It has been suggested before and the developers should be aware of it. Most people seem to agree 20 points for each enemy king at the end makes sense.
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/discuss-uncaptured-kings-in-the-endgame
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/suggestion-leftover-kings-are-rewarded-to-the-player-last-standing
Ah, didn't know that club message board existed. Just game here to the forums and saw nothing, so had to post about it.
Interestingly, I noticed today that Win Claiming seems to have been removed. However, that doesn't solve the problem, as timing out/resignation still produces the same effect.
Hope this gets fixed soon.
I'm not sure if this is the right spot to discuss this, hopefully a mod can move it if this belongs in a different part of the forums, so here goes:
I've keep encountering the scenario where, sometime after one player gets mated by someone other than me, the other player who didn't get the mate times out, and then the player who just got the mate, even though he's now low on material and in a bad position immediately claims the win, and I end up in 3rd or 4th place in a game that I had positioned myself well to secure mates on the remaining two players.
Another similar scenario I encounter a few times is where I'm about to mate the player who hasn't gotten a mate yet, and when I'm one move away from the mate, he times out, and the remaining player who got the mate earlier in the game immediately claims the win.
In some cases, two players even work together to get 1st and 2nd in points and mate one player, then the 2nd place player times out, and the 1st place player immediately claims the win before I mate him and he drops from 1st.
I can't imagine that win claiming was intended to be abused in this way. It's essentially motivating players to rush to get the first mate of the game, and hope that they get a chance to end the game early, without giving thought to actual gameplay and balancing the points/material out through the end game. In the event that there's an unclaimed king on the board when the game ends, is there any reason that that king shouldn't be automatically granted to the last player standing? This would encourage players to play more strategically for the end game, and prevent them from blitz trading to secure an early point lead and then force ending the game before their poor playing/positioning choices catch up with them.
Any thoughts? Perhaps someone who knows a dev can pass this along? I've tried submitting this to support, but no response, I'm assuming it's buried in their virtual ticket stack and they'll probably never have time to read it.