Mastering the Art of Exiting a Club in Chess.com: A Step-by-Step Guide

Are you a member of a Chess.com club and wondering about the benefits of joining one?

Being part of a club can help improve your skills, connect you with other chess players, and provide opportunities to participate in tournaments and events.

We will guide you through the steps on how to leave a club on Chess.com and what happens after you do so.

Stay tuned for valuable insights and considerations before making this decision!

What Are the Benefits of Joining a Chess.com Club?

The benefits of joining a chess.com club include the ability to access a variety of tools that enhance one’s chess experience. A member of a chess.com club can participate in official member-only club tournaments, access and utilize a Private Club Forum where only members can post and enjoy stimulating chess discussions, read exclusive Club Blogs to catch updates from their fellow members, participate in Club Matches Against Other Clubs, access the Community Tracker that shows the number of games played by your local club at various time controls, visit Online Clubs to join other matching members, and much more.

All this is added with constant updates provided by a professional member support team that regularly helps chess.com clubs with any issue that they face. Besides these practical utilization tools, chess.com members will find the interaction with fellow members in clubs fosters a solid sense of community that spans the globe. Members can benefit by connecting with other players to train their minds, improve their games, and make valuable friendships. There is something for everyone in Chess.com’s club feature, and anyone can move up the club ladder to bring all these benefits to their life. They will make their club grow, and it can help others prosper!

Improve Your Skills

One reason to leave a club on chess.com is if you need to move to one more closely matching your own level of play. If you are not happy with the club you are in because you feel the competition is too weak to help improve your game, you are probably not going to see much improvement by associating with chess.com clubs outside the site.

Instead, obtain a membership on a site such as ICC (Internet Chess Club) and seek out local or related over the board clubs where you can join tournaments usually played against stronger competition.

Connect with Other Chess Players

If you are still trying to decide whether to leave a club in Chess.com or not, you might want to message players in the club to see if they have had any good experiences with the club that you have not. Or just to chat. Patience8 suggested that you can leave any club in Chess.com at any time. And in case you are not aware of that facility and wish to leave a club rapidly, then you will see an EXIT CLUB link at the end of the partial list of clubs on your MY CLUBS… page. Simply click that and confirm that you want to leave. You may wish to leave a goodbye note in the club’s chat channel before departing.

Participate in Tournaments and Events

To leave a club on chess.com after interacting with fellow club members, participants can instead engage with the tournaments and events that most clubs organize regularly. Figure out the option in the club that aligns with personal style and play in a few tournaments to evaluate the clubs’ members as opponents and establish comfortable playing dynamics. Clubs that individuals feel uncomfortable in when playing in tournaments may not be a good fit.

How to Leave a Chess.com Club?

You can leave a Chess.com club by navigating to the club’s homepage and clicking the Options (gear icon) button to the left of Home. This displays a drop-down menu with options and Leave Club being the third from the bottom. Click the Leave Club option which will ask for confirmation. Click the red Leave Club button to confirm.

Step 1: Go to the Club Page

To leave the club in Chess.com, click on Home in the top menu bar to go to your profile page, then click on Clubs in the sidebar. Once you are on the Clubs page, click on the Settings gear icon for the club you want to leave.

After this, you will see an Exit option being displayed. If you are confident you want to leave, click on this leave the club.

It is generally preferred to politely leave clubs versus just dropping out with no warning. This gives the club owner or officers a chance to investigate why you are leaving and possibly address the issue. On the way out, make sure to remove any time-consuming threads you have initiated and exit any club hosted tournaments.

Step 2: Click on the ‘Members’ Tab

To leave a club in chess.com, visit the home page by clicking on the chess piece icon in the top-center of the site just above the navigation bar on the left side of the page. Clubs may be listed on the home page, but you can also use the search bar. Include the chess.com club designation name of the club (starts with a C) in the search field.

Once you are on the club page and have made the decision to depart, click the Members tab. This opens a list of all current and past club members who joined. On the right of each member’s profile entry, there will be a gear-shaped options icon. Click this, and it will bring up a drop-down expander. Select Kick from Club. Click OK on the pop-up prompt. A member is removed from the club roster, but they can rejoin if they saved the club page link. Please be certain you want to kick someone from a club since they cannot rejoin.

Step 3: Find Your Name in the Members List

After clicking the Members tab, you find the Members Affected by Change section. You have to click on your own name for the page to display a Change Club Points and Resign from Club button option.

According to chess.com guidelines, each member affected by a club’s points change receives an email notifying them. As the person making the exit, you need to see Change Club Points for the club to get the necessary email. If you are not the person making the exit, you can still exit, as seen in the image below. Here you must click your Last Visit date for the same option, as I obtained the following image from a Friendly Chess Game Club.

Step 4: Click on the ‘Leave Club’ Button

After going back to the club’s homepage, the fourth and final step to leave the club on Chess.com is to click on the ‘Leave Club’ button. This prompt only appears if you confirmed you want to leave the club during the three other steps. If you leave a club and wish to rejoin later, you must receive another invitation from the club itself.

Step 5: Confirm Your Decision to Leave

After clicking the gray Leave Club button at the bottom of the page, Chess.com asks users to confirm their decision to leave. Your club will be removed from your My Clubs and your permissions will be revoked. To confirm you’re making this decision intentionally, the dialog asks you to input a simple arithmetic operation. If you do it correctly, you can continue processing.

If you decide at this point that you actually do not want to leave the club, you can escape this dialog by clicking Cancel. However, if you then attempt to leave again, you should see the dialog suggests another simple arithmetic operation to help you confirm your receipt of the penalty in case you decide to leave the club and prevent unwanted spam.

These dialogs are genuinely designed to help you out. A math problem is easy to compute and helps ensure the dialog was not due to accidental mouse-clicking and instead a legitimate decision to leave.

What Happens After You Leave a Club?

After you leave a club in chess.com, you are no longer a member, and there are currently no further effects on your user account at chess.com. If you previously terminated yourself as the owner of the club, chess.com will automatically assign one of its moderators as the new club owner. Clubs are specified to be player-run, so members leaving has less of an impact than other features.

You Will No Longer Be a Member

The most effective way to leave a club in Chess.com is to no longer be a member. Most clubs do not require active or formal resignation, and if one simply goes inactive or deletes their account then they will effectively have left the club. Members of the club may still be able to see the announcement of whether the user has left on their free time control profile. Though it is rare that there will be any sort of formal announcement about whether a member has left or not. Chess.com does provide facilities to announce goodbyes or milestones in clubs. Just remember, if you do not see a button to leave the club, that means you have no membership obligations that require you to find it. They may even attempt to message you a club exclusive way to communicate regarding league or club events, at which point it is of course their discretion as to whether they will still communicate with someone who is technically still a member but not actively involved at all. If a user does not want that then they should just leave the club.

Your Club Activity Will Be Removed

Your club activity will be removed when you leave a club in chess.com. If you did not contribute anything to the club while you were in it, then the club activity will not be personalized or relevant to you; as a result, this is the only outcome that affects you when you leave. The clubs remain, but all of your activity is erased.

Going forward, all of the activity that you do after leaving the club will not appear for the club since you are no longer a member. Content analytics in your chess.com account, such as clubs and group activity, likes, and follow history, will disappear as well.

You Can Rejoin the Club Anytime

Yes, you can rejoin a club on Chess.com anytime after you’ve left it. If you exited a group by mistake or later want to be re-affiliated, heading back is straightforward. Navigate to the page of the club you are interested in rejoining, as described in step 1 of how to leave a club above. The procedure to rejoin a club is identical: click on the blue or green 'JOIN CLUB' button at the top right of the club page.

Rejoining the club may be as simple as that if the club has open membership. Beyond that, users may rejoin instantly if they had left some of the club settings set to "attached memberships, after I decide to leave the club" on their Club Preferences page and changed their mind for any reason less than thirty days after leaving. If someone had left the club settings as permanent departure, or if more than thirty days had elapsed after leaving, the user must submit an application and wait for approval from the club admin or mods before rejoining.

Things to Consider Before Leaving a Club

Before leaving a club, consider the trade-offs and your club’s purpose. Your club may lose active members and some of their ratings. This is especially dangerous when the club could be on the edge of not being able to reach a further achievement level due to no other member being able to grow to a level, which would push the club’s trophy value to another level.

If the club does not affect your trophy count, it is usually a safer option to leave. You should stick around or exit depending on the club’s and your own chess goals. Leaving more active members in a tight-knit community will harm the ability of other members to advance and this should be considered when deciding to stay in or leave the club.

Have You Participated in Any Tournaments or Events?

The group’s admin has put a lot of effort into organizing these events, and leaving will negatively affect their ability to program and delegate roles to other members. It is thus customary to mention specifically whether you plan to leave after the tournament or not. Leaving after a tournament is the ideal time to leave as there is less activity in the group after a tournament, so your departure would have less of an impact.

If you have joined a tournament in Chess.com and have not yet played any games, you will automatically leave the club when the tournament starts. If the desire is to leave a Chess.com group shortly, leaving a tournament may be the option you choose to expedite your exit from the group. But don’t forget to mention you will still be leaving the group to send them a goodbye, thank you, or other message on your way out. In Chess.com Tournaments, you can adjust which teams you want to play against or even leave tournaments. You can follow these steps to do so.

1. View the tournament you want to leave from Home
2. Click the gear symbol at the top right.
3. In the pop-up menu that will appear click Edit Teams
4. Just tap the X on the far right of each entry to remove a team.
5. You can then choose Leave Tournament from the same tournament homepage to improve your exit after being eliminated from the tournament.

Have You Made Any Friends in the Club?

Friendship is a powerful and positive force in people’s lives. If you have made friends in your club, make sure to share Social Media and/or Email contacts with those who are special to you before leaving. While you will no longer have the club page directory to click and find them, you can use these other means of staying in touch with and playing against them in the future.

Having trouble finding a friend you made in a club? Chess.com’s UI does not make it easy to find individual players who are not on your friend’s list, nor does it offer a ‘direct message’ functionality. However, their help documentation notes that games ended less than six months ago may be found in your game history. If you can remember any of the details of one of your games against the friend you are searching for, you can scour your history to get to one of your games with them which will put you into a current conversation/confrontation where you can tell them you have left the club and ask if they would like to share social media/email contacts.

Is the Club No Longer Active?

This could be the case and is, in fact, one of the commonest reasons for high member turnover rates. If the bowling or other physical venue related to the club stopped hosting meetings, the club associated with it may continue to exist but no longer serve as a cohesive group of local residents.

If this occurs it may be easier to merge with another club, thereby helping its growth, or to wind it down altogether in order to put resources toward creating a new club of the same name that better fits everyone’s needs.

Here are the general steps to wind down a club:

– Let club members know what is happening to remainder funds, materials, and other resources.

– Make everyone aware of the intentions voor proceeding to dissolve or merge without lingering resentment.

– Have a final AGM where, depending on the organizational structure of the club, an agreement can be made to donate remainder funds and excess items to an affiliated larger organization, local charity, school or educational institution.

– Ensure that you let Chess.com support know so they can consider what impact it may have in terms of scheduled events.

Conclusion

In conclusion, individual players can only leave a club on Chess.com. Owner-operators or other admins can delete other members from their club. A player can join a maximum of 100 clubs whose combined club rating does not exceed +3000.

If someone wishes to leave a club because they don’t like the club, or it represents poor chess etiquette, they can vacate a club with the following steps:

1. Click Clubs from the main toolbar
2. Click their own name under Your Clubs
3. Click My Settings in the ensuing window and then Leave this club
4. Click Yes, Leave the Club on the ensuing pop-up window

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do I leave a club in Chess.com?

To leave a club in Chess.com, go to the club’s homepage and click on the “Leave Club” button located next to the “Join” button.

2. Can I leave a club on Chess.com without being removed by the club’s owner?

Yes, you can leave a club on Chess.com without being removed by the club’s owner. Simply follow the steps mentioned in the previous question.

3. What happens when I leave a club in Chess.com?

Once you leave a club in Chess.com, you will no longer be a member of that club and will not have access to its features, such as forums and events.

4. Can I rejoin a club on Chess.com after leaving?

Yes, you can rejoin a club on Chess.com after leaving by requesting to join the club again or by receiving an invite from the club’s owner.

5. How can I remove myself from a club in Chess.com if I am the club’s owner?

If you are the owner of a club on Chess.com and want to leave, you can transfer ownership to another member first and then leave the club following the steps mentioned in the first question.

6. Is there a limit to the number of clubs I can leave on Chess.com?

No, there is no limit to the number of clubs you can leave on Chess.com. You have the freedom to join and leave clubs as you please.