As I see there are two very different thing lichess penalizes the same way.
One case is when someone sitting on clock o the end. This should be treated as quitting a game described by FIDE competition rules:
9.3 A player who does not wish to continue a game and leaves without resigning or notifying the arbiter is discourteous. He may be penalised, at the discretion of the CA, for poor sportsmanship (E.I.01A.12.9)
Another case
@ProgramFOX described is when players are playing on clock to flag their opponent. This was always part of blitz chess. I don't think this should be penalized at all.
You misunderstood. The second case is when a player spends most of his time on one move only to get flagged on the next move
No. You are who misunderstood. Flagging your opponent is part of the game. It doesn't matter you try it with moving too fast or moving too slow. This is how even top GM play blitz.
Ahh, sorry. After re reading it, you are right.
But anyhow, penalizing someone just because he uses hes own time in _any_ way seems too much for me, if he finally takes any move, because no algorithm can decide why player was thinking "too much" before moving.
There are always the same guys who let their time run down which is an offense of course. If you use your time for thinking than it is no problem, it is just a warning.
A warning for 18 seconds really seems a bit harsh.
I suppose the warning threshold is exclusively relative to the remaining/total time right now (as in: "if used >x% of remaining/total time").
It probably is a good idea to include some absolute lower bound. I propose one minute. Even in the case of real sitting, having to wait for a mere minute to claim the win shouldn't be too much of an annoyance.
Maybe that time window should even be higher for the slower modes, too.
I think that warnings should be at least a minute in general, but there are two situations that ought to be given much less benefit of the doubt.
I suggest that Lichess allow a "Claim Victory" button:
* As soon as a person [in a losing position] starts a second game (really? that's pretty disrespectful); or
* 10 seconds after a person [in a losing position] switches to another tab/window.
@Sarg0n sending the warning is the problem when it's not reasonable.
