Live Chess Trouble!?

Hey, can someone tell me why my opponent's timer stops suddenly, and his meter flashes?

This is called "Lag". Your opponents computer freezes, and so the game pauses until he can continue. It usually take only a few seconds to resume.

How can his computer freeze? I thought live chess was quick.

Live Chess on here experiences problems as it says when you click on it, that it can cut out mid game on you etc etc ......

So it's sorta like a pause button?

 No. It is when the computer temporarily loses connection. The chess.com staff is going to fix it as soon as they can. Then everything will be normal. For now though I would recommend sticking with correspondence games.

You mean online chess?

 Yes. Correspondence chess is when you play with 1 day per move or more time controls. Before the internet, correspondence was played throughthe mail. Just online chess would be any kind of chess that is played though the internet, including live chess. So I used that term to avoid any confusion.

Thanks for all your advice. But why do you lose all the games you've been currently playing once you close the live chess window, and why does it affect your rating, even the ones you were winning in?

 Because closing the window would be like walking away from the board. Counts as resignation.

Oh...

That's just unwise.

If you have a wireless connection, stay away from live chess because you will be greatly disappointed. When I had a wired connection, everything was fine but as soon as I switched to wireless I've been dropping out about half of my games. Stay away if you have a wireless connection.

You mean all those cables?

So say if I get a laptop and have a wireless router, (an N type I'm looking at, or N1) Live Chess would be laggy? Is that right?

Yes...

But I don't know why.