[mlthoughts2018]

Unfortunately, lichess moderation and policies for account bans or forced periods of inactivity are horrendous.

I once got banned because my cell phone lost connectivity as I passed a subway tunnel and in the meantime the other user “reported” me for abandoning the game.

This resulted in my account being frozen out from playing games for several hours. I wrote to the support email address and got no response.

This then happened two or three more times in the same month.

Furious with the ridiculous policy, I only will play in “anonymous” mode now, usually at chess.com with frequently changed accounts, sometimes still at lichess with no registration.

[SamReidHughes]

Only several hours? Sorry, but you're being a drama queen. If you're riding a train through a tunnel, you shouldn't be playing on lichess. Stop ruining other players' experiences.

[mlthoughts2018]

Your reply is quite rude. It is deeply unreasonable to suggest someone can’t play chess e.g. on their morning commute because other people are too whiny to accept that disconnections and move delays are simply a built-in reality of internet chess, period.

If your experience of internet chess can possibly be affected by intermittent disconnections or move delays by your opponent, then you are being the drama queen. That would be incredibly unreasonable.

[gmiller123456]

Unfortunately legitimate connection problems resulting in abandoned games is the exception to the rule. But even a legitimate connection issue is still a major annoyance to your opponent. If this is happening to you on a regular basis that the bans are a problem for you, then the solution is to only play when you have a high degree of confidence that your connection won't drop.

[mlthoughts2018]

I disagree. It’s internet chess and disconnections happen for all sorts of reasons. It’s totally backwards to have automated account bans for disconnections.

If you agree to play a game against someone, you are implicitly accepting that one thing they may do is become disconnected / idle. That’s simply unavoidable. You’re always free to resign and leave the game if you don’t prefer to wait around, but locking the other player out when there’s no evidence they did something malicious is horrible.

[gmiller123456]

You're also agreeing to abide by the rules set forth of the organization you're playing under. I generally play 10-20 games a day, and a disconnect happens while I'm playing maybe once every couple of months. If you're disconnects are significantly higher than that, you're probably not the target market for on-line blitz chess.

[mlthoughts2018]

Yes, but the rules govern intentionally abandoning games, not disconnections you may not have control over.

> “If you're disconnects are significantly higher than that, you're probably not the target market for on-line blitz chess.”

It’s not very common and it’s not predictable or uniform (not even in subway tunnels). But if someone reports you for disconnecting, it autonatically locks you out from playing and emailing to the support email gets no response to unlock in false positive cases.

Also, just in the basic rules of chess, your opponent can do whatever they want with their clock time. You’ve agreed to abide by that rule by agreeing to play. If they want to take 4:00 to think about their sixth move in a 5/0 game, they are perfectly allowed, and may even still win if you blunder.

There’s no time limit per move beyond the first move and the overall clock time. Disconnections (when the player might return) are no different.

[gmiller123456]

>Also, just in the basic rules of chess, your opponent can do whatever they want with their clock time.

This is incorrect. At this point I'd like to point out that I was (and soon will be again) a USCF certified TD [1], and have run my own correspondence site for about 20 years [2]. Abandoning a game has the unique distinction of being mentioned three times in the USCF rulebook, and carries with it the most severe penalty specifically mentioned which is ejection from the tournament (with more severe penalties are up to the TD and USCF). FIDE has a similar rule, though they don't mention abandoment directly where a player has stopped trying to win under the "normal means". Not all rule violations have to be intentional, specifically similar to your case is "annoying behavior". When you fail to finish a game, for whatever reason, it's annoying and an inconvenience to your opponent, and some punitive measure is warranted.

[1] http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmtDir.php?12709934

[2] http://www.net-chess.com

[mlthoughts2018]

Why do you feel that federation-sanctioned tournament & correspondence rules are relevant to this situation? Abandonment in those cases would be deliberate if not because of an emergency.

You’re obviously not going to get punished if the “abandonment” is revealed to have been because you get accidentally locked out of the tournament hall through no fault of your own, which is the right comparison for something like online chess disconnection.

I don’t see a reason to feel that your comment is applicable.

[captncraig]

Unfortunately it's much more common for a player to leave from a losing position without resigning. It's hard to solve that problem without hurting commuters in the crossfire. I also play on the subway, but I stick to correspondence or classical depending on where I am. I usually have 10-15 correspondence games open, and long format is an amazing way to improve your game without worrying about time sensitive connection issues.

[mlthoughts2018]

Given that the lockout policy only applies on actual accounts (someone signed up a username), I don’t see why it would be hard. If an account disconnects intermittently, the history of that would be obvious compared with someone who is disconnecting all the time because they are frustrated at losing. My whole comment is just that it doesn’t seem like lichess is even trying to differentiate at all, and failing that, they don’t respond or unlock accounts if you write to them about it either. There is so much super low-hanging fruit they could do to make the policy better, but just don’t.

Separately from this, I personally actually think it’s totally backwards and unreasonable to ever, for any reason, care that an opponent disconnects. I don’t care at all if my opponent disconnects for any reason, whether because they are frustrated, their cell connection dropped, whatever. They have zero obligation to move fast, resign from losing positions, or anything else. It is internet chess with literally nothing riding on it, ever, for anyone.

If you click to play a game of length X minutes or whatever, that’s your commitment. It’s not your opponent’s. They might waste X-1 minutes looking at cat pictures before playing a move— that’s well within their rights and you agreed to play, meaning you can quit or disconnect if you don’t wanna wait around for the next move, or you can cede that your opponent can do whatever they want with their allocated clock time, whether that is resigning, disconnecting, or playing nonsense moves, or playing for real.

I think all the frustration that an opponent can degrade your experience by using their clock time to do whatever they want is unreasonable. That’s on you, not on the system or the opponent.

[MauranKilom]

Especially in longer time controls, it is plain rude to "resign" from a losing position by timing out instead of resigning. I get that this does not apply to your case, but it's unusual to try and find that mate in 10 by disconnecting.

[Karunamon]

Isn’t it possible to play in “email” mode (read: days long time control) or something else if you’re going to be in a situation with spotty coverage? As I understand it, live games mean just that.

A few hours ban is a slap on the wrist from a moderation perspective, and it seems... odd... that they’d even hit you with that unless you regularly leave games.

[Jabbles]

> This then happened two or three more times in the same month.

Sounds like they do it pretty regularly :/

[mlthoughts2018]

The bans are automated. It happens even if you disconnect irregularly and infrequently through no fault of your own.

[beyondCritics]

I have a little bit of experience with lichess and as far as i can tell, their treating of abusers is typically rather deliberate. Maybe you should start considering their usage policy.

[mlthoughts2018]

This is just false. Lockouts from playing due to disconnections happen automatically, whether the disconnection happened through no fault of your own or not.