A question about blitz...

I'd only ever played blitz on Yahoo chess before, but I've been playing on freechess.org with Winboard the last couple days, usually at 10/15 time. I played a game today at 5/0 and was ahead an entire piece with both my opponent and myself in time trouble. However, once my opponent ran out of time, the counter simply started running into negative. A few moves later, both of our timers were in negative and the game was a "draw due to both players running out of time"

How is this possible? As far as I'm concerned/aware, I should've won automatically as soon as his timer hit zero (I had about 15 seconds on my clock when his did).

So the question is: Why did the timer go into negative rather than awarding me a win?

Because of "Usually drunk" perhaps?😛

Perhaps on this site you played on you have to claim the flag/win in order for it to happen?

Maybe you played too fast and the server couldn't handle it.

You need to set autoflag on.

dpressnell was right, I didn't have autoflag on. I would've though it was on by default but ne'er mind.

I always do silly things like this:

Move Dfthd dubois481032000
---- ---------------- ----------------
1. e4 (0:02) e5 (0:02)
2. Nf3 (0:01) Nf6 (0:06)
3. Nxe5 (0:02) d6 (0:18)
4. Nf3 (0:02) Nxe4 (0:01)
5. d4 (0:01) d5 (0:01)
6. Bd3 (0:02) Be7 (0:09)
7. O-O (0:03) O-O (0:05)
8. Re1 (0:02) f5 (0:10)
9. Nbd2 (0:17) Nd7 (0:10)
10. c3 (0:14) Ndf6 (0:02)
11. Bc2 (0:02) h6 (0:09)
12. Nxe4 (0:02) fxe4 (0:05)
13. Ne5 (0:05) Bf5 (0:16)
14. f3 (0:11) Nd7 (0:38)
15. fxe4 (0:08) Nxe5 (0:05)
16. exf5 (0:01) Nf7 (0:13)
17. Qf3 (0:24) Bd6 (0:05)
18. Bf4 (0:08) Ng5 (0:07)
19. Bxg5 (0:03) hxg5 (0:01)
20. Qh5 (0:09) Qf6 (0:56)
21. Re6 (0:13) Qf7 (0:05)

At this point white is winning, black is trying to trade queens to relieve the pressure on his king. If I had played Qh3 or any other queen move I would still be winning. In fact, if I had played ANY move I would still have an advantage... any move except:

22. Rae1??????? (0:29) Qxh5 (0:04)
23. f6 (0:04) gxf6 (0:18)
{White resigns} 0-1

Originally posted by shortgoth1
I'd only ever played blitz on Yahoo chess before, but I've been playing on freechess.org with Winboard the last couple days, usually at 10/15 time. I played a game today at 5/0 and was ahead an entire piece with both my opponent and myself in time trouble. However, once my opponent ran out of time, the counter simply started running into negative. A few ...[text shortened]... s did).

So the question is: Why did the timer go into negative rather than awarding me a win?