Abandoned Games - Ugh

Ugh, it's 2am and I wanted to play a quickie before going to bed.  2.5 minutes into the game, the player stops making any moves.

Tired of playing 10-min clock games that get abandoned 2-3 minutes in, and I am stuck there waiting for 6-7 minutes wondering if they are coming back or not.  I don't want to start a new game or leave in case they do.  It's such a waste of my time, and it's getting frustrating.  If they want to resign, great.  If they want to abuse me in chat, I'll play back.  But please please please don't waste my time.

May I suggest a feature that shows percentage of games abbandoned in past 100 or 250 games.  I get it that sometimes people have a bad connection.  I play from my cell, and it happens sometimes.  So I'm OK if I saw 5-10% of games abandoned.  But if I were to see 50% of their games are abandoned, I'd rather not play them from the outset. 

Oh yeah - that feature alone, for live players, is probably valuable enough to make it worth paying a membership for alone.  If it could give me back 30-40 minutes a month in wasted time ... yeah, I'd be all over paying for that.

I agree this really bugs me too. It is the worst when (like you say) you just want to catch one quick game before bed, or before going out etc... but instead of getting a game you end up just staring at your opponents clock.

I really feel chess.com should do more to deal with this problem. I get so annoyed because I am practically forced to play shorter time controls than I would like in live games, because the risk of the game being abandoned, or just getting hate waited, makes longer time controls a pain. I would love to play some 30 or 45 min games. But I don't want to have to sit stairing at a clock for 35mins while my opponent is already down the pub with his buddies laughing about the mug he left waiting in an online chess game.

It would be so easy to fix this. Even just adding 'minutes per move' games, would go a long way towards solving the problem. But they could also add other messures. It is pretty obvious when an opponent has abandoned their game. If an opponent suddenly uses more than say 20% of the original time control on one move, you should be able start an abandoned game timer, that automatically resigns them if they don't cancel it. At least that way people who want to hate wait you are forced to sit there with you while the time runs out.

Another idea would be to get more clock options, such as bonus time when both queens are off the board. Or bonus time after 30 moves. Because you never know what kind of game you will be playing.

For example sometimes I play a 15 min game, and win in 13 moves, but then have to spend 10 mins staring at my opponents clock because they abandoned the game without resigning. Other times I play a 10 min game which ends up with queens being exchanged and stretches on for 40 moves, and I end up loosing on time in a what would otherwise have been an enjoyable end game.

The time controls we have here were not designed with online play in mind. They were designed primarily to encourage people to make moves faster OTB. Abandoned games would have been much less common and much more obvious. That is no longer the case. We need modern solutions.

I had a power failure at home which lasted only 2 minutes and lost a game by abandoned.
How does this work?  Why did this happen so quickly?!

I agree, I have the exact same issue with 10 minute chess.  I'm left hanging for 6-7 minutes fairly frequently.  It's nonsense.  We should be able to filter out the abusers somehow.  There has to be some metric or way.

It really is not fair at all to the victims to stick us with this problem, where we get punished if opponents leave us hanging on the clock while the perp gets away with it.  Or sure, we see some sort of vague impotent looking warning that their account may be restricted.  But why don't you let us decide based on a stat before we play, chess.com?

People complain about this all the time in General Chess Discussions and the threads get shot down by the forum readers, who say just chat in the forums, or don't play if you don't have time and all that nonsense.  I haven't heard or seen a reply from Chess.com, but I don't hang out in Help & Support forum either.

Still, it seems like it's a pretty huge problem and it infuriates a lot of players, and I have no idea what chess.com's formal stance is on it.

as far as i can tell they have adressed this issue

they cal the game abandond if the player doesnt move for 1/2 the base time control and 1 min if the player disconnects. try to remember that its their time to do with as they wish. i always block those players that do that... though you will end up with a long list you will never run into those players again. also the site has the ffp (fair play policy) which restrics and flags accounts. so if they stall abandon or abort too often then they will have to wait 5 min between games that way they cannot play two at the same time- i believe

Having an abandoned game timer? Really? This is chess were you should be able to use as much time as you want without having to worry about some dumb timer. If you dont want to have youre time wasted play bullet because it is in your opponents every right to think for their alloted time free of distractions.

I used to run the WSCF during my High School years and have been known and have known people to take a good hour to make a single move in tough positions. But that is LIVE - life - sitting across the bloody board, not staring into a computer screen. Patience in those situations is expected and even prefered in many situations.

However, and this goes out to you Chess.com staff, this is not across a board. If we play against someone in a cafe or a tournament and they leave, WE KNOW. Here, it is impossible. In a normal game, a person leaves, you get up, stay in the same room, bounce around and look at other games. You see when they re-enter, you see when they sit down, if they do, and you continue your game.

This is CHESS.com; the players on here expect to play chess and you know what? One or two long games out of a hundred, or even 10/100 is fine, if it was our choice to begin with. I know of sites that don't have this problem because the users understand that if they abuse the system, the system abuses them back. Chess is about courtesy, beat the heck out of your opponent on the board, then shake their damn hand and say good game, win or lose. It should not be any different on here than anywhere else.

But hey, if you enjoy the lower ranked members on here complaining and leaving because of the lack of a simple feature, or even a feature available to only paying members, then those players, the future potential Grandmasters, will make their names on other sites where one day they will get an interview and they will tell the world that [insert site name here] was to blame for their success.

EDIT: Oh and as for that abandoned game timer, that's rubbish. If you are playing a four hour time game, two hours per person, and your opponent only moves four times in those two hours, that is his/her choice. He/she should not have to worry about another clock.

Well, I don't want to play bullet either because I am not nearly fast/good enough. Besides, chess.com videos say bullet is no good for learning. So the option for me seems to be if I don't want this, I am on the wrong website?

just saying, its fpp, not ffp

I agree - I've had opponents start sending me "Are you there?" messages after I've spent more than a minute or two contemplating moves.  I play 30-minute games only, specifically so that I have time to think through moves.

However, having some method to filter opponents by membership status, number of games played, number of games lost on time, or number of dropped connections would help sort out all the ethically-challenged.

Abandoned games when lag is high are one thing, but running the clock down with obvious intention really needs to be captured statistically.

Chess.com could do so much better on this front. Each player plays hundreds or thousands of games. That's plenty of data to drive statistics. Give games that have a significant material disadvantage with a shorter abandon timer, or at least flag them as abuse with higher confidence. Run some heuristics on players, the ones who magically disconnect 50% when losing a queen get down-rated on player quality. Make it more likely to pair high-rated players against each other, or provide filters to premium members.

These warning indicators are obvious. We all know when a game has been abandoned, because the signs are clear. A few rapid moves in a row, followed by material loss, followed by... silence.

I get timed out occasionally when I accidentally flip my WiFi switch. I come back and my game is abandoned. If chess.com can make this kind of mistake for a player who has never intentionally abandoned a game, then do so when it is likely abuse.

Side note. It would really be nice to have an always visible indicator of connection loss. It seems like the lag/connection quality indicator doesn't get updated when there is no response. So I can stare at the green quality light until finally the text tells me they've disconnected. This could be a little progress bar that shows after, for example, a 5 second lack of keep-alive from your opponent or server, that then ticks down until the time that the connection is presumed lost. Then changes state, and further ticks until the time the game is considered abandoned.

I don't know why I keep trying to play from my android tablet. Connection recovery is terrible from all my android devices. I can sit on the same internet connection and watch my opponent's clock run from android while my clock runs on my PC. Plus, when it does actually have the courtesy to tell my my connection is bad, it does it by dimming the entire display so I can't calculate while waiting for the connection to restore. Really annoying.

I play blitzs at about 150-200 points higher from my PC than tablet, even though I can move faster with the tablet UI.

I like the idea of having time controls per move.  Perhaps a 2 minute move, with an option for 1 minute extensions.  At least for games up to 30 minutes, and possibly 5 min per move beyond that.   Hopefully it becomes annoying enough for the person to have to click "I want more time" button that they'll just resign or stop bothering to be an ass.  

The other option is to prevent people from deleting feedback about them.  So before I start a game, if I look in their profile and see a lot of negative feedback about abandoning games, then I'll just not play them.  The same could go for smack-talk (I'm kinda guilty of this during games).  If you don't like the negative feedback, just don't play them then.

Right or wrong isn't a matter of what is popular. It's more logical and objective than that. (i.e. a lot of people wan't this artificial "game abandoned" sub-timer for a move within say a 30 minute game.) When you play a 30 minute game, it means: the game could last anything up to 1 hour! Most people won't just not move out of spite because they want to play chess, but even if they do, get over it, get mature, and accept your win on time for heaven's sake! This is not a real problem. The problem is people complaining with abusive chat because someone is "waiting" i.e thinking for longer than expected. It's not possible for the server the magically detect if an opponent is really abandoning the game, or just thinking for ages. Thinking within all your allotted time is allowed, interestingly enough.

i have just waited for someone for almost 7 minutes for them to abandon the game. is there anything we can do about this kind of gamesmanship.I don't think there should be a time limit per move, sometimes people have to think a long time about a move( especially beginners ).but three moves into the game is, in my opinion an attempt to cheat. Is there anything we can do?