Claim victory option

Hi,

I understand the idea behind the "claim victory" button is that people often disconnect from a game which is clearly lost but don't resign which is annoying for the "winning" player who has to wait for time to run out.

In my opinion, the server should check if there is a clearly winning position (or material advantage) before giving a player the opportunity to "claim victory". Otherwise, only "claim draw" should be available.

I was "kicked" out of a game and lost (I disconnected for around a minute because of a bad phone connection), with equal material and, in my opinion, a slightly better position.

Kind regards.

Maybe one day when fishnet is about to take over and evolves to be skyfishnet, it is able to judge about every single game played in this very moment. :-)

I agree with #2. The thought of wearing fishnet stockings to my games while being judged by a sentient machine gets me all hot and bothered.

#1 What do you propose if a 2600 is playing against a 1400 and after 10 moves they have an equal position?

1) If the 2600 disconnects?
2) If the 1400 disconnects?

So you think this would be a problem regarding processing power or did I misunderstand your reply?

My idea was to only "check" for a clearly winning or losing position (or at least material advantage - even easier) if one person gets disconnected from a game for a certain time, so not for every single game.

@Toadofsky : Then the option to "claim victory" or even "claim draw" should not be available. As far as I understand, this option was introduced to prevent people from ragequitting games which are clearly lost without resigning and leaving their opponents waiting until time runs out.

So as long as the position is equal (or close to), if a player disconnects, this does not mean that he won't reconnect in a few seconds or minutes (depending on timecontrol), he may just have a connection problem on mobile for instance. Whereas if a position is clearly lost, it is much more likely that he won't reconnect.

In my case, I closed the app on my phone for around a minute while walking around (15+15 game), and when I opened the app again, my opponent had claimed victory ... and he didn't even have a winning position at all.

I also have to say that disconnecting for around 1 minute on a 15+15 game is in my opinion a too short amount of time to lose a game when I still had around 10 minutes left on the clock...

Disconnects used to happen to me ALL the time, and not ONCE did any one claim draw (even when they were losing badly). How rude!

I have had people get disconnected in games and if its pretty even or I'm losing I claim draw!!

....I love the name senilefelines...

"I also have to say that disconnecting for around 1 minute on a 15+15 game is in my opinion a too short amount of time to lose a game when I still had around 10 minutes left on the clock."

I agree and I advocate for making "claim victory" or even "claim draw" not appear as quickly for slower games.

As for using a computer evaluation (and not considering player ratings to predict the odds of a blunder) this is problematic:
* hasty engine evaluations are often incomplete (some say "wrong")
* even when engine evaluations are complete (a mate score) that doesn't mean the player sees how to defeat every possible defense... even the engine variations may not indicate the most "human challenging" defenses
* different engines or different CPUs provide different hasty evaluations of the same position

Me too. I only claim victory when people disconnect after having blundered very badly or when I have a very big material advantage...

I think, at least regarding 15+15, lichess users can claim victory too soon...

@Toadofsky : Thanks for your reply. I agree with most of it.

But still, I think there are positions in which an engine should be able to determine that a game is clearly lost (e.g. Huge material disadvantages, really bad blunders, mates in 1 etc.).

My suggestion would be to only be able to claim victory in those clear cases, which are in fact the positions in which players tend to "ragequit" and let the time run down.

On the other hand, in balanced positions, if a player disconnects it is usually not for annoying the opponent, but due to connection issues (a lot of players play on mobile phones). In this case, I think that one should not be punished (or rewarded) for disconnecting and reconnecting after a short amount of time (proportional to the game speed).