23 consecutive rated pairings as the same color (lichess, are you there to help?!)

@thibault I managed to get in touch with a lichess dev/admin who was willing to investigate this issue further; thankfully. The findings were that my "handpicking" of white games was unrated games against the engine 3-6 months ago...

Starts here (odgkcm2x) and ends here (qiutVuAz).

As I've reiterated on this thread, I do not play rated games where I specifically request a color (unless the rare instance where a rematch gets messed up and you have to reset to pick the appropriate color).

This leads to many questions....

1. Why would unrated and/or games against the computer/engine affect my pairings for rated games?
2. If that is indeed what is happening, why wouldn't my 30-40+ unrated games as black which I played before this streak began affect my pairings (you'd think I'd be getting nothing but white now)?
3. Isn't this flaw prone to abuse by players, who can then play the engine with black a hundred times to end up with rated pairings as white over and over again?
4. Can we please try to fix this issue and/or reset my account so I can go back to playing on this site?

Thanks

"3. Isn't this flaw prone to abuse by players, who can then play the engine with black a hundred times to end up with rated pairings as white over and over again?"

LOL! Bizarre this wasn't investigated the moment you brought it up.

Good afternoon,

lichess enforces fair colors, which means that if you pick white games, then your "color score" increase and then you have to play as many black games. However people started to abuse the system by picking black games in order to have a white games streak, therefore you can't accumulate negative score that way. That's why you can have more black games than white, and you still need to recover from a white streak.

Games against the computer are not taken in count, but casual games are.

Which means if you choose to play 10 games as white, then 10 games as black, you will still need to play another 10 games as black before starting to play with white again.

@Solal35 Are you really explaining the reason behind balancing games as black and white? Have you really read none of the messages about this problem in this and other threads? Missed the part in the message you're replying to where he said:

"I managed to get in touch with a lichess dev/admin who [found] that my "handpicking" of white games was unrated games against the engine 3-6 months ago..."

?

Maybe have some coffee and try again?

@Solal35 please read my initial post in this thread, and all of my replies. What you said does not coincide with what I've reported; at all.

> Games against the computer are not taken in count, but casual games are.

So by what you said, people can purposely play 100+ casual games as black, then switch to rated games, and they will get a ton of white rated games? Sounds like a bug and a serious flaw to me.

Also, and I've stated more times than I can count, I just came off playing 40+ casual games as black, then when switching back to rated/random-color, I got stuck with nothing but black games. Not white. So that doesn't add up either. Nothing being discussed on this entire thread adds up.

And yet again, I've played 400 more casual games as black than white. I've played 30+ more rated games as black than white.

This is beyond frustrating..

@mstef To be honest, you're setting yourself up to fail if you're going to re-explain this to every forum user who passes through. Sounds like you've found and reported a bug, and there's a work-around until a dev fixes it.

@Doofenshmirtz what's the work around? Playing on a different site? No one at lichess has even acknowledged that this is a bug/issue. I'm not playing another 20+ rated games as black and hoping that it resolves itself one day. And even if I do that - then what? I need to create a bunch of alternative accounts if I ever want to play the engine or casual games with a specific color?

I explained to @Solal35 because he's a lichess dev; not just another forum user who reads 1% of the thread and makes a useless comment so they can sound right about something.

@mstef "what's the work around?" Play a bunch of unrated engine games as black until you read parity and get given black and white rated games again, if the dev's analysis of the problem is correct. I don't see any other alternative until the whole "read the thread; fix the bug" thing kicks in.

I'm really blown away by the handling of this issue. I've reported it 3 times over the course of an entire month. It seems to have been quickly dismissed, and any comments on it were clearly not well thought out, since none of them made any sense when you consider the information I've provided; seems obvious the issue was never taken seriously or what I wrote was quickly glanced over. It's clear to me that there's a serious flaw on this site and it's resulting in both unfair playing situations for certain players, and potential abuse. How it's being ignored is a mystery as either of these two circumstances should be cause for concern. I thought fair-play was a top concern.

I understand this is a non-commercial site, and this is usually the level of support you get when there isn't a paid support staff in place. It should be a lesson to players out there seeking "free" chess servers and complaining that other sites have commercial models. I have been donating to this site for most of the last two+ years. I suppose that will have to end now as I can no longer fairly play on this site. It's a massive disappointment.

What else would my options be now?
- Create a new account; no, that's not allowed and I don't want to have to do that.
- Play 30+ more rated games with black for absolutely no reason; no, that's not even close to fair.
- Try to ungame the broken system by playing a ton of unrated games as a specific color as was previously suggested; no, that's a waste of time and only perpetuates the bug we're discussing here.

I think Lichess should get remove of option starting game by color (for you).
That will fix it.