Hey, never had this issue before, I usually play on PC, and just started the following classical game:
My Wifi was not disconnected, and immideately after my opponent played his last moves, the game ended with "Black left the game; White is victorious."
This is super odd as i was sitting infront of my pc playing, and not have actually closed the game or something.
Could this have happened from some kind of server lag?
Even the lichess Website shows i had 29:00 left after my last move and when the game ended, so there was no time to claim a leave under normal circumstances.
Any help would be appreciated.
Looking at the move times, it says that you spent 37.6 seconds before leaving the game. I would assume that there was some (connection) problem on your side.
@AAArmstark said in #2:
> Looking at the move times, it says that you spent 37.6 seconds before leaving the game. I would assume that there was some (connection) problem on your side.
Quite unfortunate if thats the case, especially since its connected to quite a big rating loss, but i guess this sadly happens. However i always thought that the displayed time would be reduced by the time you spent before resigning or leaving.
Thats why i was unsure, i have seen the game analysis tool showing 37.6 seconds (which by the way for a classical game is a very short time to already giving the option of claiming a win), but the display stayed at 29:00 at the game end and after the last move i did.
I always remembered the Timer to claim a win (or call a draw) after a disconnect was 90 sec, so even more suprised by 37.6 seconds being enough here.
But thank you for looking into it!
This just happened to me, and I had over 90% of my time remaining before disconnect, and over 80% remaining after reconnect, and my position was winning (shallow eval +4.9 and deeper eval +8.5+). It took me only about 3 minutes to reconnect to a game scheduled to last 40+ minutes, and the machine declared that I lost. This was not the first time I got penalized by Lichess algorithms for being poor.
Lichess is a great interface for a great price (free!) and keeps getting better every year. It's my #1 choice for chess. But unfortunately the site still follows some commercial moneymaking chess sites' conventions by default. These moneymaking conventions cater almost exclusively to rich, young Western boys with expensive setups, a steady supply of Gourmet Espressos/Ritalin/Adderall/Provigil, fast reflexes, and no patience. The rest of the world (the majority of us) wind up getting punished for being normal, having normal reflexes, normal hardware, and normal (imperfect) internet connections. To Western rich boys, the world's normal majority are just a bunch of irrelevant poor people not worth a thought, I guess. I can see why commercial chess sites cater to these rich boys--that's where the money is. But a free, open source, donor funded nonprofit could do better.
From what I have read, almost every great chess player says that the way to improve is to play a lot of slow chess (3-5 minutes PER MOVE or longer) and to analyze your games afterwards, and to avoid bullet as a waste of time at best or a builder of bad habits at worst. Yet Lichess is set up to favor the "live fast and die rich" bullet crowd. The games and tournaments are mostly ultra-bullet, bullet (which often becomes ultra-bullet with berserk), blitz (which usually becomes bullet with berserk), and "rapid" which is actually slow blitz and becomes standard blitz with berserk, and berserking is virtually mandatory to be competitive. Even the rare "classical" tournaments are played mostly at rapid speeds.
I hope they eventually fix this situation like they have fixed many other shortcomings.
Suggestions:
* Before rushing to make a disconnected player lose for "leaving the game" in an assumed-to-be-lost-position, maybe have the server do a quick shallow eval of the position, and if the disconnected player is clearly winning, or if the game is even, give that player some extra time to reconnect (time in proportion to the time control and the player's remaining time). Or at least rule the game a draw/abort instead of lost if the disconnected player was clearly winning.
* Label time controls accurately: 10 minutes has always been on the upper end of the blitz category. Rapid has always been 20 to 30 minutes, not 10. Classical is 60+ minutes. If a tournament allows berserking, make sure the berserk time is still in the same category. Examples: 6 or 8 or 10 minute blitz berserks into 3 or 4 or 5 minutes (still blitz) so that's fine, but 3 minute blitz berserks into 1.5 minute bullet and is no longer blitz. 10 minute "rapid" is actually blitz timing, and berserks into 5 minutes--which is THE classic blitz time control. Add some rapid and classical tourney which are actually rapid or classical timing (25-30 minutes for rapid and 60+ minutes for classical)
* Add at least 1-3 second increments standard in a good portion of tourneys. No increment is a handicap to people playing from rural or third world areas or who can only afford a mediocre connection. 300-2000 millisecond ping time is not unusual worldwide. Most people do not live in a major high tech metropolis with bleeding edge high tech infrastructure. No need to punish those people for having less access to top technology.
It's entirely possible to keep offering the superfast chess games and tourneys for the rich boys, and to also add some more normal time control tourneys for the rest of us. It's a win-win.
Right now Lichess is the best free chess resource on the internet. Somewhere in the world there is a potential "next Wesley So" (2019 Chess960 World Champion who peaked as FIDE world #2 rated player and who started out playing street chess as a homeless youth in the Philippines). This poor third-world street-kid is chess crazy and trying to improve any way he can by reading chess books at the local library and using a used/donated smart phone and spotty free WiFi at a local cafe. He probably spends some time on Lichess, because it's good and popular and free, but instead of building his skills with real chess, he is wasting his potential on highly addictive bullet games which keep his skills stagnant. And he is doing so because he has few other options and may not know any better.
Help this kid become the next Wesley So.
Give him some online chess tournaments he can win despite his financial and technological disadvantages.
