Timeout and Mating Material
In live chess one question comes up again and again. Your opponent runs out of time, you still have seconds on your own clock, and yet the game is scored as a draw instead of a win. At first glance this looks like a bug, but it is exactly right. This page explains why.
The rule
The relevant rule is Article 6.9 of the FIDE Laws of Chess. In essence it says that a player who exceeds their thinking time loses the game. There is one exception, however. If the opponent cannot checkmate by any possible series of legal moves with the material left on the board, the game ends in a draw.
The reasoning is simple. A win requires that you are at least theoretically able to deliver mate. A player with a bare king could never win, not even with unlimited thinking time. So they do not win by the opponent's clock running out either. Both players get half a point.
An example
White has king and queen, Black only the bare king. White is to move and completely winning, but this is exactly where White's time runs out. Black still has time on the clock and could still make a move. With a bare king, however, Black can never deliver mate, so the game is a draw and not a win for Black. Without this rule Black would have lost the game in the normal course of play, this way Black at least gets half a point.
Which material is not enough to mate
When a time limit is exceeded, chessmail checks what the side that would take the point still has on the board. These constellations are not enough to deliver mate:
- the king alone
- king and one bishop
- king and one knight
- king and several bishops that all stand on squares of the same colour
In these cases the game ends in a draw when the opponent runs out of time. In every other case it is a full point. A single pawn is already enough, because it can promote to a queen.
This holds for live chess and for correspondence chess alike. In live chess the server scores the game itself as soon as the clock runs out. In correspondence chess you end the game yourself once your opponent has exceeded the time limit, and the form tells you beforehand when the result will be a draw.
Common misunderstandings
"With a bare king the game is an immediate draw." No. The game continues as usual, and the player with the bare king can be checkmated or run out of time themselves. The rule applies only at the moment the opponent's time runs out.
"My opponent ran out of time, so I won." Not necessarily. Your opponent's timeout is a win only if you could still deliver mate yourself.
"That is the same as a dead position." Not quite. A dead position means that neither side can deliver mate any more, for instance king against king. Such a game ends in a draw immediately, regardless of the clock. This page is about one side only, the side whose opponent ran out of time.
For rule enthusiasts
The FIDE wording is in fact slightly stricter than the check chessmail performs. It asks whether there is any series of legal moves leading to mate at all, including one in which the opponent helps voluntarily. With king and knight against king and pawns such a help mate could be constructed, and an arbiter at the board would rule it a win. chessmail scores these very rare positions as a draw. For the by far most common case, the bare king, both wordings are identical.