BIG problem

Okay this really needs to be addressed (whole game pasted below).

I just played the following game in a 10 minute "blitz" (that's it's category on here) match. It was a draw. A guaranteed draw. It was a draw when I still had ~ 2:30 left on the clock. But my opponent won on time. It was a classic Bishop pawn lockup on both sides of opposite colors. But I couldn't get threefold repition because obviously his king has 60 different squares he can go to.

50 moves right? Wrong! Originally, we had two pawns on adjacent colums that neither could advance without dropping and providing the other person with an advance pawn. Seeing as he had the time advantage, my opponent on the 45 move advanced his pawn, which was a rank ahead, forcing me to capture and resetting the 50 move count.

So my clock, eventually, runs out. But since we both still have a pawn and it is still theoretically possible that other would be be incredibly stupid and let the other capture a peice, it said I lost the game.

I tried several times to get my opponent to accept a draw, but he always refused knowing he could drain my clock. It is against the spirit of fair competition and taking advantage of a hole in the system that he claimed victory. That bothers me. I (tried) to say something I probably be shouldn't, because what he was doing was incredibly cheap and showed horrible sportsmanship (the filter blocked me and threatened to ban me). But regardless, the flaw in the system is well known enough that he abused it and it should be fixed.

I know you can't make it where any time a position looks drawish a draw can be forced, but there are some positions that are fairly obvious. One solution I can think of having count over a period of time where players can force a declared draw, say 3 times per week, where it is then reviewed by the computer program. If the computer cannot solve the position for either side, the draw is rewarded. However, if the position was winnable, even from the person who declared draw, they forfeit the match for prematurely ending the match.

I will acknowledge, and you all will see below, early on I had a winnable position, but blundered early in the endgame. That doesn't change the fact that this should have been a draw and that the system needs tweaking.

Here is the game for review.

Sorry, that's the breaks. I myself have lost games in positions like that. It is infuriating but each time I resolve to play faster.

Your opponent had a plan beyond merely killing time. He carried it out. You failed to respond. You lost.

But there are solutions to solving this problem. Changing the engine to recognize and allow players to call in the middle of the game would probably be very difficult, but to give players 3 "tokens", similar to how I can have three games analyzed per day, and then have the computer engine already in use for analysis trying to solve the position shouldn't be terribly hard, all the tools are already in place for it.

Computers can only really evaluate if the position is even, for the most part,  and how would one differentiate between just even and a draw? Short of having a tablebase position. 

The actual solution is to play with some increment. That way,  you can get to 50 moves and claim the draw, with less worry about time. 

 And in an endgame like that, premoves with your king would have probably kept enough time to get to 50+ moves. 

Or, let the king protect the a-pawn and just shuffle with the bishop with premoves.

If a position is even and remains even no matter how many moves tried minus the obvious blunders, that would be the declared draw - normally, every single move has a change in position slightly (since the computers here calculate up the the one-hundredth). If every move stays exactly at 0.00 (as it did here) then it should be a draw.

The increment is a good band-aid idea, I may have to try that, though sadly there is no 10 minute + increment in the chess.com settings. I suck at five minutes and lower. 15 Minute + 10 second increment is a good way to end up with a 45 minute game, almost double what a 10 minute straight game is in. Perhaps I could learne to play 5/5, but this is still a solvable problem.

ИГОРЬ ОКОЛОПОМОЙССКИЙ ПРОДАЛ ДУШУ ДЬЯВОЛУ?

There is no problem here - just accept the loss, learn from it and move on.

I don't understand why you feel like you've been cheated here. The only way that your opponent could have done something wrong here is if he accepted your ignorant and insulting draw offers. You're a fool if you truely feel the way that you describe here. This is a perfectly fair win and one that anybody in the right mind would fight for.

I dont understand your issue?  You lost on time.  Its 1 game of online chess. Let it go and move on.  

"I tried several times to get my opponent to accept a draw, but he always refused knowing he could drain my clock. It is against the spirit of fair competition and taking advantage of a hole in the system that he claimed victory."

If you have ever play OTB tournament chess then you know winning on time is part of the game.  The issue is you need to learn to mangae your time better.

I don't agree with this at all. OTB this is a draw. Call the arbiter over and say that your opponent isn't playing for a win on the board. If he agrees with you he will rule the game drawn. Obviously he would agree here. OTB this game is drawn. This isn't OTB though. That rule isn't in place here.

Maybe I should be more like you and scour the forums for comments made by a particular person who made a fool of me one time so that I can find any opportunity at all to insult him?

Diakonia wrote:

I dont understand your issue?  You lost on time.  Its 1 game of online chess. Let it go and move on.  

Wouldn't the arbiter simply say "you should have used a 5-second delay on your clock"?  

You can create a custom challenge with pretty much any base time and increment.

As to the equal position discussion, there are a ton of positions where it can be equal but there is still a ton of play in the game (not just shuffling pieces around).

In your desired method, a player could use a ton of time, get into a completely  even middle game position and have the computer evaluate it for a draw condition.  I completely understand the desire but  I believe most of the best solutions are already available for the problem (increment and/or pre-moves).

I had a game on Wednesday that got to a position where I was low on time and it was similar to yours. Opposite color bishops, pawns that could be protected by their own bishops, and the position such that the kings couldn't infiltrate (well, I may have had some chances but not with the time I had).

I offered the draw and my opponent didn't take it. He alternated his moves a bit to try to stave off triple repetition, I offered a couple of other draws (hard to keep track for a triple-rep) and then just used the increment (and could have used pre-moves) to force the 50 move draw.

In your game, you had 11 seconds left the point I probably would have parked my king on b4 and started pre-moving the bishop until 50 moves were up. Still might have lost on time, especially if missing a few pre-moves but probably could have got it in.

Troll much? That is a drawn position, OTB or not. The goal of chess is to win by checkmating the opponent's king. Possible outcomes in the game design are win, draw, and loss. Clocks are a metadevice that ensure the game is played at a pace deemed acceptable by both participants and/or event organizers.

I have lost games (daily) on time when I had the winning position and I have accepted that without complaint. I did so because I accept that though my position was superior, I was only able to gain it by using more time than alloted in the pre-game agreement, and the conclusion of the game was not ensured. Yes, I may be up a queen, but perhaps I could have blundered, giving material back or leaving my king exposed for a counter. I had not won, only gained an overwhelingly stronger position.

The difference here is the game IS drawn. It is complete. There is no way my opponent cant stop the 50 move rule. Even with his one reset, I was almost back to it again when my clock flagged. Unlike the games I lose due to time in a winning position, the final (meaningful) position had been reached for over 2 minutes. I didn't get the drawn position by taking too long too think, the game was complete, for all intents and purposes, with 25% of my clock being unused.

And you acknowledged this game is drawn OTB, so how on earth are my draw offers "insulting"?  Chess is a board game, we play on chess.com for the convenience of finding opponents. Chess.com proclaims, rightly, that this is where you can play chess, a board game, with the convenience of thousands of players. It doesn't say, "Play a chess-like game where you can claim victory by taking advantages of the shortcomings of our design to claim victory."

I greatly appreciate what chess.com offers, and am very aware that many people here play for free, which I think is great. Because chess.com is free, and even started small at one point, it has always been improving its product as it received the funds and opportunity to do so.

As I stated in my original post, I was (and am) annoyed that my opponent abused a shortcoming of the system to claim victory when in reality the game was a draw. His victory was made possible by a hole in the system, similarily to, but much less egregious, to people playing with engines and then copying the moves. Chess.com has attempted counter that problem - a much tougher one to solve than recognizing hopelessly drawn positions. So, while I am annoyed at my opponent, I also recognize in a competition, people will claim an on-paper win whenever they can, whether or not they achieved the result within the intended design of the game.

Since chess.com has solved much tougher challenges than this, all I am doing is asking that they investiage a way to uphold the spirit of the board game by either allowing players to declare a draw with some form of double-checking or accountability. In a game that has anywhere from 25-35% of games (when played at a high level) end in draws, if your goal is to provide a true-to-life experience of the beautiful game that chess has been for the past 500 or so years, they should look into a way to acknowledge draws much better than they have until now.

The clock is there for a reason.  How do you manage to lose on time in a totally drawn position with 2:30 on your clock?  If it is so drawn then your moves are instant.  If there are dangers in the position that cause you to take longer over your moves then it isn't "totally drawn" within the parameters of the clock.

I've lost plenty of drawn games on time, but I take personal responsibility for them, something that seems generally lacking in all aspects of society nowadays!