Those who agree to play with a clock and time-out with a possible mate at hand: is complaining afterwards intelligent?
The only valid way to prove that you won’t get mated is to play it. And if you have no time left this is at your expense!
Even better post #20, Mate in 5:
lichess.org/editor/8/6N1/8/8/8/p7/k1K5/8 w - -
Remember that such things happen, time-out to deprive the opponent of the smothered mate?
I find the choice of words interesting: there are always salty losers who are strictly against this „official“ rule in place: bs, idiotic, asinine...
The supporters with a detached point of view: consistent, lesser evil, logic...
Well then, I draw my conclusions.
I agree that a timeout should count as a loss for the player as long as the theoretical possibility of a checkmate exists for the opponent. There needs to be a clear and unambiguous way of assessing whether or not a position is lost or drawn for the timed-out player and this is the only metric by which this can be reliably achieved.
Clearly, in your example, delivering checkmate with N vs QN is borderline impossible in a practical setting, but where do we draw the line? What about NN vs QN? R vs QQ? NNB vs QQQ? Who determines whether or not these positions are trivially defensible for the stronger (timed-out) side?
Use this as a learning experience. The next time your opponent is low on time and gives you the option of keeping a lone knight or bishop vs his bishop of the same colour, pick the knight and flag the dude :)
Hi Nick, as I said before I have two decades of experience with what is apparently only the American way of doing things. Experience builds up expectation. Sarg0n, you and others have made reasonable points and I now see that the other side of the argument is reasonable. I wish I could just delete the thread.
