FICS question: Going into negative time

This is a problem I've had for quite some time now. During a game, my opponent might stop moving and I try to call the flag when his time is up, but the time just goes into the negative.

Does anybody know what's going on and how to fix this thing. It's been going on for years.

it's a server bug, and as far as I know you can't do anything about it. try to adjourn, log out, log in, and rematch your opponent. they don't usually come back though, as they know they'd lose the game.

I just resign the game, forget and move on. I'm done with requesting adjudications.

AFAIK it's because of the lag between the two players. The clock will go negative until it spends all the lag, if you wait long enough you either will see your opponent's move with the correct clock situation or he/she will flag. There's nothing you can do about it.

How long can a lag be? I've let it go to minutes negative. Surely a lag isn't going to be more than 5 minutes.

Originally posted by Eladar
How long can a lag be? I've let it go to minutes negative. Surely a lag isn't going to be more than 5 minutes.

yeah, it's not lag. lag can be something like from a few seconds up to a minute, but when you get hit with the server bug the clock will run for as long as you let it.

Originally posted by wormwood
yeah, it's not lag. lag can be something like from a few seconds up to a minute, but when you get hit with the server bug the clock will run for as long as you let it.

I didn't know that, glad it never happened to me, I would rather cut my hand off than resign in such situation. 🙂

That could make waving problematic.

I've had someone go ballistic when for some reason the auto-flag didn't work when my time had expired. I just typed resign and he was all friendly again.

Originally posted by wormwood
it's a server bug, and as far as I know you can't do anything about it. try to adjourn, log out, log in, and rematch your opponent. they don't usually come back though, as they know they'd lose the game.

I just resign the game, forget and move on. I'm done with requesting adjudications.

FICS now has an automated adjournment request form at www.freechess.org/Adjudicate

There's no need to send a message to "adjudicate" anynore.

Originally posted by Nitreb
FICS now has an automated adjournment request form at www.freechess.org/Adjudicate

There's no need to send a message to "adjudicate" anynore.

Is your fics name the same

My FICS name is the same. My rating is on the rise for blitz games. I'm now sitting at 1280. At the beginning of the week I was sitting at 1050 with a high in the low 1100's. I'm rather happy!

I had an opponent go into negative numbers again a couple of days ago. He had been lagging all game (somehow he always got time back) so I decided to wait 2 minutes and he game back at neg 2 something.

I think India has some bad internet connections. That's what one guy told me as we played. He was losing connections and explained that in India internet connection problems are common.