Ok, so let's say 1 person disconnects whether on purpose or by internet failure. They can reconnect to continue the game. But if the person doesn't reconnect (again either by choice or purposely trying to get out of the game) does the other person win the game? Does the disconnected person receive a loss. They should shouldn't they, to prevent people from ducking out of a lost game right? 

I think they have to run out of time in turn based

But I'm talking about Live chess

I have not been in live chess for a long time, but reason would have it the the dude would lose, yo!

I imagine that the game continues whether or not any players are there. (Both players can reconnect)

So the person whose clock runs out would be the loser. 

This is obviously an assumption on my part, but it makes the most sense to me :)

It seems that you do not win if your opponent disconnects. This happened to me earlier. I hope that future versions of Live Chess will allow players to resume games and/or submit games for adjudication (similar to how ICC and FICS handle games that are unfinished due to disconnects).

EDIT: I was wrong. If your opponent disconnects, you can win on time. It just takes a minute once your opponent's clock has run out for you to be credited with the win (I'm not sure if this is intentional or not).

Sad, but true. I lost my game because i got disconnected!

I started a 30 mt game and within 5 mins, i got disconnected, then within a couple of secs,i got reconnected, but the page said 'loading'. Soon, the board was back where i had left off which was good, but it went to start position again and it said 'loading' again and i waited for atleast about 5mins, meantime i chked my net connection-it was fine. Then keeping that page on in the 'loading' mode, i opened another fresh page and there i came to know that i have lost my game in 7 moves and i ve lost about 20 points!

And while i am writing this, the other page still says, 'loading'. :( I am sure there is atleast another 15 mts left! I am really sad!

I've been disconnected several times, but in all cases when I reconnected, the game resumed. I managed to reconnected within a min though.

Not sure how long of a waiting period the system "tolerates" before scoring the game as a loss, but it makes most sense to wait until the disconnected player's time runs out before counting it as a loss.

 have played my last game of live chess for awhile. I have lost to many games lately due to disconnects and other problems on the site. I will check live chess out in a couple of months to see if these problems are rectified. It is just to irratating to play a game and on the point of winning have the site mess up.