When something goes wrong

Most of the time a game ends the way games end: somebody wins, the money moves, and there is nothing to think about. This article is about the rest of the time.

It is the least glamorous thing we could write and probably the most useful. Anyone about to put money on a game wants to know what happens when the internet drops, when a game is drawn, when an opponent vanishes, or when a payment does not appear. So here it all is in one place.

A game that ends in a draw

A drawn game costs nobody anything. Both players get their stake back in full, and we take no fee at all. A draw is not a small loss for each of you: it is as if the game had not been played, financially.

Games can be drawn in their own ways depending on the rules, and both players can also agree to one. Either of you can offer a draw, up to three times each in a game, and if your opponent accepts, that is the result.

Your connection drops, or you close the tab

The game is still yours. Come back to the site and it is where you left it, in whatever state you left it.

The important part is that your clock keeps running while it is your turn. Closing a tab does not pause anything. So if your connection drops during your move, get back as quickly as you can, and if you have ten minutes on the clock you have ten minutes to sort it out.

If you were in a Rivals game, the Rivals page has a card that takes you straight back to it. If it was a lobby game, your live games are listed there.

Your opponent disappears

Their clock runs down and you win on time. That is the whole mechanism: there is no separate abandonment rule and nothing you need to claim. Ten minutes of their turn passing without a move ends the game in your favour, and the pot is settled to you exactly as if you had beaten them on the board.

If they leave before making any move at all, the game is voided instead and both stakes come back. A game nobody played is not a game either of you should pay for.

You resign

Resigning is a loss. Your opponent takes the pot, and in Rivals it moves you down the ladder like any other loss.

The button sits below the board rather than beside it, deliberately. Scrolling to reach something you cannot undo is a feature, not an oversight.

A deposit has not appeared

If you sent USDC on the Polygon network, it will arrive. The deposit page shows it counting the network's confirmations, usually a few minutes, and it lands in your balance whether or not you are watching.

If you sent something on another network, or sent a different token, it does not reach us and we cannot return it. That is not a policy that could be softened: a transfer on another network never arrives here at all. The deposit page names the network and the token before you send, and it is worth reading once.

A withdrawal is taking a while

Most withdrawals land within a few minutes. The page shows the progress and you can close it: it carries on without you.

If the transfer clearly failed, the money goes back into your balance and the page says so. If it is not clear whether it went out, it is held for a person to check against the blockchain before anything moves, and your funds stay reserved while that happens. Either way, nothing goes missing in between.

Very large withdrawals wait for a person to look at them before going out. If yours is one of those, the page tells you, and the money is set aside while it waits.

Withdrawals are paused on your account

Changing how you sign in pauses withdrawals for twenty four hours: adding an email, or adding or removing a passkey. Depositing and playing carry on as normal.

It exists so that somebody who briefly got into your account cannot change the locks and empty it before you notice. It lifts on its own.

If you see that pause and you did not change anything, contact us immediately. That is exactly the situation it was built for.

Something that is not on this list

Write to us through the support page. Tell us what you were doing and what you saw, and if it involves a specific game, the link to it.

We cannot promise a reply time, and we would rather say so than invent one. What we can say is that a real person reads every message, and that we would much rather hear about something early than find out later that somebody had a bad experience and said nothing.

The thing underneath all of this

Every movement of money here is written into a ledger where both sides have to balance. A stake leaves your balance and lands in that game's escrow. At the end it leaves escrow and lands with the winner, or comes back to both of you. Nothing can vanish in between, because nothing can leave one place without arriving somewhere else.

That is why the answer to most of these questions is boring. The money is somewhere specific at every moment, and the interesting question is only ever which of the two of you it goes to.

Try it

If you have not played here yet, practice is free: pick a bot on easy, medium or hard, or send a friend a link. Nothing is staked and nothing is recorded.

When you play for something, start small. Everything above applies the same whether the stake is 5 USDC or five hundred.