stealing my time

Recently there has been unexpected load on the Live server process and staff have been looking into some limits they are hitting. I haven't seen an update but I don't see all the posts

I don't trust Chess.com I think the site is very unsafe technically. Either unknowingly or dilebarately  because the site is desperately trying to make money from members. Probably all who are complaining are non members and were never members.

Alot of spooky stuff has happened to me on Chess.com and I recommend running Chess.com on a virtual machine.

I have problems where my opponent's time is running, and I wait and wait and wait, only to loose on time because my move was not registered. It clearly showed that my move was played, otherwise why is my opponent's time now running.

My connection just suddenly looses, however I am using a lan connection, which never disconnects. The only time I face disconnection problems is on, you guessed it, Chess.com!

Other even more spooky things has happened to me on Chess.com but people might call me paranoid if I say, so I will just end by saying that their are security issues on Chess.com. I know they are trying to earn money and nothing is wrong with weeding out non members. But doing devious practices to make money is not moral and probably illegal. If you don't want us on your site just disallow us. 

If Chess.com is not the problem then obviously their site has major security holes, and unscrupulous persons could be using the site to do illegal and dangerous to our health things.

Okay then.

I just encountered this. But it is slightly different.

I usually only play 10m games (Kiwi mentioned increments above, but 10m games don't have increments, total time is fixed at 10m). Around half an hour ago, I just finished a game against TITANKILLA. About halfway through, I noticed that I had 30s more time than my opponent. Great I thought. I'll just run down the clock. I begin to play very quickly, making each move in 5-10s. I noted that my opponent was taking his own sweet time, sometimes taking 30s or more per move. We still have lots of time left, so perhaps he was not worried. Or maybe he didn't noticed the clock. Boy, is he going to be surprised in a few minutes, I thought.

A few minutes later, I saw that I was the one about 30s behind. That's impossible. I was ahead on time, ahead on points, and winning the game. I was making quick moves, he was moving slowly. So I began watching the clock carefully.

He moved relatively slowly, taking maybe 10-30s per move. The clock moved as normal when he moved. I then moved very quickly, taking about 5s or less. But a strange thing happened when I moved. My clock will actually jump down by about 10-20s, and his clock would jump up. I don't know if the amount being lost from my clock is the same as the amount his clock gained. It's difficult to keep track of all this while trying to play at the same time.

But it was clear that each time I made a move, a huge chunk of my remaining time goes missing, and his clock also goes up by a huge chunk. Less than 1m, but more than 10s. Despite moving leisurely, he was not in time trouble. I was in time trouble very soon after less than 10 moves. With my time nearly all gone, I was down to less than 1m, maybe 20-30s, didn't see exactly, I resolved to made an instant move. I'll input the move while he was thinking, and when he made his move, my move will be instant, and it will take 0s. I've done this several times in the past, it worked fine. Not this time though. As soon as he made his move, all my remaining time disappeared immediately, and his clock went UP.

I don't know if TITANKILLA is using a hacked client, or this is just a bug. I'll play a few more games and see if I see this again.

I'll add here that it's not just lag. When it lags, or I lose connectivity, my clock will just run down the at the normal 1s per second rate, until it reconnects. In this instance, as I'm making my move, I can clearly see a chunk of time disappears from my clock, AND I also see the remaining time on his clock jump up by a huge chunk. Clock times do not increase. And they don't jump up or down in huge chunks.

I wish I had grabbed another phone and recorded a video, but I was surprised and didn't think of it at the time.

Your opponents can't "steal" your time. Anybody that thinks otherwise is a paranoid fool.

It is lag, lag adjustments and potentially disconnects. You can look at the game in the archive and see the times for each and every move. The server keeps the official clocks and when you get your opponent's moves, the server also sends along the official clock times, which will update your client clock (or should, barring bugs). 

https://support.chess.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1444849-why-did-the-clock-times-suddenly-change-the-clocks-seem-broken-

OK. I have thought about this some more. I think I understand how lag may cause this.

Assume my connection is laggy. I make a move in 5s. My phone sends my move to the server, but because of the lag, it only gets there after another 20s. So the server thinks I took 25s to make a move. My opponent also makes a move in 5s. The server sends the move to my phone. But due to the lag, it is another 20s before my phone gets the move. So I'm sitting there, waiting for 25s, thinking my opponent is taking his own sweet time. But in fact he already made the move 20s ago, and the time I spent waiting is being subtracted from my clock. Because all the lag is between me and the server, all these delays runs down my clock. Because my opponent's connection with the server is not laggy, he does not have this problem.

On my phone, if I made a move, and then it loses the connection to the server, the client on my phone starts decrementing my opponents clock. Once connection is restored and it receives the move from the server, it stops his clock and starts mine. The server also sends the actual/official timing, which shows as a correction to the client on my phone. Which is why I see the weird time jumping up/down in huge chunks.

It's been half a year since I posted that earlier. I now no longer see this problem. What I see is that chess.com seems to have modified their client. Now, when my client loses connection to the server, both clocks stops, and I see a moving line on top of the screen indicating a problem with the connection. When the connection is restored, the clock jumps to whatever it is supposed to be. This is vastly better.

1. it makes clear that I'm having a bad connection, so I can adjust appropriately. Either move very quickly, or stop playing until I can find a better connection.

2. no more weird, confusing, clock jumping backwards and forwards in big chunks. When it freeze, I know exactly why. Then it jumps to what it should be. This is the normal expected behaviour.

it happen to me all the time and when ask about that the members telling me it happen just for you .

i think even the chess.com server know about that.