Rating for sale – buyer beware

by ChessBase
2/25/2005 – Maybe money can't buy you love, but there are at least a few people out there who think it can buy you a high Elo. You won't believe what we found on Ebay UK today. Someone is actually trying to auction their Playchess.com account with a 2586 rating! Bidder, bidder?

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First of all we must say that we don't approve of such behavior and the chance of this auction being valid are quite slim. But you have to admire the enterprising spirit of the seller. We almost feel proud that the Playchess.com server has become so popular that it's attracting the sort of virtual property sales that massively multiplayer games like Everquest and Warcraft have seen in recent years.

A few months ago someone paid over $26,000 for an island in the online game Entropia. The person trying to sell this Fritz account doesn't seem to be doing quite so well. After three bids it's only up to around four dollars. There have even been lawsuits over such virtual property sales, which are prohibited by some game servers.

Below is a screen capture of the auction, which ends today. It's all in German, from a seller who has sold hundreds of items on Ebay. We're not exactly sure what a buyer would do with such an account, other than never use it to play or he'd be found out in a hurry!


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