Is ChessFriends.com Cash Zone a safe place to play for money?

Cash Zone is a gaming zone more alike to a gentlemen’s club than a casino. Our foremost goal is to build a reliable and trustworthy community of chess players, by eliminating cheating, aggressive behaviour and other misconduct. Playing at the Cash Zone is a bonus feature not available to everyone, only to trustworthy players.

How is security achieved?

Firstly, player’s own trustworthiness is a requirement to access the Cash Zone. Unreliable players are not allowed to play at Cash Zone at all. To ensure trustworthiness, players are required to obtain a membership. Membership alone is a prerequisite, not an authorization, i.e. if a member is not trustworthy, he will not be allowed to play cash games.

Secondly, we put a lot of emphasis on eliminating anonymity, while still preserving privacy. Exceptionally strong players are required to confirm their identity by providing their FIDE certifications.

How can a new member gain trust to play cash games?

New members are automatically allowed to play at Cash Zone upon buying their membership, if they did not behave unfairly or inappropriately in the past.

What are the reasons to consider a player unreliable?

Main reasons of losing trustworthiness are:

  1. Cheating at any part of ChessFriends.com, especially Online Zone or Cash Zone.
  2. Repeated unfair behavior towards other players e.g. purposely running out of time without moving instead of resigning.
  3. Using crude language, verbal attacks towards other players in chat or spamming.

Even a strong and well-founded suspicion of cheating may result in suspension from cash games.

Why is membership needed to guarantee security?

The membership fee serves as a players’ guarantee of fair play. If they take part in cheating or other misconduct, they risk being permanently suspended from cash games. They still have access to other paid features of ChessFriends.com website.

How are unreliable players eliminated from playing at ChessFriends.com?

Unreliable players are suspended from playing at Cash Zone, thus they are not able to play cash zone with the same membership account again. Their credit/debit card and/or PayPal account is also labeled as unreliable, making activation of a new membership costly and complicated. This effectively prohibits unreliable players from financial gains by means of cheating.

How is ChessFriends.com able to detect cheating?

We use advanced proprietary cheat-detection engine that extensively analyse every game played. More information on cheat detection could be found here.