Sometimes opponents like to abandon the game when they know they've lost, causing you to be unable to play on the site until you either resign (and reward their bad behavior) or the time runs out. We must find a way to deal with this, because it makes the site less fun, decreases the number of active games, creates resentment among players and makes me less willing to play lower ranked players (because they're the petty ones who usually do this).
I was brainstorming ideas, and I thought of a button to ping your opponent, and they are notified somehow and must respond to the ping in time (by clicking anywhere on the board?) or else they lose. I think a 2 minute time limit would be a good start. In other words, if someone doesn't pay attention to the board during a full two minutes after being pinged, they lose the game. It seems fair to me.
That wouldn't work: someone temporarily leaving a game to go to the bathroom, etc. might be punished for taking what might be a fair break in a real tournament (although the clock still runs).
I would make a different proposal: allow members (and perhaps everyone) to participate in multiple games at once, and increase the aggressiveness of the 'rage quit' sensing algorithm. That way, both players can continue to play other games, and the player whose opponent left the game can still wait for the opponent's timer on their original game to expire while playing elsewhere.
+1 Chessatom
Simply block people who let their time run out in a loosing pos.
In order not to "punish" all for the bad manners of some.
That's what I do (though I'm not high rated so it doesn't happen that often to me).
But the system already does this for you. When your opponent leaves the lichess site in the middle of a game (the "online" symbol goes red), the system waits for a minute or two, then tells you that your opponent has likely left the game and asks if you want to claim the win, claim a draw, or wait. This is a pretty good method, and only makes you wait a couple of minutes, if that.
Do not forget to consider that people can sometimes lose their internet connections during the game, not on purpose. It has happened to me many times.
Quite often it happens in my games (in such cases) that I get to see something like a "Your opponent might have left the game. Claim win or draw" option after some 10 to 20 seconds after my opponent leaves the game.
This doesn't always happen (sometimes opponents seem to let time run out on purpose in totally lost position, making the opponent wait for even 2 or 3 minutes. Wasting the time of everyone. Some players do this all the time.) but I am quite happy how Lichess handles this right now.
Lichess does this much much better than on Fics (freechess).
Yes, some people actually let time run out without disconnecting... Ridicoulous and not often but happened.
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