insufficient material

Can someone explain this rule to me. I thought I understood it but after the last game I played I am sure I do not. The game ended in a draw when I had a pawn about to be promoted.

If you ran out of time but your opponent had no mating material left then the game is a draw for you rather than a loss by time.

I was not out of time. It was 2 pawns and a king to just my opponents king.

Aha! This happened to me and I thought it was a bug. Good to know. Perhaps a better explanatory message in this case would be helpful.

The scenario described above does sound like it would be a bug.

At the time you ran out of time, you were at least 3 moves to promotion, so you had insufficient material to mate right there and then, so the game ends in draw. You took the best part, because since you ran out of time, technically you should have lost.

I've had the same thing with various piece assortments, and often with time left on both clocks.

Here's a couple examples (and I believe neither of these were time-outs):

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game.html?id=38187383

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game.html?id=34087331 (yes, I know I missed mate on move 46 - mouse slip, yeah we'll go with that . . .)

Maybe I'm wrong. I only play unrated, so it didn't really bother me enough to document it thoroughly.

dunce: both of your games are 1-minute bullets, where it is rather easy not to notice a time-out. It would be very surprising if this was a bug.

OTOH, it would be nice if the completed live games include leftover time for each player, just like the online games do. In this case you'd likely see "OUT OF TIME" on your side of the board and some number of seconds on the opponent's side.

I'll have to screenshoot the next one.

(now where did I put my gun . . .)

Good explanation.

. . .

Thank you for all of the information and thoughts everyone. It is much appreciated :-)