Board Game Arena

There are occasions I want to avoid ever playing with a player in future, but I can't red-thumb them even as a personal opinion because I have never played them. (The reason I'd avoid them is because they say rude or trollish stuff in the general chat sidebar.) Is it possible to do this?

Currently, there is no way to do this. There is a forum thread in Suggestions for implementing this (from around November, by me ), but as of yet it is not possible to do. The best work-around is to make a personal note about a player. That way, you will have an alert whenever you try to join one of their tables, even though it won't prevent them from joining one of yours.

interesting.

because i just played a game of chess for the first time on this site withe a entity called 'AKTUNA'.
it said he was new to the site but it was obvious he was trolling as an expert.
he was quite rude in his comment section but can't give it a Red Thumb to warn others.

If you finish the game, you should be able to red thumb them, and you have the option to make it a "personal" one, i.e. you just personally don't choose to play them anymore, or you can make it like a so-called "public" red thumb, which is not showing publicly but can affect their reputation and such. You have to finish the game, and then you can do it from the game results page, or find their profile and do it from there.

Do you know for sure they are purposely "masquerading" as a beginner? Everyone who comes on here as a new player potentially knows a few or many of the games already, but are new to the site and are going to show as being new to those games. Unless this person is lying about it, or putting comments on invites implying they're a new player, then that is just something that happens. (In some ways, it might be better to play new players, because when that person wins, it won't hurt them as much as it would a higher level player.)

And if there's inappropriate comments being made in chat, report them. You can do that directly from their profile, or send a PM to sourisdudesert directly about it.