Would he have won? No. Could he have won--strictly speaking yes. (If white can play with the goal of losing and can achieve it then by definition black must have had mating material to do so.)
There have been a few games where the draw like this is being questioned a bit.
I wonder if the system is trying to balance the likelyhood of a victory in extreme cases like this. Not sure if it is a bug or perhaps just a need for clarification.
Notwithstanding the position clearly being a losing position, and the fact that the pawn could easily have been captured with just one more move, the fact of the matter is that that move was not made and that a pawn is sufficient mating material. This is a bug and the game should have been awarded to BigNose for being .6 seconds faster than his opponent and probably a little lucky too (as it's mate in 2 and a draw if his opponent loses on time after 1).
This is not an argument about my ability to win the match - obviously I had no chance if my opponent had more time. This is an argument about the basic rules of chess. Time is a factor in chess, and if you lose on time then you lose. The rules state that a pawn is sufficient material, and so I should have won the match.
TheGrobe - I appreciate your understanding of the rules, and you are correct.
There is no doubt that this is a bug and must be fixed. I would appreciate it if someone representing chess.com could please comment on this.
Does anyone from Chess.com participate in this forum? If so, could you please comment on this bug?
Have you filled out te "report bugs" link from the bottom of the page?
The bug might be in the way the rules are applied, but it might also be in a lag issue. It's possible that your opponent did take the pawn before running out of time and the the clock on your side was not in sync with the clock on his side.
Well, that's a question for the programmers to figure out.
I just lost a 3 minute game on time when my opponent only had a Knight, whereas I had 2 Knights and 5 Pawns.. this must be a bug because in normal quickplay rules you must have mating material to win, which my opponent did not have.
http://www.chess.com/livechess/game.html?id=14911932
johnwr
Hello,
The screen shot below shows a game I just finished. I had a pawn left and I won on time, but the computer called this game a draw even though I had sufficient material (the pawn). This must be a bug with the program, and I wanted to bring it to your attention.
Thanks,
Charles