Running down the clock but not on purpose

We've all seen games where one player deliberately lets the clock run down hoping to get a win if his opponent gets fed up and quits. I'd like to believe that such people are a very small minority and was wondering if it's possible that some technical glitch can make appear like someone is letting the clock run down when in fact this is not the case?

I have seen glitches where the opponents move does not seem to to be transmitted to your end. You think they haven't moved but they have. It can even happen that if and when it does come through at some point, your time has been running down all that while while you were sitting around waiting for their move.

this error is purely an internet connection problem. lichess has a little green thing next to the players name, it's their connection status, connected or not. if they or you cant connect to the lichess servers then it will look like they left the game.

I've lost several games because it showed my opponent's clock running down and then suddenly shows actually he moved a while ago and I have lost on time.

#4 its because of your internet connection. what you should see is something up top saying something like 'reconnecting', and 'unable to connect', it should be shown in red. this is how you would know.

#5 of course, except when it doesn't.

the basic answer, yes it IS possible for it to be a technical glitch.
this was the main question, #6. and if they do it on purpose, well, it's probably because they are losing.

> its because of your internet connection

I know to look thing like connection problems, and often times there is no indication of any such at all.

In fact many times I discovered that my opponent had really moved by asking him in chat! If the chat is working fine, the opponent has moved, and to him your clock is running, but you have not seen his move, and on your side his clock is running, this is nothing to do with the real underlying internet connections of the players. It is a lichess tech problem.

Sometimes you can force an update to the board and clocks by doing things like giving your opponent 15 sec, which seems to wake the server up.

Yes, all the times I am talking about there was no visible sign of anything wrong anywhere in the interface. It looked exactly like I was connected with a normal ping and everything, my opponent's clock running down, and then BAM switcheroo, that's all she wrote.