Live Chess Lag Fiesta (ongoing for few weeks)

Exhibit A As we can see my knight has landed on d3, except it has not.

Exhibit B

Nooo, my game was abandoned, hey at least I found the best move.  If this was an infrequent occurrence, fine, but disconnections for me have been rather frequent these past few weeks even though my connection works wonderfully everywhere else and my values is rather high and my playing device is rather powerful.  Anyway, I tend to begin streaming soon so it should prove to be an interesting shared experience I guess of how to enjoy hopefully instructive chess despite a platform that makes it challenging or occasionally or often impossible to play.  Thanks for your consideration and my condolences to the support team for sharing our suffering and reading such posts.

You might check out the following to minimize connection issues.

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8652402-how-can-i-optimize-my-online-chess-performance

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8584209-how-do-i-fix-my-disconnect-lag-issues

I have read and followed said steps, reducing tab numbers and cleared my cache. Regardless my issues are exclusive to using the live server. I will test playing in the live server again on browser and on the app.

Issues continue, maybe affected opponent as well

My opponent randomly and I randomly lost about 30s here each.

Possibly my opponent used 30s there idk, I feel like move times have been weird for opponents in general although as my rating plummets I expect opponents to use their time less responsibly as well.

Issues seem to be exclusive to the browser, not the app.

I will test different browsers, issues have been on Safari as the people with the appropriate privileges probably could know.

edit: issues persist on Firefox although so far less bad, never mind, it is equally bad. Didnt get a disconnection notice in my past game and flagged without my opponents last move appearing on screen and I lost my last 7s magically.

edit2: no issues at all on chrome so far. Nevermind same issue on chrome without the disconnection notice.

this is happening to me too

Actually I have the same issues on the app, it is everywhere.

Could be an issue with your router, ISP, or somewhere between you and the site. If your app is on a phone, are you connected the both wifi and cellular data? If so, does disabling wifi help at all?

I just tried playing chess on other sites with no issues, but I will try playing on cellular data on chesscom. The issues seem fairly constant, but become worse and more laggy in time time scrambles especially, even if it is only the other player low on time.

I am playing on the app or on browser both on an iPad Air. 106 down 48 up mbps wifi

Edit: cellular test, so far no issues, that’s curious. 61 down 11 up mbps cellular. could be a WiFi stability issue however idk why I have not had noticeable issues elsewhere. Also I have had the same connection and WiFi service for awhile. Issues started I believe since around whenever the last State of Chesscom address was. Playing on cellular does resolve the issue for the moment it seems. Incidentally it has been an interesting study for me how having a smooth vs lag experience affects performance.

Going to test playing on other sites again with my WiFi, even if issues are fewer I wonder if it will be noticeable bc on chesscom issues have been extremely prevalent when on the WiFi.

Upon testing, I do believe it is at least in part a connection issue - however playing elsewhere, I do not have to reconnect by refreshing the page (site reconnects me automatically) or forfeit by abandonment elsewhere, hence the experience is not as smooth as it could be for sure I feel like regardless? Anyway, I will try resetting my router.

It would be nice to if the display time and the actual time were close to matching upon reconnection in any case, as is the case elsewhere.

The site only forgives a certain amount of lag, which could include some small disconnects, so if it takes too long then the clock is impacted.

https://support.chess.com/article/423-why-did-the-clock-times-suddenly-change-the-clocks-seem-broken

Display time: I may see that I have 10s left. Actual time: I have 1.2s left. Thus I lose on time before my clock hits 8s. I have had a few of these incidents as well.

I understand how the lag compensation (forgiveness) operates although I appreciate you posting the article! I was unaware that it differed slightly per time control.

Unrelated issue I hope but I get a lovely grey screen instead of a playzone (regardless of connection?) The insert image functionality does not seem to be functioning either anymore…

On chrome instead I get a lovely board but no other functionality. Truly what fun and connection is lost posting this even on cellular!

I did get forfeited for a game somehow meanwhile. So I decided to go off cellular and back on WiFi where at least I can see the boards again it seems. Anyway unless if any constructive suggestions I am done trying and will play on other websites instead.

I believe occasionally lag issues and fast moves can end up with the clock not syncing well

There was a bug for non-logged in members that staff just fixed.

After resetting router, no issues playing on WiFi at the moment rapid chess. Hopefully that persists. edit: and still no issues! I suppose besides the clocks not being right in the case of spotty connection, no other issues (hopefully, relating to live chess play)

For sure the lag/disconnection issues have been worse in recent weeks than they have for quite a while. Probably mainly noticeable by people who play bullet or fast blitz (3+0). I've encountered disconnections so frequently that whenever my opponent is "thinking" for more than a few seconds I will type something in the chat window to see if there is a connection issue. If the text stays light grey it means the connection is broken, at which point I refresh the page which usually fixes things. Perhaps this indicates a buggy or bloated client?!

The other thing I've noticed is the time reported when I type /ping in the chat window has been higher than usual. Playing from New Zealand this tends to be quite high at the best of times, usually in the 120-140ms range. But recently I've often seen it higher than this, for example I just played a game and it was 253ms.

A few times when bullet became unplayable on C.C I played a few games on lichess. Was able to play 1+0 games without issue there, even though I believe their servers are in Europe which is much further from NZ.

Perhaps chess.com need to invest more in networking infrastructure. From my time working in big tech I know these companies invest a huge amount in their networking infrastructure.

FWIW I typically play chess in the browser, and use Chrome on Mac, wired connection to router, fibre to my home, and I generally try to shutdown apps & close other tabs before playing.