It isn't even winnable!

This is a clear flaw with the Chess.com Live system. In the below scenario it awarded a win to my opponent after I ran out of time when it shouldn't have.  He has insufficient material to win and even with the 'help' of my pawn it's impossible to mate me.

I also find it very lame and arguably exploitation that he declined to draw, knowing the loophole in the system.  I specifically sacrificed the Rook when low on time to remove any actual opportunity for him to win and if this was an OTB game an arbiter would be able to confirm this as a drawn game.

This isn't a case of me being a bad loser because I am definately not.  I don't complain about losses and always congratulate my opponent when they win in a fair scenario.  I think most will agree that this scenario is unfair in quite a few different ways though, and I would urge Chess.com to program such bugs out of the system.

Your thoughts please.

This is stupid.  Obviously I wasn't goint to promote to anything except a Queen. I even have auto-Queen on in such short games.  The board position was as good as having a "Draw" button.  In such a position OTB I could claim a draw and nobody would argue.

This scenario just distorts grades, which are relatively unimportant to me but very important to the Chess community as a whole.

Incidentally, how do you get in either such position?  I'd have to want to be mated.

Yes it is stupid but it is the rule. There is no internet arbiter to adjudicate the game. Next time, don't get into time trouble.

And yes, you do have to want to be mated, but again official FIDE rules do not say that a helpmate is a draw.

 It's true that the positions can't be forced, but FIDE rules state that if mate could occur by any sequence of legal moves then the side that times out loses. In other words this is a problem with FIDE rules and not the site.

Chess.com doesn't need to inherite the problems of Fide, it could remove the stupidity from many of Fide's rules.  Especially true when you consider that Chess.com cannot simulate OTB play (for which Fide rules are designed), and in OTB play an arbiter could and would rule the above a draw.

The rules have to be respected.

If someone can show a way for white to win, no matter how ridiculus it is, than white wins. Well, there are two situations already showed here.

I agree this situation was stupid, but I don't think chess.com should ever change any rule of chess. Chess is regulated (by FIDE) and it is good to have a game with universal rules.

By the way, I believe it would be very difficult to create a rule that decides what is and what is not a ridiculus mate possibility, hence the generic rule of "anything possible" 

Also, there is sufficient material for you yourself to mate him, you know assuming he hangs his bishop and kindly moves his king away from your pawn so it can queen.

Welcome to the club, my friend :)

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/once-again-the-draw-on-time

Yes, on the technical side it probably couldn't get better. Yes, in a RL tournament an arbiter probably would declare that your opponent didn't show any intention to mate when he just moves pieces around waiting for your time to run out. Yes, I think declining a draw in this situation is pathetic (and more so that even 1800 players do this ...). So what to do? Remember his screen name (I didn't find a function to put a player on ignore for live chess games) and don't play the guy anymore, that's it ...

Just look at this if u think what happened to u is bad AMcHarg:

Use this as a opportunity to learn something new.

This has been discussed so much here, chess.com should really put it into FAQ.

As for you, you can play games with increment, or try to premove the 50 moves.

You're missing the point.  If nobody questions the rules then nothing ever changes so it's not a case of 'whining' about anything.  The vast majority of people think that this rule is completely stupid, but then go on to say "but it's the rule"?  Rules are made by men and are fallible like everything else.

If you had read one of my earlier posts in this thread then you would have seen that just because Fide makes a rule it doesn't mean it should be followed by online Chess sites.  In my example above I said that Fide design their rules for OTB play, not for online play, and as a result their rules assume the availability of an arbiter.  Clearly in online play an arbiter is not available which is why certain common sense endings should be ruled as draws (automatically) by the computer. It's good enough for online sites to rule that someone is cheating with a computer based on percentage probability that they are (which I agree with), but it's not okay for them to use percentage probability to determine the most likely outcome of a game such as the above? Paradoxical!

So what to make a draw and what not?  Contrary to what someone posted above I think a line could be drawn here that would fairly assess the likely outcome of a game and then make a judgement on it.  If a human arbiter can do it then a computer certainly can.

As I also previously stated, this distorts grading.  My opponent didn't actually play well enough to win but has received an increase in his rating as if he had.  I think that blunders and what-not balance themselves out but there is currently no mechanism or evidence to suggest that exploiting a site's time controls does.  A guy could be a very high grade just because he knows how to exploit the system, when in reality he isn't that good at Chess.  Since ratings are, literally, meant to indicate a player's strength in the most reliable way possible, doesn't it become completely farcical when you have people who are quite good at Chess but very good at time manipulation having extremely high grades, as if they were extremely strong players?

Finally, it's a great day for questioning the rules of Fide, the day after the World Number one player has already done it, but this isn't really about the rules of Fide as Fide do not govern sites such as Chess.com.

We will have to agree to disagree then.

Like I said before, I don't care about the loss in terms of grade, but I just can't help but feel as if I have been a little bit cheated.

I know my opponent technically did nothing wrong, and 'lame' is probably the correct and only word that could be used to describe the way he played, rather than 'cheating' etc. It's still a bit unethical and outwith the nature of fairplay though.

one of these draw/not draw on time threads had eric and many other people discussing how chess.com could alter the rules to avoid these.  it became a bit tricky, but you may want to search for it and see what was discussed.  i think that the final determination was that it was better to stick with fide rules than try to make something else up. 

Small hint: You can avoid this kind of thing from happening by using time controls with increment.

after you've ran out of time an arbitter would rule it as a lose for you, your opponent would be a bad sport for doing this but he will win.. And as well as saying this is a stupid rule you can say en-passant or casteling are stupid rules, where did they came from?

You can't claim a draw in blitz - that is specifically excluded in the appendix governing blitz rules in the FIDE Laws of Chess. It would be sportsmanlike to accept a draw offer as white in this position, but playing for time trouble is a part of blitz. In a tournament situation, if white really needs the win, I wouldn't blame him or her for attempting that kind of play. If this pisses you off that much, play with increments or move to standard time controls.

By the way, complaining about this sort of thing in bullet is doubly unnecessary. Bullet is almost guaranteed to be ridiculous like that.

You see that everyone has different definitions about what is fair ...

on the one side there are even discussions if one should offer a draw if the opponent makes an obvious mis-click (as opposed to a blunder)

and on the other side there are the people who will pull you over time in a drawn position to score a win. Well if they are happy with these wins ... I prefer to play chess, if I want to play "quick mouse moving" I logon to facebook and play that silly "clicks per minute" app ...