@OP: The server does detect and punish players who abandon games. You can read more about it here:
http://support.chess.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/171/0/fair-play-policy
Abandoned games
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I totally agree with this.. It seems that the threat of account restrictions is just that.. a threat, and nothing more.. totally empty.
By the way, a feasible solution is to simply undock the window and move it next to the new board so you can still start a new game and monitor the old one (in case the quitter tries to pull the I-think-my-opponent-left-now-so-I-will-put-in-a-random-move trick)
@-redak- I've done that many times, but I don't always have enough time.
And I think there should be something to actually avoid the problem, no just punish people who do it (if they are willing to waste time doing it, waiting 5 minutes to play again is practically irrelevant).
I have to constantly deal with players who just refuse to resign when they are at an overwhelming disadvantage, and instead leave the timer to run out. It's really annoying.
I know that sometimes people need to leave to do other things, I've done that several times, but isn't it possible for the software to detect that a player has abandoned the game in a hopeless situation (like an inevitable checkmate) and automatically resign for the losing player after a few minutes (in the case of standard chess)?
I know I can technically also abandon the game in that situation, but sometimes the other player decides to move again, thinking that I've abandoned the game. It has happened before. Therefore, I'm forced to stay and wait for the game to finish, unless I want to lose rating.