Yea the timeout thing I think was just, like, it calculates who had the massive material advantage and decides whether to treat the game as a draw, even though one player flagged on their clock.
Here's an example of what I meant:
http://en.lichess.org/ccimhl3xv9yqThibault's current design, automatically declared this game as a draw the moment the last piece was captured.
thibault's algorithm includes two bishops and two Kings = draw by insufficient material to mate?
This is not so.
It is possible to checkmate in that game I linked, although against decent players highly unlikely.
Imagine White's King on a8 instead of a5,
White's bishop on a7 instead of d4,
my (Black's) King on c8 (or c7) instead of c6,
my (Black) bishop on c6 instead of d7
That is a reachable position, legally, which meant I could have won that game by checkmate, although that guy's way too good for that trick to have worked. It probably would have drawn anyway by the 50 move draw rule.