cheating on live

I have often been accused of cheating on Live Chess when I win on time, esp if i come from behind on time. I know sometimes there can be some lag on the timers, but dont realy know how the system works, as not much of a computer whizz i am afriad. Maybe here i would like to point out to some members that there can be discrepancies witht the timers, and is unlikely your opponent is cheating (if that is poss?). SOme of us chess players are senstive souls, and to get accused of cheating can jolly well ruin our night.

we're working RIGHT NOW on fixing it so that it is more obvious what is lag. some people don't understand what LAG is, and assume it is cheating (which is never is).

I'm not really sure of this myself, but what you can do is point out that you have, say 30 seconds left, compared to their 0 seconds. Also, you can point out the lag of the servers. Besides, not many people care about Live Chess enough to cheat, anyways.

Eric, and guitardog too,

Perhaps this is a software issue, but I find it a bit interesting that I can - in a one minute game - go from a 10 second advantage to losing by 6 seconds.

And, another instance of this is apparent when you begin a game - usually with someone who shows they are overseas - and in the span of one move your clock goes from 59 seconds to 34.

I realize that chess.com live is still beta, and being a software guy I can understand bugs.  Perhaps I jumped the gun a bit with guitardog, and I apologize publicly for being a bit of a prick.

Perhaps I need to play 2 minute games instead of 1 minute...

i have never seem my OWN clock jump like this... really?

I have experienced this clock-jumping on several occaisions, and even though I am well aware of LAG issues, esp from having previously played on yahoo a lot and other sites, I have still come to the conclusion at times that there was some 'foul play' afoot... I know you are saying that this is not the case, but even with all the explanations given above, I seem to have encountered impossible situations where I have been clearly well in the lead time wise, and in the blink of an eye I'm all of a sudden losing on time (by far) and somehow my oponent seems to have gained the the time I lost, yes, his time has actually increased.

Now one of the main reasons that I have concluded that some kind of cheating is most likely responsible is that I personally never experience these jumps in time to my favour, but often do to my dissadvantage against certain players. As well, I have noticed no relationship to geographic location (I'm in Canada, but this has happened on numerous occaisions with U.S. players, and often NEVER with overseas players, so...).

In anycase, just wanted to add my 2 cents and I am curious to see what becomes of all this...

Hmm I've never had it as bad as that, but I have experienced my opponent's clock going up after he's moved. It's never been to above what it was before his move began, though, so I always assumed it was the server accounting for lag on one of our parts.

Is there a local clock on my computer that will keep on counting down my opponent's clock until the server tells it to switch to mine? So that if there's a delay in my computer receiving the message, it will seem to me, after the local clock has been corrected by the server clock, as if my opponent's time has increased? That's what I'd guessed was happening.

I disagree. I occasionally play 1 minute and 2 minute games. There is a point when some opponets jump from 24 seconds to having their full minute.

For me, it seems to happen more when I'm playing against opponents who show a flag from outside North America.

I guess when it comes to free play, I shouldn't get so worked up.  But I've been on other sites where you know you're time - or in some cases, your board or mouse - is being manipulated.

I came to chess.com to evaluate - to determine if it makes more sense for me to pay for play here or stay with playchess.com.  I like the resources here, the thinner client, and I really like the look.  And I love that all I need is a browser and not have to install an application (Fritz).

But this clock thing is holding me back from becoming a paying member at this time.  I'm sure I'll hear that if I drop my cash it will give the admins more incentive to fix the problems, but that logic doesn't fly with me.  I spent too many years trying to convince my clients to pay for the privilege of being beta testers for Microsoft and SalesLogix...

Please take this in the manner intended - constructive criticism from a member looking for a reason to upgrade his account...

looking into this... your own clock should NEVER be off...

This is all very interesting, although largely irrelevant to me as I rarely last long enough for the clocks to matter! And on the odd ocassion when I actually HAVE run out of time the gap between clocks has never been small enough for a LAG, large or small, to matter.

my clock is never off but often their clocks will be in 0 for around 5 seconds to pop up to 30 secs!!!!!

lets call it the "pop-up effect" ^^

Its odd that I have had certain players on ICC in which they seem to lag.......but ONLY when they are losing . It certainly seems intentional to me as the same opponent never lags when I am losing...is it possible to lag intentionally ? I am not a computer whiz so I dont know. Anyone know ?

well I imagine you could turn on some bittorrent client or something in the background and it would lag pretty badly.  You can easily choke up your internet by maxing out your upload capacity on adsl to the point where browsing the web becomes a real pita.  I imagine that would cause pretty bad lag on livechess. 

Once I lost an easily won game in 1 0 (which I never play because I'm terrible at it) because with 10 seconds left my opponent started lagging, and I lost on time (much harder to react and not lose time off your clock) instead of winning the easily won endgame. 

I'm not accusing my opponent of intentionally causing the lag but it does seem like a plausible strategy. 

I play quite a lot of quick and I've never seen any big time jumps. Only little lags of 3 to 5 seconds. Maybe on a different continuum I would have some 30 seconds problems though...