games aborted when opponent losing

Whoops, sorry, I was wrong. Nevermind

I have one opponent that I've been playing multiple 1 day games with and he often aborts right before I check mate. It is only happening with this one person and in this one situation. It is not a server reboot. How can this be prevented? And is this against the rules?

and he is not resigning. the message on my screen says the game was aborted. not resigned.

Thank you @jenni4real could you please ticket this via https://www.chess.com/support so that our Support team could assist you further. It is incredibly helpful that you add in all relevant details, such as opponent's username and link, game links (if appliable), times that this happened, dates that it happened, and any other additional details that could help our team investigate this further.

So servers resetting is the narrative used to explain this exploit? I'd come up with something less embarrassing.

There's no exploit and with very few exceptions, Live server restarts don't cause games to abort anymore, as the RCN network is hosting the vast majority of games.

That's great news! Though, it happened to me yesterday. Same scenario described in here, multiple times, since around 2021. Quite a lot of coincidences: opponent getting into a losing position, match "aborted", no punishments and no feedback from the platform. Super interesting from the perspective of someone affected by it.
Let's hope in 2026 this thread gets buried down since there's no exploits (:

The restarts, when they happen, are very early morning US Pacific time, so prior to RCN, that's generally the only time that would be seen. All of your games from November have been played on the new system.

There is a special case, where if both players are disconnected, the game is aborted as a double forfeit, and won't show in the game history

To be honest, the last piece of information makes a lot of sense.
Is it auto-aborted if we both have network issues at the same time? Is there a countdown meant to happen?
In any case, thanks for the answers and for providing useful information.

There's not countdown that I'm aware of.

Just happened to me: I was on a Mate in 1 situation with the pre-move already set for the win, I had plenty of time on my clock but that was of no consequence. My opponent had 3 legal moves, no one was saving him from the checkmate, with about 5 minutes on the clock, he didn't make a move and kept spending his time. I was just waiting for his time to be up and then, with like 10 seconds in the clock, the game was aborted! The game doesn't appear at my library. If it was indeed a server restart a message should be issued along with the "game aborted" explaining why the game got aborted! But the situation seems a little suspect for a bystander... My connection didn't drop BTW.

This is the 3rd time an opponent aborted the game when they were losing.

Chess.com needs to find and patch the exploit. Yes it is an exploit.

I managed to capture the game via the Share option. We both definitely did NOT disconnect at the same time, were not playing in any arena, and chess.com server restart is unlikely exactly when I got a decisive advantage. Even if that happened, apparently they don't abort games anymore.

So it's clearly an exploit that allows cheating resulting in rating manipulation. I was playing a 96% accuracy game, I'm so mad right now.

You both got disconnected from the live server process.

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8593801-how-does-game-abandonment-work

The server didn't have either player connection for at least 15 seconds, so the game was aborted. There's no exploit

And server restart happens only when I’m winning right? Exactly at decisive moments. Got it.

It probably wasn't a server restart, as those aren't done very often. It would have been a disconnect issue where you and your opponent were disconnected from the server at the same time for at least 15 seconds.

I thought the client could detect disconnects and tell the player? I just had one of these aborts, and was interacting with the site (via the web app) right after the abort message appeared (and quite soon before as well). Is there a user-visible history of disconnects?

Sometimes the client doesn't correctly see connection related issues. There's no user visible history of anything like that.

His behavior is inappropriate.

But why are you still playing along with him and discussing the problem here instead of privately with him? Your behavior gives him the impression that his behavior is acceptable.

Yes it is. They abort to avoid losing.