I don't know if anybody has seen this, or can explain it. But I've played two games against the Hard computer on chess.com in the last couple of days, in which I had K+R vs. K, and it declared a draw after three moves. They were unrated games, so it's not that important. As far as I'm concerned, they're wins, but I'm not sure how to explain it. Does their program think that the 50 Move Rule is a 3 move rule? Or does it not know that you can mate with K+R? I wonder if it would work the other way around. If I was in trouble in game, could I swap down to K vs. K+R, and have it think this was a draw?

The draw would be the correct result if the rook side has run out of time...(?)

No, no time forfeit. Just a draw 3 moves after the ending began. Maybe it's some kind of bug that thinks the clock is gone. Or maybe it happens after the last pawn is removed. Maybe I'll play a couple of games on the lowest level, where I can manipulate what kind of ending we get into easier, and see what I can find.

Speaking of quirks, I've seen several games on Playchess itself where people seem to be usig some kind of time seal program, in which their time runs down to zero, but they don't forfeit. Sometimes they even win that way. I've only seen it from Guests, but it's still annoying. Is Playchess that insecure or is there some other explanation?

The playchess exploit has burned me several times when I'd get a winning position and they would fudge the connection such that they would be awarded the win the moment I clicked the 'claim win on disconnect' button.

Just the other day, I got a won position on a Mexican scumbag, and he kept spamming the make take-back offer button. It pops up on your screen and you are forced to sit there and decline it over and over. He spammed it about 500 times, letting his time run almost all the way out. Then he offered a draw (declined), and then an abort (declined). With a couple seconds left, he then made a move on the board, and it gave ALL of his clock time back, with a message from the server claiming there was a lag of 5 minutes. He then proceeded to repeat process all over again, only I managed to get the server to recognize his disconnect right before he logged back in to start the cycle a 3rd time. It was a nice moral victory, since I knew he saw I got awarded the win.

I've written to chessbase about this countless times in the past, but they never respond and never do anything about it.

How do you use it? And how do you avoid it? Is the trick to just never play guests?


I've seen that, but it didn't happen last night. This guy only offered a draw once at a time. But when his time went to zero, nothing happened. I assume it's a time seal program like the cheats people use on Pogo.

Speaking of that, I once played a guy using one of those at a time control of like 2 0. He won his share by cheating, but I still took 200 rating points away from him that night. He was furious, of course, but what did he have to be mad about? He was cheating, I wasn't, and he was still losing. If you can't win even when you're cheating, it's time to take up checkers, you know?

In the game last night, (a 1 0 game, incidentally, I just left the program open with the draw offer showing, and went to bed. When I got up in the morning, it claimed I'd lost on disconnection (even though I was still connected), but I doubt the guy saw it if it happened hours later.

So, does Playchess not care about cheaters? Or do they just not care in unrated games? I know they care about computer assistance when they catch it, because I'm always seeing them deleting ratings and dragging the bodies through the streets. They once deleted mine (even though I hadn't cheated at all), just because they didn't like me task switching too much.

What would they do if someone blatantly opened Rybka and task switched to it after every move, but in an unrated game between two guests? They couldn't delete a rating. Would they not care? I'm not willing to test it to find out.