League clarifications

Since Jan 21, these are the new rules.

Only performance in the first Champion division is going to count towards prizes.

And, as posted by @TomoMod, simuls are not allowed.

None of the games I won this week are counted (same already last week, it only worked the first week of this year iirc), I'm still at 0 trophies but if the games i won (mostly but not only in tournaments) would count i should progress this Sunday to the next higher league :(

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/leagues-1#comment-66939921

So, any chess.com staff can bother to make an official statement on what the hell is happening? It's been said that simuls are not allowed anymore, however, 1st place in Elite league already has 655 trophies made in 80-90 minutes. IM, titled player, diamond member..... He seems to feel pretty safe while doing it. What should we do? 

Meanwhile, you keep allowing the ZERO fair-play arena settings, where high Elo players win 70-99% of time, matched with players even 2000 Elo below them... AND GETTING ARENA POINTS BONUS, ON TOP OF EVERYTHING. Average players winning ~50% of their matches have zero chances to compete.

Besides the disgusting, absolutely moronic decision to change the rules in the middle of the Leagues tournament, you're only handpicking the issues you seem to be bothered by.

Simuls are anything but easy. They're quite challenging and absolutely exhausting after a while. That was the only thing balancing the arena abuse you consider as normal, the only thing giving even the average pleb a fair chance to compete without resorting to actual cheating, like account sharing (to play 24/7) or absolute sandbagging on purpose (1000+ Elo jumps).

I'd choose that over hours of bullet/blitz arena grind every time. Not to mention how I'd throw your website in a cobra pit whenever arena matches me with someone 600 Elo higher than me, while I actually put my precious time into trying to win games and trophies.

I don't give a damn about your cash prizes, but so far for me, the thrill of the competition was, until now, something extraordinary. Now? Uncertainty, chaos, zero communication, lack of professionalism from your side.

At this point, why don't you just pick the winners yourselves if you won't offer the same fair chance to everyone?

Oh no! I didn't see the new rules til now.., I got my first 400ish trophies from rapid/blitz simul... is my account getting closed, or am I being kicked from leagues? I started with playing the hourly 3+0 arenas, but at some point in crystal I opted for simuls to keep up. 

So for league rules, no more playing multiple games at once, got it. However, what qualifies as "intentionally only playing lower rated opponents"? What rating constitutes as "lower rated"? 1+ rating points, or a few hundred? Additionally, as @Scorpyoon89 mentioned in #7 about arena abuse, is intentionally joining arenas that often have lower rated players disallowed as well? for instance, the premium only arenas, 3|2/5|5. The time control is longer, but it's easier to attain a winning streak, so the tradeoff may be worth it. 

One last point, which @scorpyoon89 mentioned, is account sharing. Sandbagging has always been against chess.com rules and it a reportable offense. However, account sharing I would assume to be tough to prove if both players are around equal playing strength. I have seen some accounts play almost all day, and be up 500-1000 trophies when I wake up 8 hours later the next... although it is always possible someone simply requires less sleep to function.

From now on I'll just stick with 3+0 blitz arenas to be safe (sorry for "gaming the system" before 🙁) but I am interested as to some concrete/numeric clarifications for the league rules if possible. Thanks! 😊

@Mayo_Neighs

It seems there are no rules. Nothing clear, at least. Rules get changed in the middle of the competition, they have no proper system to detect ''so called'' no longer allowed ''abuses'' (multiple games at once).

No proper system to detect it... means manual work to notice and punish. Considering the amount of games played daily in website, it's a black hole. You can't manually check that, which means you only handpick some players to punish, based on reports from other players. If you can't even get close to punishing all of them, you're doing a mistake towards the few unlucky ones.

For the sake of all players who couldn't make it to Elite because of ''abusers'' when the ''abuse'' was still an allowed feature, the same rules should have stayed in place until the end of the tournament.

It really is a bummer how vague the rules are... its kinda been a free-for-all up until this point (no fault towards the chess.com staff, there has been alot of unforeseeable plot twists with the whole leagues competition). That is a good point, that there are no ways to really detect/enforce the new rules. How are 2-game-simuls detected? How is a shared account detected? Both would offer one a significant advantage. I mean to keep up one could stay awake 2-3 days straight playing chess... I know I've done it before, but its not a good life choice by any means 😁 I don't want to have an unfair/undeserved advantage over anyone, but I'm not too keen on the vice versa either 🤣

I guess I'll wait a day or 2 to see how/if the new simul rule is enforced in any way... but for now this is chaos 😐 (Again, no fault to the chess.com staff in any way, I just wish I knew what is happening with the leagues... oh well tho, all good 🙂)

https://www.chess.com/leagues/elite

Either everyone gets punished or nobody. The only fair and good way for this problem to be solved was making what's not allowed.... well, unable to be abused, right from the start.

Some people ignore the new change of rules, some simply don't check to see that something changed. Have fun punishing the people that you feed your ads to, while they use their own time to enrich your website content, all while you fail to make the rules clear and make it so easy to bypass them.

As I already said, while there is no automated process to simply disable what's not allowed, all this is a chaotic manhunt which will never be accurate/fair to everyone and chess.com image goes deeper into the land of gross incompetence.

Martin, Thank you for that answer (and sorry for cross-posting)!
I'll answer there (although "clarification" seems the more specific andappropriate topic...)

Are there any way to skip division while upgrading to next division?

What do you mean?