Bishop verse Bishop end game

I was playing a guy. We each had only a bishop left and they were on opposite colored squares. He ran out of time, yet it said draw due to insufficient material. Clearly a checkmate is possible if his bishop is convering his king's only escape square. So why does it say draw due to insufficient material?

Only a fool would play Bg8 as black. That indeed would give white the opportunity to checkmate black, but come on.... Bg8? Seriously, just move around with the bishop sensibly and a checkmate will never occur in a situation like this.

As I mentioned in your other thread, this situation is covered under the website's implementation of the philosophy behind the USCF's "insufficient losing chances" rule.

The point is their time ran out and they deserve to lose. If we were playing an untimed game, I could see the logic, but they decided to take the risk by offering a timed game that their time might run out.

Except that's not the official rules.

If you can not win on the board, then you do not deserve to win on time.  And if the only likely way for you to win is by flagging the other player, then that player has the right to claim a draw for "insufficient losing chances" from the arbiter/TD.  Since there is no arbiter/TD here that can determine such subjective motives, the draw becomes automatically declared in certain situations when time runs out.

FIDE and USCF rules are different concerning such endings . If you had been playing under FIDE rules you would have won on time since a mate is possible , no matter how unlikely .  Where FIDE and USCF rules differ I have found that the FIDE rules make more sense in the majority of cases . Losing on time in such endings though is ridiculous and is why increments are so popular in FIDE play . 

But I could win on the board as I had demonstrated.

The sentence after that is the one that is relevant, here.

"And if the only likely way to win is by flagging the other player, then that player has the right to claim a draw for 'insufficient losing chances.'"  That means that a player can tell the TD that he isn't going to lose on the board because he's not going to blunder it away even in time trouble and the TD will stop the game and declare it a draw.

As casper_van_eersel pointed out, a win on the board is possible, but unlikely given that "only a fool would play Bg8 as black."

And as Reb pointed out, FIDE rules are different that USCF rules, here.  Even in FIDE rules, however, there is a mechanism for having the arbiter declare a draw in similar situations.  As I understand it, though, it is only available for certain types of time controls.

Please define "flagging."

"Flagging" means having your flag or causing the other player's flag to fall - i.e., to run out of time.  This terminology goes back to before digital clocks became common.  In analog clocks, the minute hand pushes up a small flag-shaped piece of plastic as it nears the hour mark.  When the minute hand moves sufficiently far enough, the "flag" falls, marking the point when a player runs out of time.

So the situation we're talking about here, in OTB play, would be one where, for example, I know I can't win (on the board) and there are no stalemate opportunities, but I have a lot more time than my opponent.  Instead of resigning, I decide to continue playing with the sole goal of causing my opponent to run out of time.  According to official USCF rules (and, I think, in some situations in the FIDE ruleset; though there, the terminology is "not trying to win or cannot win by normal means"), my opponent is allowed to stop the clocks and contact whoever is running the tournament.  If that person agrees that I have no reasonable chance to win, then they can declare the game to be a draw.

Your position is a help mate. In other words black has to help white mate, white can't force black into checkmate alone. In those cases the game can be declared draw due to no forced mate possible. You can't be declared a winner On time when you could never checkmate your opponent without your opponents help.

I beg to differ, Wayward_Bishop. Most games need the opponent's help to checkmate him, not just ones with one piece left. There are occasions where you are in a place that you can force a checkmate, but usually, this is not so. The opponent must fall for your traps, or make errors, or you just blunder into a checkmate.

I agree with you, the rules are completely arbitrary.

On one hand they say that an opposite bishop ending doesn't give sufficient winning chances because the opponent would have to be an idiot to lose that, while at the same time a KP vs. K,Q,R ,.. etc.. is somehow sufficient winning chances for the pawn side, even though the opponent would have to be an idiot to let you promote and take all the pieces.

I think the real reason for these rules is the ease of programming. It would be very difficult to decipher which positions do or do not have some helpmate possible. It's much more difficult than you would initially think:

 Chess.com would recognize the above position as "sufficient winning chances".

So the site makes up these excuses, trying to convince you that the rules which are easiest to program also happen to be the best ones. Take the idea of having to "claim draw" for instance. Do you know how much load it would put on their servers if they had to check for drawing conditions every single move?

Excellent obervationss, Mosai. I would think that claiming draw would be easier to program than making it automatic as it would only have to check for the draw condition after it was claimed but with automatic, it would have to check after each move after the third move. And since the chess rules in these cases say that you may claim it, it should not be automatic in cases where you may claim it as you may feel you could win instead.