Auto forfeit for thinking?

Chess.com,

It is completely bullshit that you put an artificial timer on my move in a complicated position and force me to move or forfeit. I have never, not even once, let my time expire in a lost position. I was playing a 3 2 rated game, and spent about 1 minute on a move before a timer popped up distracting me and forcing me to move in an otherwise equal, but complicated position.

If you're not from chess.com, and you are reading this, and want to be an apologist... then don't bother. Unless a player has a history of leaving games without finishing them, or the position is dead lost, my clock is my time to spend on my move.

It is absurd they are putting a timer on a move when I'm not even losing.

If the timer was on one of your first 10 moves, then you ran into the long move timer. If you use more than half the base time control then that will come into play.

https://support.chess.com/article/338-how-does-game-abandonment-work

It was in the first 10 moves, and I was winning according to the post game analysis with -2.7 but was having trouble finding the best move.

The popup forced me to move and I ended up blundering. I should have been able to spend the time necessary on my move.

It just happened to me in another game, again a game that I was ahead in. Yes, in the first 10 moves. Sometimes openings are tricky, we should be able to use our time.

The long move timer is intended to prevent someone from blundering early and then just letting time run out. Yes, it can legitimately catch some members having a long think in a complex position as well. 

There really isn't a good way to cover both issues. Firing up an engine instance in the background every time a possibile long move abort is happening would be pretty resource intensive. If it then allowed the abort to continue if the player was losing but kept the game otherwise, it also provides information about game state, which isn't ideal.

If everyone playing had good sportsmanship, it wouldn't be necessary to have at all.

This just happened to me.

I had this position. I was calculating Qf3 when Chess.com began the countdown. I ended up playing Bxe6 in the last second and lost all my advantage and ended up losing the game. My loss is entirely Chess.com's fault. This feature is pretty absurd. Rage-quitting is very rude, but it changes nothing. You come to the game expecting to play for the whole duration. Rage-quitting does not add to your time; it only forces you to play for the full duration. So I don't see a need for taking measures to prevent it to the point of impacting a player's winning chances. It's totally unnecessary.

It doesn't make any sense. If the game was a 60 minute game and 1/2 that time was 30+ minutes then maybe.. but 1 minute is not that long in a 3 2 game. It's not that hard to wait for your opponent's move.

If they really wanted to know if you were rage quitting, they have chess engines. At a minimum they could submit that position to a brief engine analysis to see if you are actually losing before threatening you with a forfeit.

I still don't think they should auto-forfeit for just 1-2 minutes of thinking in any position unless you have a history of letting your time expire. They could automate that too. If you let a % of time expire before losing a game, submit each to a ragequit checker and if you are losing by a significant margin then put you on the list of people who get threatened with forfeit.

I just encountered this for the first time ever after finally switching from "live" to "play". In a 3+0 chess960 tourney! Where you literally have to spend a lot of time early on because of the complicated starting positions. It happened in almost every game, too.

I do not like the feature at all, but in those specific circumstances it was just utterly ridiculous. This needs to be reworked or removed!

iirc the long move timer will not do anything unless you use more than your base time? I believe that was an advantageous bug, did it get fixed?

It's more than half the base time control on any move before 10 moves have been completed.

While you're correct, it's actually less time than that before it distracts you with a popup notification. So in a 3 minute game it's about 1 minute before it pops up and interrupts your thought process.

This is a pretty haphazardly thought out feature.  I guess the idea is that you should be in "book" but not everyone has an extensive opening repetoire, especially people who are not titled players.  And most people just blitz out the first 10 moves regardless of how good or bad their position is.

Obviously, as the OP I agree. However, I think I can offer an improvement. I think it is unnecessary to present auto-forfeit for shorter time controls. For example, in a 3 2 blitz game, Chess.com threatens to auto-forfeit you after just over a 1 minute. The message itself is very distracting (to me at least). It's extremely unnecessary as at most they are saving someone from 90 seconds of waiting to win. While as a player I should be able to spend 90 seconds thinking about a tricky gambit line if I choose to, especially considering I have a 2 sec increment, it isn't unreasonable.

On move 4 I was forced to make a panic move, in chess960 during a 10 minute game in a stream arena. No theory exists yet in this variant, it’ll take at least a thousand years to get a handful of openings for one starting position. What is even more insulting is I panic moved for nothing because the timer didn’t forfeit the game for me when this platform made me want to rage quit. I was dead lost and couldn’t resign because it was early in the game. This has been a problem for years and it’s insane that it’s still an issue.

This is absolutely ridiculous and its still happening in 2025.

You could be a beginner and not know the first 10 moves and actually need to think. Your opponent could make a random move that throws you off, anything can happen.

Chess is supposedly a game where one wants to think before they move.

Also, it's a very easy problem to solve. Worst case scenario when the counter shows up, if you press anywhere on the screen it should disappear because you demonstrate you're still here.

I honestly can't believe this is a thing