A better solution for abortion

I realize there has to be some mechanism for auto-aborting games. I also realize for experienced players in orthodox chess, the current system is perfectly fine (some impatient people even wish it was more aggressive). While it's just a little unfair to beginners playing black, who may not have a response to every opening move, it's totally inadequate for chess 960. In 960 tournaments at the highest level, players are given several minutes to study the opening position (up to 10 minutes even for a 10+10 game!), discussing it with a coach, before they even sit down at the board and start their clocks. Even then, players will frequently spend considerable clock time before the first move. As more and more high-profile 960 events garner attention and attract new players, the status quo on lichess will become increasingly annoying to a larger and larger proportion of users.

I've seen some archived posts complaining about this, but I haven't seen many constructive suggestions for a solution. I know there are a lot of brilliant minds who spent time engineering the current solution, so I'm perfectly happy for someone to explain to me why my proposal isn't an improvement, but HERE'S MY SUGGESTION:

TLDR:

In 960 games (and perhaps later, if it is popular, all games) the abort clock would count down inside a new button. The player must move or click this button before the abort timer runs to zero. If they click the button, their clock time begins to count down, the abort timer resets to n seconds, and the player must click it again every n seconds until they make a move; this repeats until the first move is made. This fulfills the function of the abort timer by requiring user input, but doesn't require a move. If the player with the black pieces gets fed up with waiting they can just leave, as the game will still be aborted if they don't click the button or move.

I realize having to wait a few seconds longer might drive some people mad, but this is why reserve time exists. This is how it works in real tournaments. If you don't like it, play increment-only or low reserve time controls. If a user can run down the clock from move two, it's arbitrary to prevent them from doing so on move one. There are other mechanisms on lichess for preventing that kind of abuse.

IMHO it would be better if, after the initial timeout, the clock would just start. With your solution, white could effectively think about his/her first move indefinitely. Having to perform an action (like pressing a button) to confirm presence and intention to play would make sense, though.

@mkubecek said in #2:
> IMHO it would be better if, after the initial timeout, the clock would just start.

Yes, and I think that's how it works in swiss tournaments. But that would basically be eradicating abortion altogether, which I think would make a lot of players angry. It does serve a purpose.

@mkubecek said in #2:
> With your solution, white could effectively think about his/her first move indefinitely. Having to perform an action (like pressing a button) to confirm presence and intention to play would make sense, though.

I think you misread my post. The clock WOULD start after the first click.
@seveer said in #1:
>If they click the button, their clock time begins

@seveer said in #3:
> I think you misread my post. The clock WOULD start after the first click.
Yes, I missed that part. This way it would IMHO make sense.

I had a similar idea at the back of my mind for a long time. I was thinking both sides would have to press a button "present and ready" and the clock would start.

That would actually solve 2 problems:
a) being able to think on move one, as you say
b) black can no longer bail out wheter they like white's first move or not

I don't think this will ever happen, but one can dream.

@MusicGarlic said in #5:
> [...] I was thinking both sides would have to press a button "present and ready" and the clock would start. [...]

Great idea in principle, but I think this one would cause numerous problems from players who would not know that they have to do this. I think a similar idea has already been suggested specially for Swiss tournaments that players should indicate their presence before a new round starts but that was thought by most respondents to be unwise because too many players would unwittingly fail to do that and would be pushed out of the tournament when they did want to continue. Same, I think, for individual games.

So I prefer seveer's original suggested implementation and I think it's a good idea. The only problem: I think it would be a lot of work for the developers.

@Brian-E said in #6:
> The only problem: I think it would be a lot of work for the developers.

What makes you say that? Compared to some of the extremely complex backend work they do, this seems like peanuts. I don't see how it would be more work than any other feature they release monthly.

@seveer said in #7:
> What makes you say that? Compared to some of the extremely complex backend work they do, this seems like peanuts. I don't see how it would be more work than any other feature they release monthly.

You may be right. I say it, though, because it's an alteration of the way games are played (at their start) which seems to me quite a fundamental change. It would also possibly have knock-on effects in the recording of time taken.

@Brian-E said in #8:
> You may be right. I say it, though, because it's an alteration of the way games are played (at their start) which seems to me quite a fundamental change. It would also possibly have knock-on effects in the recording of time taken.

Well they do broadcasts of live events where move one does not equal time zero, so they must already have a way to handle it, and if they want to improve broadcasts in the future they'll have to continue to deal with it. So other logic relying on this erroneous handling of move one time should really be considered tech debt and fixing it sooner rather than later will save them work in the long run.