About end game

In one of the game i had only king and my opponent had  queen along with king , but his time is over and how can it says that its draw ( insufficient material ) .

By using queen we can checkmate the opposite ... its not fair what  happened to  me .

"Insufficient Material to mate" is a fairly common rule of tournament chess. Same as "why I must move a piece when I touch it". 

These kinds of rules were put in to actually ensure fairness and make winning an "effort based" activity and not a guaranteed result.

I dont understand why its called insufficient material as my opponent had queen.

Even with elephant also we can checkmate .

Insufficient material applies to YOU, the guy with the lone king and not the opponent who has atleast a Pawn/Rook/Queen/B+N/B+B.  If you can't theoretically win, it is a draw if the opponent's flag falls.

k but eventhough he had queen he didnt mate me ... he has lot of time left wer he can checkmate . Wen his time finished it should show that i win but its not .

You're missing the point : You can ONLY win (as per the rules) if you have material to deliver checkmate.  The Long King is insufficient.  

k i agree ....  but what is the use of timer then .

The timer is to enforce time management.  Competitive chess is about 33 pieces. 16 white, 16 black and the clock!

Take for example => me and you play a G/60 (60 minutes each side) game.  I am winning but don't have enough time to finish the game.  My clock runs out as I am crushing you but then you have a king and a pawn (enough material to mate) and the result is a win for you. Should the rule let me win because I "was" winning and playing better chess? No ... I didn't manage my time and that is just as bad as playing a blunder.

I've played a dozen people at clubs who tell me (After their flag falls) that they could have won if they had time.

Wrong!  I budgeted EACH move according to the time I had. If there was a deep calculation that needed 20 minutes to resolve and I was playing a G/30 game, no way I'd invest that much time.   I would just play the best move until my budget runs out and then hope for the best. That is how any logical chess player would play things under a clock. Just because you wasted a ton of time playing high quality chess, you cannot whine that you didn't have enough time to finish the game. You claim you were playing theoretically perfect chess for the first N moves but then could not finish because of the clock ... meanwhile => the objective of the game is to WIN ... not play perfect chess now, is it?

As an analogy => you don't see runners who run a marathon expend all their energy for the first 3-4 miles now, do you?   You can't expect to whine saying "I was racing forward and held first place for the 1st 20 miles, but then I had no more energy left and that's why I lost".  People will call you an idiot.

Time (the clock) is used to make the game truly competitive and to guarantee that the beter chess player and not the best chess moves win a game. 

The other variation of chess called Correspondence Chess has nearly infinite time limits (such as the online chess in chess.com) and one can argue that only the best chess moves will win this kind of game.

Insufficient material ONLY happens when you have king, and your opponent has king. Neither one can checkmate, thus a draw --- insufficient material.

If your opponent has queen + king, the game will go until TIMER hits 0 on someone.

If chess.com said "insufficient material" when your opponent has time + king + queen and you have time + king... This is a bug. There are many bugs in Chess.com, and they never seem to make any updates. Sometimes the board will look different to you visually (such as a piece disappears from the board), such bugs happen often.

Also, while elephant is common term for bishop in the East, English players may not understand that, so please call it bishop.

Well, King and minor piece versus king is also an immediate draw due to insufficient material; chess.com should recognize those I think. (Technically, "dead" positions, without minor pieces in which interlocked pawns prevent either king from reaching the other side's pawns by any possible combinations of moves, are also immediate draws, but I doubt chess.com can handle those.)

Either way, I have serious doubts that the principle of how time running out affects the outcome of matches is hard to understand. If your time runs out, you lose, except if your opponent cannot win with any combinations of moves.

I'm thinking right now... Is there a possible mate position in a king and bishop vs. king and bishop if the bishops are colored same?

Silfir

"Is there a possible mate position in a king and bishop vs. king and bishop if the bishops are colored same?"

Perharps I am wrong but I really think that this mate is impossible.  It is necessary an enemy piece to block one of the squares next to the king. But if you are attacking a king with a dark squares bishop in a dark corner, this enemy piece must be in one of the two light squares next to the king.

That means this king can not be blocked by his bishop if that bishop is of dark squares, as yours. Off course, the same situation occurs if you change the squares' colours.

That's what I thought too. Wanted to make sure :)

All other minor piece vs. minor piece combinations should work though.

Makes sense. Incidentally, Silfir, the point you brought up makes me curious...if either side runs out of time in the position below, is it considered a loss or draw?

Loss.

Incidentally, if the side without the Knight in a K vs K+N situation runs out of time it is a draw for this reason, however I believe that if it is a K+N vs K+B situation the side that runs out of time will receive a loss.  This is because of the ability to checkmate if there's another piece on the board that could block the King's escape.

His situation isn't a bug. His opponent had a K+Q and ran out of time. That's a draw since Arunse only had a king.

By FIDE rules this should be a draw:

"9.6 The game is drawn when a position is reached from which a checkmate cannot occur by any possible series of legal moves. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing this position was legal."

(Note that the FIDE rules do not specifically mention the King vs. King, minor piece vs. King or other combinations.)

This means that the moment such a position occurs, the game is drawn, not only "drawn if time runs out" but "immediately, irrevocably drawn". Similar to how a checkmate ends the game immediately; you don't have to hit the clock. If you checkmate during the last seconds of the match and time runs out just milliseconds after you released the piece that caused the checkmate position, you win.

I have little experience in using chess software and I don't know whether chess.com would be capable of handling such positions, but yes, by the FIDE rules, such a position would definitely be a draw - not only if time runs out, but for good.

And it doesn't have to be something quite as outlandish either:

I'd be interested to know how that's implemented here -- I suspect the win is awarded due to the complexity of programatically determining whether a checkmate is possible from the given position.