fair play policy

01 No outside assistance

During your games, you must rely on your own ability. You may not:

• Use a chess engine or any software that suggests, evaluates, or computes moves.
• Consult opening databases, tablebases, or move-recommendation tools while a game is in progress.
• Receive help from another person, or play moves on someone else's behalf.

Studying with these tools outside of your games is, of course, completely fine — this policy is about live play.

02 No rating or result manipulation

• No sandbagging — intentionally losing or playing below your strength to lower your rating.
• No boosting — arranging wins or colluding to inflate a rating.
• No multiple accounts used to farm ratings, evade penalties, or distort matchmaking and leaderboards.

03 Respect other players

Harassment, hate speech, threats, and deliberate disruption (such as stalling to waste an opponent's clock) are not allowed in games, chat, or messages.

04 Detection and enforcement

We monitor for violations, which may include reviewing game data and play patterns. Where we reasonably believe this policy has been broken, we may — at our discretion and proportionate to the conduct — issue a warning, adjust or reset ratings, remove content, or suspend or permanently close an account.

05 Appeals

If you believe enforcement action was taken in error, you may appeal by emailing contact@zochess.com. Please include your username and any relevant details.

06 Changes

We may update this policy as the Service evolves. We'll revise the "last updated" date above when we do.