Network issues? or exploiting?

Sounds like you got disconnected.

https://support.chess.com/article/4720-online-chess-performance-optimizations

https://support.chess.com/article/213-how-do-i-fix-my-disconnect-lag-issues

Chess.com and their apps suck, they throw up these generic support articles there meaningless because the problems exists solely in their software. 
google Chess.com abandoned game and you’ll see issues starting in 2013. I have made screen recordings of games that I ‘abandoned’ while still in them and able to view the other user’s profile with the client not being notified of any issue at all, support in the meantime is completely useless. 
I asked for a refund through apple b/c this is BS.

Even look at recent iOS App Store reviews, their app / platform is trash, they clearly spend the money on influencer marketing and not customer support and/or engineering.

You really think so? I’ve noticed you post the same two links in multiple posts about the same thing… for literally years. Are you open to any other possibility b/c I’m starting to see a pattern with your posts here.
Do you think in all that time chess.com could have add a connection to server widget on their apps? I sure do, I’ve even recently messaged their CTO on LInkedIn with the Apple API to use to determine if a device can connect to a site.. I digress. I know there’s a signal indicator, that I have screen recordings of it clearly not working, or it was, meaning their infra is trash and their client apps work as expected. 
My point being that if chess.com wanted their apps to really convey their connection status, they could but they don’t because their infrastructure is trash and it would more directly expose their internal issues that they try to hide via vague support articles, that don’t apply to most modern technologies, and beyond lackluster support. It’s obvious they’re too busy paying YouTubers than giving a crap about their product experience. 
Imagine if other real time games had this many reported issues, Blizzard sucks but they don’t floss on this low of a level w/their infra, imagine Xbox or PlayStation having these issues? Chess.com doesn’t exist in a bubble, they should pull their collective heads out of their butts so they can see how the rest of the world runs platforms at scale. 
We’re talking a 2d coordinate system with a finite amount of data that needs to be kept in sync, this is nothing like the vectors needed in more heavier computational apps and games.
Chess.com has trash infra, trash support articles and a trash tech stack (now that I’ve looked into their careers page and see they still write in PHP, in 2024! - they’ll never get better, and they probably know this already, knowing the joke is on us b/c their influencer marketing is working, so they can afford to churn and write the last crappy PHP on the planet). 
They fooled me because I got excited and signed up but this is a trash app that’s closer to MySpace circa 2003 in technology than anything modern.
It’s a joke of a platform and customer experience but I’m sure someone is making money, they’re just no longer getting any of mine.

There are a lot of things that can impact connection quality, some of them on the client side that can be influenced by things on the local client and local network. A lot of the time, improvement can be found by looking through those articles and checking things that can cause issues.

There are also things from your ISP and the many connections between you and the site that can have issues. Other than how that is handled, that's not really anything that can be done if that's where the problem is, short of a different internet provider that might have their traffic on a different path.

There is also the site's datacenter, network, and code (server and client code). Those things the site can influence but generally if the problem is on that end, everyone notices issues.
You mention the iOS app. If you're on mobile and have both Wifi and a cellular data connection active at the same time, that can influence the connection as the data can bounce between providers during any session.

If you're on the app then be sure to update to the newest version and maybe uninstall and reinstall. If that doesn't help, a new topic or ticket with support stating your device type, OS version, and app version can help let staff know if there may be some issue on certain combinations.

yeah, just only issues between my devices & chess.com where nothing else I use, that uses way more data, has any of the same problems, not buying it.

You just say all this vague non specific stuff that isn’t applicable… chess.com can’t handle switching radios in their app but a video call can? That’s on chess.com for being useless in their engineering department.

If their engineering needs people to uninstall and reinstall the app they’re doing it wrong. 
Your answers are nonsensical.

The apps don't choose the data connection, the operating system decides which connection to use at any given time.

There are staff members using the apps daily. If there was a major issue impacting a large number of iOS app users, they would be aware of it and fixing it

@ff2x if you're on app version 4.3.2 staff are looking into potential issue with that version and have done something to hopefully mitigate the problem, something completed in the last 12 hours.

If you're on that version of the app and are still experiencing issues please reply.

lol, ok

Who cares, it’s buggy AF, Apple refunded me so I’m out, l8a!

& P.S iOS offers NWPathMonitor api