Updated attempt at solving the early resignation/disconnection issue

Here is an idea for a rule that could help resolve some of the unfairness that airses from early resignation and disconnection.

So here it goes:

If a player resigns or disconnect while:

1: No points have been gained by any player

2: No promotions has been made by any player

3: The player that resigns or disconnects is not in check

4: The game has gone 20 or less plies (maximum of 5 moves/player).

If all those conditions are met,  2 solutions are possible:

Solution 1:   The game is aborted for all players, it will be as if the game bever started

Solution 2: The  disconnected/resigned player's king would not be worth any points, but the game goes on.

I prefer solution 1,  because I find those 3 player games to be quite unfair for the player who is 'sandwiched'  between the 2 others.

Yes, this could solve a limited amount of cases. Personally I don't remember any game of mine where these conditions occurred. But if other players have stuck again and again in situations like this, its a Yes from me. :-)

I am voting for option 1.

A third option is that the board morphs to look like this:

But then, that really ought to be a separate variant...  I've played it OTB, it's wacky but fun, once you figure out the bizarre way pieces move in the middle of the board.

@samueljthoo04 You cant be loosing thatbadly if you ahve all your material, you arent in checl and no one has promoted,  and 5 moves or less have been made...  Thats the point

@stefkomilos I've had plenty of games where a player disconnected on move 1 or 2 and all those conditions are met

@mlgleason I actually thought about that too.   But I think its too much,  it changes the nature of the game.  

Are these cases related to the bugs currently annoying so many players, and the general immaturity of the software? If yes then ... I still think your suggestion is good. Because even if these problems are solved soon, they could reappear in the future, and it is good to be in place a protection mechanism just in case.

@Skeftomilos sometimes it had to do with that bug, sometimes not.   I've seen people leave a game because they got a phone call or something. Also,  sometimes people actually have problems with their internet.

The idea is that when a disconnects happens beofre the game has effectively started, it would seem

reasonable that the game should be aborted.   Perhaps diffrent cirterias than those suggested should be applied.  I'm open to suggestions

I think this is a great idea. This would be a good addition to the game. 

I'll just chime in on this... First time I've had a major glitch with the game was a few minutes ago against Ne2willdo. My pieces froze.  I was told to refresh... but after doing so, it took me too long to figure out how to get back to game.  Hence, I timed out after one move.  Anyway, on the anecdotal case that technical glitches may be causing some of the early resignations, I'd like to give a huge shout to suggestion #1.  It was bad enough that I missed out on playing a "celebrity-level" high-rated opponent; getting 4th place point-hit was a bit of salt on the wound...

As soon as it's equally probable for all players all responses seem equally fair for me. And given the amount of time you have to wait for some games, I find more convenient the second one, to avoid some delay on game "restarts". That's just my opinion

This actually seems like a good solution to me, but I don't think the developers will be very happy coding a separate program nor updating the present one to handle 3 player games.

Although it would be cool.

I am voting for option 1.

Ne2willdo, I am not in favour of any of your options.

We should not be inventing new ways of aborting more games.

If you think disconnects are a problem for example, then the best improvement about this will be on the technical side so that less disconnects will happen.

I like the idea 2

For this case I think option #1 is best. Long term I think a solution to early resignations needs to be found, but for this rather dramatic case one is best.

Life does occur, and even the best of players might have to leave a game because of 'life' happening in the background.

Here's a page that illustrates the moves in the middle of the board: https://www.ymimports.com/pages/how-to-play-three-player-chess 

@MGleason and what if a second player disconnects? Should the board morph again to a normal 8x8 chessboard?

No, my suggestion wasn't serious.