What happens if I disconnect during an online xiangqi game?
These answers restate the rules implemented by our open-source engine, which follows the WXF laws and is regression-tested against the official 110-diagram repetition casebook. Where an answer refers to a specific position, that position lives on the linked reference page, where the build verifies it against the engine before publishing.
Direct answer
Most platforms keep your clock running while you are disconnected and give you a set window to reconnect before the game is adjudicated as a loss, essentially treating it the same as running out of time over the board. A brief drop that you recover from quickly rarely costs more than the seconds it took.
Why the clock keeps running
Pausing the clock for every disconnection would be easy to abuse, deliberately dropping the connection to buy thinking time in a difficult position. Letting the clock run treats a disconnection the same as any other reason for not moving, which is simpler to enforce fairly than trying to distinguish a genuine outage from a convenient one.
What to do if it happens to you
Reconnect as fast as possible; most sites let you rejoin the same game in progress rather than starting over. If disconnections happen repeatedly during rated play, check your own connection before assuming the platform is at fault, since a pattern of drops can also raise fair-play questions from the other side.
Related questions
Does a disconnection ever get a game voided instead of lost?
Some platforms allow an appeal for a genuine, documented outage, but this is handled case by case rather than automatically.
Is this different for correspondence games?
Yes, considerably; see correspondence xiangqi, where each move has a much longer window regardless of momentary connectivity.
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