear Titled Players...

Chess is a great game, no doubt. There are tons of online events going on every now and then. Almost every one of you is participating in those events. Early Titled Tuesday, Late Titled Tuesday, Chessable Masters, Pro Chess League, and so on, you name it! As a FAIR PLAY PROCTOR, we do monitor the events and take action accordingly. But it’s not only on us to keep the environment cool and smooth, but also a humane responsibility to all the participants out there, it’s for the sake of the game per se. 

For this blog, I will try to give an image of what we do and I will be using TITLED TUESDAY as an example. 

Before that, you all know Chess.com has a Fair Play Policy which I assume every one of you has read. Let me pull that up for you again, it’s a little revision we’ll do now. 

• All of your moves must be your own

• Do not cheat in any way

• Do not get help from any other person, including parents, friends, coaches or another player

• Do not use chess engines, software of any kind, bots, plugins or any tools that analyze positions during play

• Do not use tablebases or any other resources that show the best move (in both Online and Daily chess)

• You may use Opening Explorer or other books without engine evaluations in Daily chess only (not in Online / Live play)

• Do not perform any automated analysis or “blunder checking” of your games in progress

• Do not allow anyone else to use your account

• Do not use anyone else's account

• Do not artificially manipulate ratings, matches, or game outcomes

• Do not interfere with the gameplay of other members

• Suspecting your opponent of using outside help is not an excuse to do the same. If you suspect someone is cheating, report the player to Chess.com.

EXCEPTION: These rules do not apply to unrated games or tactics. However, if you intend to use assistance against your opponent, you must notify them beforehand. We may expand or narrow any applicable exceptions to the Fair Play Policy at any time without notice to you.

WARNING: If we determine that you have violated our Fair Play Policy, then we will close your account and label it closed for a Fair Play violation. All account status changes are made in our sole discretion. For a full listing of the measures, we will take to both monitor your play on Chess.com and enforce our Fair Play Policy, see the Termination and Account Limitations sections of our User Agreement.

Titled Tuesday is the most popular event to play among other events since it doesn’t require any additional criteria. You have a title means you can sign up for the event. Once you sign up, the Proctor from Fair Play Team may reach out and text you via messages, it’s the only medium we use for Titled Tuesday. So, once you sign up for the event, you do have to check your textbox, at any point of the event, you may get a call from us. We ask the players to join us via ZOOM. We do provide the ZOOM Link and the password of course. 

There are basically FOUR things we ask :

• We ask the player to Share the Screen he is playing on. 
• We ask the player to show the Task Manager 
• We ask the player to Add a Second Camera (it can be a mobile phone!)
• We ask the player to do a quick Room Sweep with the device’s camera or the second camera he/she added. 

Once you join ZOOM, you have to perform all the tasks abovementioned. Failure to join on request may result in disqualification from the tournament. 

This makes me come to the next point quickly. Not every one of us is tech-savvy, we did notice some of the players not having enough skills to operate their playing devices except for making the moves. So, some of the players start panicking after getting a call from the proctors. They often take our words (my assumption) negatively thinking that our team thinks of the player as a bad person, literally! I can assure you that it’s not about YOU. It’s about the game and the environment others are playing in. You won’t believe how many reports our team gets regarding breaking the fair play rules. We may not make the place clean overnight, but by coming to the point of normal checking- we surely can make it safe day by day. 

Ensuring fair play and protecting the integrity of the game is a priority for Chess.com. We believe that our members should have a voice in how we handle cheating in chess, and in an effort to understand the community's sentiments better, we shared a fair play survey with three groups: members, titled players, and top players (the top 100 players overall as well as the top 20 women players by FIDE rating). We received 11,383 member responses, 166 titled-player responses, and 61 responses from top players.

Read the Fair Play Survey Results conducted in 2022!

Another thing our team noticed is that many of the players do think it’s spam or some kind of invitation to get the account hacked when they see our text with the ZOOM Link. How to be sure it’s not what that demography of the player thinks it is? 

Well, one of the strong pieces of evidence is- you’ll always get the invitation to join ZOOM from an account having the BLUE PAWN icon next to his/her username.

Blue Pawn means the user is a moderator, and GREEN PAWN means he/she is a staff! We strongly advise you not to click on any link if you do not know the user or have that minimum communication and trust in between.

Cheating in chess is a complex problem, and there are no easy answers. But we can get to it if we cooperate, listen, and apply! 

Drop your questions (if you have any) in the comment!