Timeout and Draw

Let's consider this position. No player can gain an advantage or checkmate their opponent by any possible sequence of legal moves. So should it be a draw even after one player flags? As per FIDE rules, it should be. Lichess declared a win for black after white flagged.

I think an issue is OTB you can claim with an arbiter. How do you code such a thing?

Strictly speaking the game is already over otb. You cannot code recognition of fortresses, as simple as that.

For that lichess would have to program the engine to find the worst possible sequence of moves within 50 moves. If it is still 0,0 then a draw is declared. I think that just a few games end that way, and don't think that lichess should provide much server power for such a rare thing. But they already have one genial solution, threefold repetition or 50 moves rule will almost always terminate the game: Use time controls with increment ;)

ı knot now

@Karpfenkopf But how would it determine the worst sequence in such a position where every move leads to a draw?
In this exact case, brute-force is possible as there are only 24*24 = 576 positions that could arise. As none of these is a checkmate, a draw could be declared.

Technically the above position (although I think its impossible to recreate in a real game but anyway) falls under the draw by dead position rule, popularly known as "draw by insufficient material".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw_(chess)

" Under the standard FIDE rules, a draw also occurs "in dead position", when no sequence of legal moves can lead to checkmate, most commonly when neither player has sufficient material to checkmate the opponent."

Focus on the word "commonly" which doesn't restrain the rule specifically by not having the material to checkmate per se (because technically a single pawn could lead eventually to that) so "commonly" is used to give only an example; the most frequent one by far but still an example, a reference.

So this is a dead position no matter if worst play or best play is going to follow and thereby a draw.

Edit: And now I see that you are just asking how this could be recognized by lichess lol :P sorry

Well I think lichess could check (when player time's out) if any other piece(other than the king) is able to do a legal move(thus much less computer power required compared to running a cloud analysis to determine that), if the answer is negative then it should declare a draw.

EDIT2: well thinking more on the subject the first edit answer wouldn't lead always to accurate assessment since if 2 pawns both on the B file for example could lead lichess to draw the game...

So in addition to that it should check (no pun intended :P ) the movement box of each king so the boxes the king could exist from the position he is if the box of the king's movement doesnt include the particular position an enemy piece is located and the what I said on my first edit also holds true then it should draw the game when time is out.

It would be brute force just for getting every possible case, that's using too much computer power to evaluate every finished game, which was terminated by win on time. Run it only on longer time controls would also be rather unfair. Best way would be to run it on request by the player who lost on time on a very short period after the game.

Easier would be to use human arbiters. But who want to do that job?!

Yeah, that seems to be a better solution.

guess you could only pre-move 50 moves and hope not to lose on time if lichess doesn't have enough positions in the database for positions for insufficient material.