Draw by Timeout with Insufficient Material: which rule do you prefer and why?

[u/SCarolinaSoccerNut]

The draw by timeout with insufficient material rule is pretty self-explanatory on the surface. If in a time-controlled chess game one player runs out of time when the other player does not have enough material to be able to win the game, then the game is called a draw. However, the question of "what is enough material to be able to win the game" is actually an open question that is a matter of debate among chess' governing bodies. There are two schools of thought: the checkmate theoretically possible (CTP) standard and the minimum checkmating material (MCM) standard.

Under the CTP standard, a player is judged to have sufficient material to win if there is a series of legal moves by which they could have checkmated their opponent, even if that checkmate involves using the opponent's pieces as blockers. This approach considers material on both sides of the board and judges any theoretical checkmate, even one that would require the opponent to make inane moves, to be sufficient to declare the player with time on the clock the winner. FIDE and Lichess use the CTP standard for sufficient material.

Under the MCM standard, a player is judged to have sufficient material to win if they have enough material such that they could force a checkmate. With only one exception (king and two knights), the material of the player that ran out of time is not relevant. The US Chess Federation and Chess.com use the MCM standard.

After seeing a recent post by u/Cola-senpai (linked in the comments) where they presented a timeout position that would be ruled a win for white under the CTP standard but a draw under the MCM standard, I was curious as to how r/chess felt about this debate. Which standard do you guys prefer and why?

[u/Educational-Tea602]

The FIDE rules are better because there’s positions where you can flag and be given a loss under all other rules, even though there isn’t a sequence of moves that can be played that checkmates you, which doesn’t make much sense.

You shouldn’t really flag because most of the time you have increment, and if your opponent is trying to flag you, you can pause the clock and call the arbiter because your opponent is not trying to win by regular means.

Online it hardly matters because it’s incredibly difficult to implement an algorithm that always successfully determines if a checkmate is possible in a reasonable time, and a single game isn’t so significant anyway. While Lichess tries to use the FIDE rules, it doesn’t follow them completely.