Rating advantage by choosing to play as white

[trichoplax]

Two things each seem fair individually, but in combination seem unfair:

• The "Rated" field can only be set to "Yes" when the "Color" field is set to "Random" (seems fair).
• No rating adjustment is made for a game that is aborted before a move is made (seems fair).

Each of these seems a reasonable approach, but together they mean that an unscrupulous player can start a game with "Color" set to "Random" and abort if they do not happen to start as white. This allows them to play all of their rated games as white.

I don't know if there are any mechanisms in place already to mitigate this problem. If not, would it be better to treat aborting a game before a move is made as a loss, to prevent avoiding the random colour assignment?

Is it intended that a player be able to abort a game before making a move to avoid playing against a particular opponent (perhaps one too strong for them)? If so, the opponent could be presented before the player decides to begin the game, and only once confirmed is the random choice of colour revealed. This way a player can abort based on opponent, but not based on colour.

[FirePlank]

Chess.com gives you a warning if you abort too many games in a certain period and then periodically bans you from starting new games if it continues. A similar system could be implemented here.

[trichoplax]

Chess.com gives you a warning if you abort too many games in a certain period and then periodically bans you from starting new games if it continues. A similar system could be implemented here.

That sounds good if the intention is to prevent aborting a game for either reason (based on colour or based on opponent). I don't know whether the intention is to allow aborting a game based on opponent. Is there a reason to prevent someone from aborting a game if their invitation is accepted by someone with a rating 600 points higher than theirs?

I understand that there is only a very small loss in rating for losing to someone with a much higher rating, but some players may prefer to only play games against opponents nearer their own rating. Another option might be to allow an invitation to optionally specify a rating range (such as "only +/-200 from my rating).

[LPDJulius]

Sliders like on Lichess would be nice. You can choose +/- 0, 50, 100… up to +/- 500. On Infinite Chess, as there are not many people, we should do if up to +/- infinity.

[Naviary2]

Is it intended that a player be able to abort a game before making a move to avoid playing against a particular opponent

That is a happy byproduct of the current behavior. They can back out if they change their mind from new information.

would it be better to treat aborting a game before a move is made as a loss

Doesn't seem like a good idea, I don't know of another chess website that doesn't allow backing out before moves are played...

Chess.com gives you a warning if you abort too many games in a certain period and then periodically bans you from starting new games if it continues.

Seems harder to implement, and with our game frequency it wouldn't really punish players anyway... unless the ban was for a long time.

The rating range idea seems very nice for scaling!

Another idea I have is to decrease the weight of the color the player most recently played as. For example, if both players just played white, then color would be 50-50. If player 1 just played white twice in a row, but player 2 played white just once, then it's 67% chance player 1 gets black. If player 1 just played white and player 2 just played black then it's a 100% chance that player 1 gets black (so they swap every time if they keep playing each other).