"Abandoned" Games: Are they abandoned?
Not too long ago, just today actually, I was playing my best Chess. My rating was 1380, (my highest ever is 1390), and I was getting close to perhaps raising it even higher. Now, just a few hours later, my rating is 1358. Why? I was playing this game and lost because of an internet connection problem. After that, still frustrated about the loss, I played another game against a player rated 1200. I blundered in that game, and eventually resigned. I understand that it's frustrating when a player intentionally leaves the game instead of resigning. But I think it's even more frustrating to lose a game because of an "abandoned game" timer. I have probably lost 10-20 games, (granted many of them were blitz or bullet games), simply because I couldn't reconnect before the "abandoned game" timer goes off. As a matter of fact, I don't even play bullet anymore, because I got too frustrated with these "abandoned game" losses. In all of these games that I "abandoned", there was only one time when I ever intentionally abandoned a game. I don't like complaining, and I feel that this is a good web site to play Chess, but the "abandoned game" feature, to say the least, frustrates me.