Time manipulation

The problem is the system lets your time running without delivering opponent's move. It is clearly against the rules of chess and unfair. Usually there is no sign of your own disconnection, it looks rather like opponent's disconnection and/or time manipulation.

I retired from Live chess a few years ago because of this. I always checked my connection and it was OK, so it was on the server's side I suppose.

Hum... I guess you mean that when you disconnect, you don't get a warning, whereas your time is running low on the server.

It doesn't deliver the opponent's move, because you disconnected, duh. It might seem the opponent's manipulation, but again, it really is your poor internet connexion. The opponent has lost time when he was thinking, does not lose anymore now he gave his move to the servers, and has no way to influentiate on this. I don't see how this can be unfair.

If you mean it would be better to have a warning such as "beware, you are now experiencing connexion issues, you might be going low on time without knowing it", let's say you are right. Still, it doesn't change much.

Players have to look at the little box next to their time. if it is fully green or partly green, you have a decent connection to the server. If it is orange, you have a fair connection. Red indicates a poor connection. The strength of your connection determines the lag in moves both made by you and your opponent. if you have bad lag times, it will appear when it is your move that your opponent is thinking on a move, when in all likelihood, he has already moved and once the move is transmitted, the opponents time corrects to the actual time remaining on the clock. In most cases, unless you have selected the premove feature, you will likely flag before even the 6th or 7th move has been made in the game in a 1 minute game.

It is for this reason that I abandoned most blitz games unless the lag is very low or not at all, since I use public terminals at stores, libraries and schools. It also is why my Blitz ratings plummeted so drastically last year.

To counter this, I have set the ratings threshold of challenges from 1500 min to 1800 max. This way, if I win, I get 10-15 points but if I lose, it is only 4 points or so. The only real blessing to this is that I end up playing stronger players and am improving in my games slightly. Also, I usually do not play below 10 min games anymore and toggle the premove button as well.

In the US, we have connection speeds as slow as 8 Mbps to 100 Mbps. This makes a lot of difference, especially if multiple terminals are in use (such as a library). There may not be as fast connections in other parts of the world but the connection speed is nearly as if not more important than the clock speed of your CPU.

trust me, i thought the same thing as the OP for a while until I played on a MAC at a friends house and was able to see the Router speed and the server speed.

It happens. Get over it and play longer chess times if it is a continuous problem.

Completely wrong.

I say and *insist* the system must verify first, if the move was delivered on the chessboard, then and only then, never before, the system may let player's clock ticking. It is not allowed to switch the clock without making the move. Warnings about disconnection etc are impolite, unless the disconnection was intentional.

If the current Live chess system is doing it otherwise, it breaks the rules. This is the problem, not the quality of connection. Subtracting player's time from his clock for alleged disconnection when the server failed to deliver or take the move is not only unfair, it is also against the rules.

Btw, my connection is standard one, but it is not the problem. The problem is bad procedure of handling connection failures, which seem to happen mostly on the Live chess server's side.

When connection fails, it is not the reason to punish the player, unless it was deliberate.

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No naming and shaming allowed. Mod.

Nonsense!

The liability lies on the organizers, always. The server should run smoothly in the first place. When I played Live a bit (4 years ago) it happened quite often: opponent froze and ran out of time, then out of the blue sky he made the move and had whole clock recovered, while my own time went down a lot. I *do* blame the server, because my connection was OK (green flag in the box) and internet went well.

The issue with artificial disconnectings - use the clock in the player's browser as reference, but never switch it on, unless opponent's move was delivered.

I agree, but it must be done in a correct way. And it means my correct thinking time is on my clock in my browser, opponent's time in his browser, measuring only time between actually delivered move and own move made by mouse. Server's intervention is inappropriate here. The server can correct the opponent's time in my browser and my time in opponent's browser, but not my time in my browser.

P.S.

I know very well how chess.com Live server does it. But I insist it is wrong and not in accordance with the rules of chess. I am not familiar with the current situation, but a few years ago the problem was aggravated also by overloaded crappy system of servers.

@LongIslandMark

I understand. But if disconnection happens, it is *absolute necessary* to use the player's clock as 100% valid reference and correct the thinking time on the server, not opposite.

OTB chess has clear rules when the player's clocks can be switched on. It is after the opponent's move has been made. Switching on the clocks without making the move is against the rules and it is usually penalized by bonus time for the player or by game loss for the opponent if done repeatedly.

Also I would expect internet live chess obey the same or very similar rules.

Server's clock should rule only if server used some verification in communication with player's browser that move has been delivered and player actually sees it. I guess this would be tougher a bit to make than leave player's clock rule.

The situation you described - subtracting time from your clock for no reason - it is indeed "the bug" we discuss in this topic all the time. It is just bad procedure chess.com uses to handle your alleged disconnection.

@PolarBear : we all agree it seems unfair to have one's clock running without thinking of the move. The question is, how do we correct this without allowing time manipulation ?

Basically, I guess the way the sever handles the games now is : player A sends a move to the server, which then stops A's clock, sends it to player B and simultaneously start his clock (plus lag compensation tricks).

Your proposition, if I understand well, would be that when the server sends the move to player B, and also sends a request "can I start the clock now ?" and starts the clock when player B's computer answered "yes".

In that case, I cannot see what would prevent B, with sufficient computer science knowledge, to create a script that he runs when playing, that has as an effect to display the move but not to answer the "clock starting" request before some time - thus creating a time cheat.

I think I have already answered and in fact proposed the solution. So again:

Example I.

Player A makes the move and his clocks in his browser stop ticking. The browser tries to send the move with time information included to the server, but for some reason can't. Server clocks keeps ticking, but immediately after reconnection and obtaining the move with time stamp, the server stops and corrects player's A time on its internal clocks and forwards this information to player's B browser, which makes the move visible on the board and also stops and corrects player's A time.

Example II.

Player B moves, move goes to the server, but during the tranfer to player's A browser trouble occur. Player's B move contains info about time consumed created by his browser. In the meantime, player A sees opponent's clocks ticking. No problem, because once the move is delivered, opponent clocks is auto-corrected, but definitely not at the expense of player A. Player A keeps his time and his clocks is allowed to start ticking after the opponent's move becomes visible.

Then I create I time cheat by the following script pseudocode.

"when receiving move from the server, note the time ; when sending move to the server, time indication is last noted time + 0.1s"

The problem is that chess.com servers have no way to avoid that you run such thing on your computer. This is for example 1.

Example 2 is not clear on how A's clock is corrected after trouble occurs. On the server side, there is no way to know whether the transfer went well or not, so the only way is to ask a reply from player A's browser saying "wait, we lost XX seconds delivering the move" - in any case, this can be manipulated by a similar program.

Creating a time-cheat script may be easy task for an expert, but almost impossible for common user. It requires some work and knowledge anyway. Well, the information between server and player's computer should be encrypted to make it hard even for experts.

Even if you were right - minor time cheating is definitely lesser evil than breaking the rules subtracting player's time.

And finally, it is logical afflicted players feel cheated and angry. It is nothing you should laugh at, especially when they weren't aware they had been disconnected (maybe they hadn't, server was overloaded).

Yes, you can feel angry as long as you please, and I feel angry too when this happens to me, I don't laugh at that because there is nothing laughable, but I still think this is the way to go. Your opinion is not stupid, but you have to concede some manipulation problems in your system.

Encryption of the time information is useless because where the cheat lies in is the data the player sends to the server, and there is no way to authentificate that data - the player can encrypt a false time.

"Sufficient computer knowledge", sure, but as soon as you get 10 person that have that knowledge, you get say 2-3 that are decided to use it, and who pass it (=the script to use with detailed manual, not the knowledge) to 10 of their friends each, who pass it to...

And BTW, the current system prevents also the abuse of disconnecting sore losers, that's not time cheat but still annoying. If you set up a time of say 90s before a disconnected players is kicked out of the game, there will be many players in a completely lost game that will coincidentally disconnect for 89s every move, thus making the game last an hour when it was a blitz. I thought there were some comment about that on other sites in the thread, but I cannot find it anymore.

I have the same problem as you and my internet connection is actually incredible, only happens when im 1 or 2 moves from winning and whats worse, i was pre moving the whole way. When i check the peoples page they have a lot of insult explaining this same situation. I think some bullet players have  a program to force this.

You're new here I see. Please, no foul language in the forums. It is against the TOS and there are consequences.

this happen to me on other server( Yahoo chess) I play a 15 min game and the other person had a lose position and he stopping moving ,his clock start to go down from 10 min to 1 and suddenly something happens and the times was switching and I get his time 1 min and he get my time 11min and i lost f the game on time. I think is a hacker program and is used all over the internet. I stooping playing live chess on internet now and focus on learning.

all you dumb shits trying to explain cobra's situation away are knuckle heads. The same damn thing happened to me in a 15/10 game against, "chelseayu" last night. So please if you don't have nothing more meaningful to say or a way to help contact chess.com, that seem to have been running from the public for many months now, please don't comment at all.