Players who lean exclusively on their queens

I understand that as I progress, I will encounter fewer players who open with their queen and play it exclusively. But it could be years until I'm at that level and quite frankly I find it unsporting to be stuck playing against these hacks in almost half the games I play. In fact, I find it beyond frustrating, it makes me question the extreme waste of time these games become. It seems like it would be a pretty basic thing to allow members the option of avoiding pairing with players who like to use their queens heavily in the opening. Oh, trust me, if for no other reason than survival, I've become quite adept at catching these hacks at their shenanigans, but to be frank, we members who want to work on becoming better, rather than hunting blindly with our queens, we ought to be given the option of avoiding these players, if for no other reason than to limit the extreme waste of time these games represent. In fact, and no offense intended but I consider these to be only one step above an aborted game.

"Lichess is intended to be an enjoyable environment for everyone." I'm sure I'm not the only member who would find it a lot more enjoyable if we had the option of turning down the volume on wayward queens.

@CruncciRoller said in #1:
> players who open with their queen and play it exclusively

How do you play the queen exclusively? Aren't the pawns in the way?

One option to avoid such players is "Play against the computer," or another option is to play against lichess.org/player/bots .

I think you got things backwards.

If you would be getting stupid openings half of the time and were able to punish them, you wouldn't be stuck at your level, but would rank several hundred points higher.

Improving in chess is exactly that: take advantage of your opponents' mistakes. At your level (according to your experience), this is early queen moves. Learn to beat them consistently, and your "problem" is solved.

At your current rating of < 800, you will find moves that are just absurdly stupid. That's why they are rated < 800.

Do things in the right order. There is no point in learning sophisticated positional concepts deep in some opening, if you blunder pieces left and right, or don't take advantage of the blunders by opponents.

And the rating carries the annoying truth: if they are of similar rating, their "stupid" moves are just as good as yours!

There is neither an easy technical way to filter out those players, nor should there be. It is completely legit to play any legal move one sees fit.

Respectfully I disagree that the avoidance technique cannot be done simply, the building blocks are largely in place, as evidenced by the highly evolved analysis engines that apps such as lichess already have at their disposal. It's just a matter of tweaking them to recognize the particular form of hunting and pecking that my post refers to. (Btw if you happen to know specifically through hands on experience or in-depth investigation of the 'chess engines' that I'm wrong, then please forgive my assumptions.) That said, differences of opinion are fantastic, and I thank you for sharing yours on this post I submitted.

@CruncciRoller It isn't clear to me whether you already know this, but a player who brings the queen straight out in the opening and doesn't develop other pieces is defeated by their opponent developing their own minor pieces (knights and bishops), attacking the queen while doing so, and leaving the queen-player undeveloped and defenceless. You call it "hunting and pecking", but it's really just losing play and you should be able to beat these players with proper opening development.

@Brian-E I mentioned in my post that I've become more effective in avoiding the gotcha element of it. My point had more to do with the extreme waste of time these games are. And yes, as players advance then theyre less likely to encounter this type of hunting and pecking. But advancement in chess is a years long proposition, it doesn't happen rapidly, for most of us anyways. And since wayward queen opening followed by the hunting and pecking behavior is so common, I don't think it's too much to ask if those it can simply be avoided. As they say, "been there done that." Don't need every other game to be about that, is like driving with someone around a parking lot endlessly. I don't need or want to spend the next 2 or 3 years of my chess life playing against that kind of widely prevalent play. Jmo ymmv.

While I think there are many faults with rating systems, I don't see an easy way to improve them. Small changes even like what you're proposing could have widespread positive or negative impacts on existing rating systems.

Behind every Great King is a strong Queen.
I wish I could say the same in reverse, but alas, Chess is built up around real life.
Where the women are perfect, and vastly superior to all males regarding everything, except in value.
The Queen is worth 9 points, but the almost useless King is considered priceless.

@CruncciRoller said in #4:
> (Btw if you happen to know specifically through hands on experience or in-depth investigation of the 'chess engines' that I'm wrong, then please forgive my assumptions.)

Indeed I do have. But even if you do find people who make moves you don't like, why should we punish them? This is the opponents's task. Their moves are just fine.

This would never end: one player doesn't like early queen sorties, the next one dislikes 1.Nf3. How dare someone play the Grob 1.g4? He must surely be stupid, what a waste of time. The next player tends to overlook night forks. The other one is an idiot at pawn endgames. Oh, and there's that guy who likes to keep the position blocked. Or the player who advances his pawns like mad.

You can play chess in many ways, and that is totally fine.

As a side note, (and I do not want to be rude here), I had your recent games. You made serious blunders as early as on move two.

You play 10 minutes game, yet after 3 moves you have 9:55 left and are already -2, then your opponent blunders a queen.

In game before, you made 5 pawn moves out of the first 5 moves, missing a clear win of a pawn on move 2. and are at -3 after move 5 with 9:49 left on the clock.

Another game, similar picture... hanging stuff on move 4, moving within two seconds, not taking it, blundering a full piece on move 5; funnily enough the opponent blundered on move 9 - but instead of winning, you resigned right there in a +3 position and over 9 minutes on the clock.

And the list goes on and on... those games were not cherry-picked.

So what makes you think that your opponents' moves are worth so much less than your moves? Again, this is not meant to be rude in any way. But I think you can imagine that many players would find it equally annoying to be faced with your moves, lacking the basic understanding and often not looking at the position at all.

@nadjarostowa thank you for your gift of feedback I appreciate it and accept it in the spirit with which it was given, to coin a famous science fiction movie. I must respectfully disagree with you regarding the difficulty of invoking such a feature as what I'm discussing. I don't know as much about these engines as you do probably but I can sense given how I've seen them work that to invoke something like this would not be a big stretch.

And I hope you do understand that players come to chess for many different reasons and all the reasons that people come here to play chess in my opinion are legitimate as long as they're respectful of other players. So if some of us want to play a game without having being chased around the board by a queen that has no M other than to get lucky then that should be an option.

There's a great book by George Lakoff called "women fire and dangerous things" it's a great read, I recommend it. One of its key premises is that every mind on this planet is unique and different and everybody's motivations are legitimate and the people who provide services that understand that are the ones that are going to be most respected and most used. In this case just providers who are able to customize the experience somewhat for lack of a better term are going to do better than those that Force everybody down a specific path.

Of course I don't know much about Chess most of my commentary here is based on my knowledge as an information scientist and my knowledge of how people think and operate in an information based environment. Whether that's chess buying dresses or food online or for socializing you underline concepts are very similar and that is people want freedom of choice and customize and ability to customize their experience. Cheers appreciate your feedback.