Live Chess: Proposing a Takeback offer system WITHOUT requests

Hi all, this is my first post here so apologies in advance for any gaffes.

As mentioned in the title, I made this post to suggest a system of takebacks (for Live chess, I am aware that a standard request-takeback system exists for unrated games) My proposal is for a unilateral takeback offer system by the player whose turn it is to act WITHOUT the usual feature to request takebacks. Logically, this would only make sense before

This issue has certainly been raised on these forums before (most recently https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/takeback-request-option) , so I don't think I need to rehash the benefits of having takebacks at all, and websites like Lichess have request-takeback enabled for live games too.

The major argument against it it that I can see is (to paraphrase) the concern of whiny players requesting takebacks after bad moves, and presumably stalling out the clock when denied, which given how often it has happened to me by an opponent facing checkmate/fully lost positions, is certainly a valid concern.

But let us consider the flip side as well. Except perhaps at the highest level (and usually even at the top levels), the point of playing a game of chess isn't simply to win by any means possible to gain made-up rating points but to have a fun game, which of course is only possible in somewhat equal positions. One of my favourite quotes (about a fictional game, but relevant here IMO) has an expert teaching a student a strategic game and explains that the point isn't simply to win: "The point... is to play a beautiful game. Why would I want to win anything else?".

To get to the point, at any time control beyond bullet, perhaps blitz, both players spend time and brainpower assembling exciting positions. I'm sure we've all been in the situation of excitedly calculating a 4-5 move trap for an advantage or to win a piece only for a misclick or a blunder to effectively end the game well before its time. And while I've certainly been thankful to get some of those blunders when I was losing, I've also been annoyed when an interesting position fizzles out because of random lapsus manus. Changing the mechanics of gameplay to fix this seems both sensible and completely feasible to me. 

And most of the time, it is quite obvious when this happens, often to both players (how many times have we noticed our blunder the instant after the click?), so the workflow I am suggesting is that as the 'winning' player facing a blunder/misclick, IF THEY ARE INTERESTED IN PRLONGING THE GAME, should have the option to extend a takeback offer for the last move prior to making their own (which obviously the opponent may decline, some other caveats at the end)

Pros:

1) When playing friends/'friendly' rated chess, would make the game a lot better, especially in cases of a large rating mismatch

2) One of the big reasons I even use chess.com is the Arena/Tournament situation, which does often end up with those mismatches

3) Coaching/streaming would benefit from this, I think, though I hope to hear responses from people so engaged. Given how many strong players also use alts/do rating climbs, there certainly seems to be a sizeable population of players at any given time playing far weaker opponents

4) Maybe, just maybe. Can reduce overall toxicity by enabling actions to foster goodwill (one can hope )

5) The mental toll of a blunder: This is perhaps less of a problem in bullet/blitz where every game has multiple blunders by both sides, or at higher rating levels but at mine (around 1500), a single blunder leads to tilt and further blunders, that then ruins the game, even if the blunder only ceded a minor advantage (Example: Blundering a bishop/knight in the opening is by no means gg at these levels, there's still a chance. But if that blunder leads to a cascade of bad moves, then, as agadmator says, there is nothing more to be done, but resign. (My sense is that this blunder cascade is often the 'trigger' for rage quitters as well re toxicity )
Cons, with partial responses:

1) Primary concern of whiny players haranguing their opponent to forgive their blunder is the reason for the proposed system. Not a 'right' to be demanded, but a gift by a generous player.

2) Time control issues: Obviously there's some finesse that's needed with a system such as this, especially for shorter time controls to ensure that the takeback-offerer's generosity isn't abused. For a start, in rapid games and above though, the loss of a few seconds shouldn't matter too much

3) Move order/no of moves: As mentioned at the top, this proposal would only ever be useful in situations where the opponent at least notices the situation prior to making their own move, and so might not be that useful at all.

But once again, it needs to start somewhere and atleast in roughly equal and interesting positions in Rapid+ games, these errors are quite apparent. Mouse slips especially, as you would assume that the opponent who has been pushing you thus far intended to capture a piece, not park his Queen next to it for you to capture ..

4) Blunders, misclicks and 'integrity of chess': In prior threads, one area of debate I saw was that takebacks, if enabled should only be used for misclicks, not to forgive blunders.

Which is of course impossible to distinguish for the opponent. But I don't see any issue with giving the reciepient of such unintended gifts the discretion to decline it, if they so choose. As for the integrity of chess being defaced, that's a line I've heard against everything from bullet games to sneaky memorised engine lines. The game simply evolves, and I'm sure there were old-school traditionalists who initally opposed castling and en passant when those were 'new'

5) Weaker opponents offering a takeback in response to a gambit/sacrifice: Honestly the thought of this happening gave me a chuckle. Certainly measures should be in place to stop annoying scenarios like being offered a takeback every single move but the same Spam prevention systems against spamming Draws should work heree too right? And hey, if your sacrifice is so clever that your opponent thinks you misclicked, take it as a complment, feel Tal for a moment as you decline and play on. It's the human equivalent of an engine calling your move a brilliancy! And maybe a sign that you should be playing stronger opponents.

6) Hindering improvement by making players more lax about blunder checking: While playing computer bots, this is actually one of the bad habits that having takebacks did have one me. I was perhaps not as focussed on ensuring pieces weren't hanging when I knew the do-over option existed. But again, the proposal is for the takeback to be your oppoent's gift, not your option. If you are playing such generous opponents that blunder takebacks are so frequent that you can't get better, well that's a player list to build for sure. And again, seems like it can be dealt with by allowing players to opt out. Either to get better or for any subjective notions of purity, that you can apply to yourself.

So that's about it. What started off as a slight pet peeve ended as this massive wall of text, and of course, this is just a preliminary system that I outlined here, and the implementation details would no doubt affect how this would play out at scale. That said, I did spend an unwise amount of time thinking about this, so would love to hear feedback from the community on anything I missed or glossed over..

Also I don't actually have any idea on whether chesss.com devs/executives use the Site Feedback when building features in the first place.. Would like some clarity on how that works as well!
To playing a beautiful game, with grace!

I would not welcome takebacks as a feature here. The system causes a lot of argument on Lichess and is bad for the game in general.

I agree with you @tryingmongoose,

Before the main content, I'd also like to note that I'm a first-time poster in Chess.com and I apologize for the same potential reasons.

The site here definitely needs a takeback feature, especially for unrated games, but I would still strongly recommend extending this to rated games as well. In Lichess you can also disable such a feature for your games so this shouldn't be an issue if Chess.com does this as well. I don't understand why this would be bad for the game because, as you have said, that the vast majority of playing chess is a means of having fun, other than some top-level chess and rating challenges. Of course, takeback abuse is a problem in allowing takebacks in live chess, but there are game reviews, and it's up to the player to decide how they figure out their mistakes. But in fact, I feel that request takebacks work better than having an engine running in the background to see if you accidentally cascaded off your winning position.

I've already lost many games as a result of very buggy piece movement. My piece will sometimes land short one square of my intended location, which will obviously be extremely problematic in piece exchanges, as well as the enjoyability of the game itself. I can definitely feel you; in one game I blundered in a strongly advantageous position (piece dragging issues, not calculation error), and after my opponent took advantage, I stalled for three minutes, and finally I resigned, and I reported my opponent out of pure rage (also because my opponent was 100 pts. more than I was, I saw s/he was way overrated, and felt that it might have been cheating somehow.) (By the way, my rating has cascaded 100 points, purely because of drag error or misclicks, and as for dragging issues, the devs really need to fix it.)

Enough of my personal venting, I feel that request takebacks aren't much of the problem simply because:

The other player can always refuse.

Of course, this may, and will, create some integrity issues, because sometimes the accident was obvious and the other player will simply see that as a gift without strings. But request takebacks basically prevent a situation in very low-level chess where it seems like the player misclicked but it was a genuine blunder, then they identify it and get a free takeback.

So, I would definitely welcome request takebacks, especially in Rapid or faster games. In fact, I think takebacks are more necessary in rated games, because stress will cause more misclicks and mouse slips. In general, games on this platform are friendly and for fun, so takebacks should be invited into our games. It might even make Chess.com more popular. Actually, I'm using this platform right now simply because Lichess's UI is completely bugged and only the HTML code is working (for me) as of the time of this post.

Sorry for such a long response, if anyone dis/agrees or wants to add to this, please do. Thank you, enjoy your time playing!

P.S. after posting this I solved my puzzles and I missed one of them because of drag issues, this time not even going the right direction. Please Fix.