Time inexplicably decreases/runs out between turns

Hi. I'm playing 3+2 blitz games and over the course of this week I just had the second instance of my clock unexpectedly running out. In this most recent game I've just played I had a bit more than 3 seconds after I made my last move. Then I see my opponent's move and immediately my clock runs out, it's just suddenly 0. Similarly, few days ago I had a game where I had 6 seconds after my move but then when it was my turn back I flagged after what felt like a second, maybe one and a half — but certainly not 6.

When this happened first time I thought I might have had a random connection issue but I find this very unlikely to be the case twice as I didn't see any connection issue indications, the rest of the games felt completely fine without any weird delays or anything, my internet generally is quite stable (I'm at home on fiber), etc etc.

I've also seen this happen to a popular streamer during a Titled Tuesday event not so long ago — between the moves his time inexplicably reduced from 3-ish seconds to under a second, you could see it live on stream. He obviously didn't notice it and flagged. How is it even possible to be under a second in a game that has 1 second increment?

Is this a known issue?

https://support.chess.com/article/423-why-did-the-clock-times-suddenly-change-the-clocks-seem-broken

@Martin_Stahl I know about lag compensation and it doesn't seem relevant here? If anything, lag compensation is the mechanism that adds time. In my case I had 6 seconds of time suddenly turn into 1 second.

I found the moment captured on stream that I was referring to: https://youtu.be/kfVnyDnHXI0?t=824

Notice how Sergei's time jumps from 3.1 to 0.8. It is literally impossible to have 0.8 remaining for your turn when you are playing with 1 second increment.

Excessive lag, beyond the amount that is allowed, can cause more time to be lost on the clock than expected. That is, the server received the opponent's move but it takes longer than the allowed lag to receive and send the reply to the server. So more time will come off the time to account for the lag.

@Martin_Stahl pardon me but I'm not quite following. Could you please describe the process step by step? Did you mean lag on my side or on my opponent's? If it's on my side then I'd definitely expect some sort of visual indication. E.g. if my local browser didn't receive a move acknowledgement from the server within a second, then I'd expect a connection indicator to flash and somehow bring it to my attention that I'm lagging.

If it's on my opponent's side then honestly it doesn't make any sense at all — all of a sudden I have less time than I expected to have, and again there's no visual indication.

Did you perhaps have a chance to take a look at Sergei's video? He was very surprised and frustrated when it happened, and understandably so.

This is a Major problem. Clock runs normal until end. I notice it most when the opponent is not trying to win the game until very end.

I mean lag between you and the server. As to the lag indicator, I don't know how quickly that registers lag and I know in some instances a disconnect may not be registered by the client and when it reconnects, the opponent's move will be shown as well as the clocks will change, with a corresponding decrease on the lag/disconnect side when the clocks update to account for it.

@Martin_Stahl I see, thanks for the explanation.

Sorry to be a broken record but did you have a chance to take a look at the video? If it's the same issue/explanation, would you agree this is not really a desirable behaviour because it's not very friendly to a player as it basically catches you off guard if you didn't somehow notice your clock decreasing.

(I'm assuming you are a part of chess.com team and have a possibility to forward this to the dev team, correct me if I'm wrong please!)

What happened to Sergey in the video happeens to me all the time when I play bullet on chess.com My internet connection is excellent, even their website says that, but I randomly lose several seconds out of a sudden while playing. WTF chess.com? Are you developing this website with interns? Hire some competent developers please!

I am facing this error today.. Lost three matches due to this issue. May I know what is root cause of this issue? If chess.com has ability to detect lag, then why it doesn't give any warning to user like "u have extreme lag so don't play game now". Please response me.

Lag causes may be intermittent. For example, when I have played and someone on my network stats streaming, I'll get lag that didn't exist when the game started.

Unfortunately this website is overrated.. So many silly issues regarding time.
Why lichess despite being free doesn't have these issues at all?

Exactly.

I have also run out of time on a number of occasions but this has only started happening recently. It NEVER used to happen before. Also you only really tend to notice this when you lose in a "timeout" where you made the move on time. So think of all the seconds lost along the way you don't even notice. RIP the people playing bullet.

I think the real reason for this is that the chess.com servers have been buckling under presssure since the explosion after the Queen's Gambit/lockdown, we've all who've been on the site a lot seen the downtimes, and rather than have downtimes or invest more heavily they thought this would be a way to alleviate the pressure, they decided to do away with the most sacred thing of all - the guarantee that the server will relay your moves exactly when they're played. So now it'll be laggy sometimes. I'd much rather more server downtime or even server downtime for certain regions where they could handle the rest.

My understanding is that they allow pretty much all lag, so if you're experiencing it, the only thing you'll notice is games last longer than the time controls would indicate.

Lag compensation has always been something the site does. What has changed is the actual algorithm. It used to be each move was treated separately when it comes to lag and now it's over multiple moves. The algorithm is more forgiving than the old one.

If you make your move when it says you have time still on the clock you should NEVER be flagged period.

Unfortunately, you disconnected and the move you showed in your screenshot was never transmitted to the server.