Anybody have any idea how to report nonverbal Abuse on Playchess? You can report improper chat, but there seems to be no way to report unethical tactics.

Depends what you call unethical tactics. You can always flag a Sysop and report it. Or go on the "English Help" channel and ask. (I'm a helper, btw).

But, there are sometimes things done which you think unethical and may not be able to be proved. If it happens with the same person many times, they will watch them - look at their history -and apply whatever punishment seems warrented.

In this case it was repeated takeback offers in the last few seconds of a 1 0 game. He must have been using some kind of program, because he was able to offer about 100 of them in the space of a second, and it simply wasn't possible to decline them all in time (In fact, I never did, I had to exit Playchess and go back in).

There is a place where you can right click on the screen and report someone, but he hadn't said anything reportable.

Playchess has many of these kinds of problems. Players can also erase your premoves by claiming win on disconnect too. They can also spam certain options and have them all buffered in. For example, after losing, a player can spam rematch by rapid-firing the mouse clicks on the button, making it to where you have to deal with each and every request.

But how do you report it? I can't see how to even offer Takebacks.

On the other hand, I'm using Fritz 10, and I've started to get "Get a Horse" messages when I sign in, in which Playchess tells me to download their latest free browser, rather than the Edsel I'm using now. Maybe you need the new browser to be able to offer Takebacks.

Another thing I'm noticing is that I seem (it's hard to tell) to be doing significantly worse against Guest players than against players with fixed names. I think progging is much more prevalent among guest players, but it's hard to tell.

I've only had a couple guest players I confirmed were progging on me. Most of the time I stomp the tar out of guests, but every now and then it turns out to be a master and I get outplayed. Some even allowed me to keep playing until I finally won or draw, which is really nice of them. Like I said though, I only found a couple of them were actually cheating. Cheating by itself is pretty lame, but cheating in unrated games is downright trolling.

I didn't mention it, but that game in which the guy offered all those takebacks was an unrated game.

How did you confirm that the guests were progging?

I first suspected it when I played 1. b3 and they played a very bizarre set of opening moves that I had never seen a human attempt before. After I got crushed off the board, I plugged the game into houdini and it turned out the 'strange' moves matched the engine's top pic if you turned book moves to 'off'. Every subsequent move also matched the computer's top choice, all the way until I resigned.

I remember shaking my head in disbelief that someone would be so petty as to use a computer in unrated guest games. As I said before though, I only had this happen on a couple games for sure. Whenever I ended up playing a random master, I'd get crushed as well, but in a much more logical and tangible way (and often times I even had chances to win). Against the computer, Nakamura puts it best that you're facing a brick wall and just bouncing your head off of it.

I don't play against guests. Makes no sense to me.

I think playing as a guest is useful for testing, mainly (or only). I'm not surprised if a guest cheats in (therefore) unrated games. That is probably how a cheater tests his method.