What does ''time out v insufficient material even mean - when one player has played to gain an advan

What is ''time out v insufficient material even mean - when one player has played to gain an advantage of nearly two and a half minutes in a five minute game - since when does time-out make sense in a very fast game of chess & how if it is named as thus (above) does one player (obviously the player with 2&1/2 exrta minutes get two points awarded - because the player with 16 seconds left has obviously been out performed by minutes (how can the strategy and tactic of gaining so much time be reduced to a draw which even awards points. And more importantly is this true that the decision to name a game thus is decided by the losing player with a higher paying membership - staright answers please from the facilitator

if one player runs out of time, he cannot win.

the other player must have sufficient mating material on the board to win.

So "timeout vs insufficient material" means neither player can win so it is a draw. Normal rules of chess.

The amount of time left has no impact on the scoring. The only thing that does impact the scoring is the relative rating of each player. So if you draw against a higher rated opponent you will gain points.

I concur in what #2 and #3 said, but I would note that in real life chess clubs, there can be subtle but important differences in the "mating force" rule.

A king alone cannot mate. 

That was basically the Fisher King's problem, until a hero arrived to ask him an important question.  Counting down until someone asks me in this thread what it has to do with Bobby Fischer.  

Well that is not a legal position but anyway...I would guess that over the board an arbiter would determine that it is a win for black, but the non-human chess.com program would perhaps give it as a draw.

As Strangemover said it would be a win for black under FIDE or USCF rules as there is a forced mate by black.

chess.com uses a simple peice count to determine "insufficient material" and would declare K+B as insufficient and thus a draw. But this is one of those edge cases where the rules of chess and computer programming don't quite meet.

I was a US Chess Federation Tournament Director and in OTB rated chess games the rule (USCF Rule 14E) is that the game is drawn in insufficent material vs time out games even if the clock has already run out of time before the player whose time is out claims a time out to the T.D.  That's the only difference from the chess.com rule: in USCF OTB games the player has to make a claim of his opponent's insufficient material and the T.D. must confirm it.

In unrated club games, the players should be following the USCF rules in the USA or the virtually identical FIDE rules.  The USCF Rule 14E states specifically that it's a draw if the insufficient material is 14E1, Lone King, 14E2. King and bishop or king and knight, 14E3. King and two knights when the opponent does not have a pawn.

The corresponding FIDE rule 9.6 is: "The game is drawn when a position is reached from which a checkmate cannot occur by any possible series of legal moves. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing this position was legal."

It's not clear to me, from the brief FIDE rule booklet, what the procedure is in FIDE games when the player whose clock ran out of time himself had sufficient material to win and his opponent insufficient material, since the game would not end in that case. I don't know if he has to claim the draw to an arbiter before his clock runs out or not.

But in the USCF, it doesn't matter if the clock ran out before the claim is made.

But is there no reference to a forced mate ? In the position posted surely the forced mate would mean a win for black under USCF rules ?

The FIDE rule you refer to is actually 5.2.2 now. But this rule only applies when both players have time on their clocks.

Under FIDE rules once a players clock runs out the game is over. His material is irrelevant. If his opponents has insufficient material then the game is a draw.....

FIDE 6.9  "Except where one of Articles 5.1.1, 5.1.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3 applies, if a player does not complete the prescribed number of moves in the allotted time, the game is lost by that player. However, the game is drawn if the position is such that the opponent cannot checkmate the player’s king by any possible series of legal moves"