When people log off instead of resigning

The site says that players may have their account restricted in accordance with the 'fair play' policy. What actually happens? It seems to be very prevalent that players will simply log off, leaving you to have to wait for their time to elapse. Could the punishment be increased to discourage this further?

Thanks for the info re 5 mins. That doesn't seem much of a punishment, given that they often cause the other player to have to wait for more than 5 mins whilst the time runs out.

I don't mind if someone loses power. It's the prevalence of this happening precisely AFTER you have just made a winning move that bugs me. (i.e. it would be a strange coincidence if they just so happened to lose power at such a time.)

Maybe I have just been particularly unlucky in facing either (a) unscrupulous players or (b) players who have poor connections that just so happen to fail when they realise they can't win.

It really bugs me. I feel like I should start a name and shame page for people who do this. It is obvious that they are just being stubborn/angry at losing.

For example, I take their queen and immediately it says they've 'disconnected' and they have 2 mins to reconnect, etc.

Perhaps a chess program should look at the game if a player has recently disconnected. If it sees the player that is connected being up more than +5 it should automatically give the player the victory. I think it's really just emotional weakness that causes these players to quit in this manner.

This pattern could perhaps be the basis of an algorithm that keeps tracking the user behavior, and then when it happens way too much the offending players could be actually punished/banned. I don't think that power shortages would be too much of an issue.

And regarding power cuts, I think that perhaps it's extra suspicious if the person comes to another match in 5 minutes. I don't know about other countries, but around here when there are power shortages they will usually take half an hour to solve, but often more than one hour. It's quite rare that the power will just go down, return more less immediatelly, and remain stable after that. It happens, but it's like 1 in 8 times. 

The internet can drop for many reasons besides power outages, especially since Chess.com has a phone app. I know that when I play on my phone, I drop occasionally (though not more than maybe one in fifty games). So of course you can't ban people simply for a drop.

However, if a player repeatedly abandons games in completely lost positions, then obviously something should be done. And it sounds like something is done, which is good to hear. I don't know if players who continue the behavior with restricted accounts get additional penalties (like a permanent ban), but they should.


By the way, you shouldn't have to wait more than a few minutes after your opponent disconnects. After a few minutes, it will simply award you the win and say "game abandonned." However, if the opponent doesn't disconnect and just leaves the game running, you will indeed have to wait until he times out.

A great punishment!  It's always nice to force a restroom break.  It's even more effective when they disconnect and don't come back for a day or two.

Get used to it. A victory by abandonment and time forfeit is still a victory. It may not be as sweet as checkmate and resignation. Just don't play against the same person again. Sportsman practice is getting extinct gradually. These unsportman conduct is similar to trolling.

If you play 1 game a day or more, you'll run into this a few times a week.  When I'm in these situations I just pop onto the chess.com forums and see if there is anything of interest.  Eventually I'll hear the move sound or the game over sound.  Either one works for me.

What I think is worse is when they decide to let their time run out in a long game.  It's not the end of the world, though.  I once had someone spend 15 or more minutes in a position like this:

C'est la vie.

*thinks*

Now wait a second, the first couple posts brought an interesting thought to my mind.

IF a player violates the fair play policy then their account is restricted by 5 minutes. If they do it again, it is 10 minutes. If they do it a third time (over a specific number of games) then their wait time is increased by the amount of time they made the last person wait!

Feel like a classic punishment to me.

That bugs me too, but they do lose points.

I was not referring to anyone in particular, I just thought it was could be relevant for a method dealing with this sort of cheat, if what described really was a general pattern, but in the other hand I acknowledge that there could well be that different types of power plants and grids will suffer different types of issues and therefore the duration and frequency of interruptions could vary significantly.

Perhaps they could develop some system that halts the game if one of the players logs off, and pops up a warning/resume option when both are online and available again. With some time limit, if the player who logged out doesn't resume the match in something like the original time control times 5, he loses.

I don't see how logging out can be construed as cheating, but it is just plain rude. Its right up there with knocking all the pieces off the board. I just had to wait 3 days while someone after acknowleging his emminent demise just let the time run out.

this is definitely gonna be censored very soon

Most of these people wouldn't throw such a fit in person.  Strange how the internet changes us.

I agree with whoever said that an engine could evaluate the position and give the win to the appropriate player upon disconnection. The ICC has such a policy now, and it works great. Plus, this is definitely a much bigger problem on Chess.com.

man, I can't believe it. 28 hours, and still not censored!