What you are speaking of is known as psychological play in chess and is credited to Emanuel Lasker. It also includes studying an opponent’s games and playing to their weakness—pretty standard now. Steinitz felt cheated and Tarrasch hated Lasker for it. Subsequently, Capablanca was a purist and hated Alekhine’s tactical use of complexity to gain a time advantage. And so it goes…
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I resigned after tenuki, then realized my opponent’s atari move was not just capturing one stone, but connecting his/her dead stones back. 
One reason I hate correspondence games, don’t remember all those details after a day and don’t have a habit to scan the whole board before every single move.
No regret, I am back to play what I enjoy, live games and already won back the .1 rating point I lost in this game.
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Just to be clear, I am talking about using time advantage tactically / strategically in Fischer / byo-yomi games, not absolute timing. In absolute games it is too easy to force a win by time with unsporting behaviour as discussed by others above or even by accident so I pretty much never play absolute timing. But with Fischer / byo-yomi, they use their time early to get a better position, you use your time later to carefully read a complicated plan and then play it out quickly so they don’t have time to read the response and make a mistake. Sure, I could get a better position if I use more time earlier but sometimes I go the other way. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. 
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"All warfare is based on deception. "
– Art of War, Sun Tzu
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But is it really? It surely relies on the opponent playing too slowly for the time allowed. If they play fast enough and keep a sufficient amount of time in reserve then surely no shenanigans will “force” them to lose on time. If they play too slowly such that these shenanigans can work to make them lose then surely that is the risk they choose to take.
I think this is harder to achieve than it seems. Or at least I’ve never managed it! With any reasonable Fischer/byo yomi setting most people can resist the kind of nonsense that might work in an absolute game.
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Indeed it is harder. But possible. Certainly in blitz, e.g. 10 sec per move.
That’s why our society has so many mental health issues now. When things don’t go right for ME, it’s someone else’s and/or the system’s fault. 
What about individual’s responsibility to check the game settings before you accept?!
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WAIT, its wrong to win a game on time?
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It’s wrong to win a game on time after your opponent has passed if you are playing moves that have no chance of improving your score. IMO.
(And of course, that would be a judgement call, which is why we have mods).
If your opponent hasn’t passed, you can play whatever you like, because they have not indicated that the game is over.
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if one is truly winning, one should be able to defend its win regardless what the opponent does.
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Yes, one should be able to.
That doesn’t make gaming the timer OK.
But if you are in a position the you have left so little time the you cannot defend your “win” then I don’t see that you have really won.
But what about if those moves might win you the game? Surely you should be allowed to play them.
Passing doesn’t indicate the game is over. It indicates that one player believes they have no more useful moves to make on the board. The game is over when both players pass.
If the other player can make moves and the passing player losses on time then those moves have been useful in winning the game.
It’s not in the spirit but if you’ve agreed to a time limit for you game then I think it’s within those agreed rules.
The solution is simple, don’t play absolute there are other options that completely avoid this issue. If this issue arises it’s a result of both players choosing.
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Yes, you should. But only if they will win you the game on score, not if they will force your opponent to run out of time after they passed just because you played them.
There is a world of difference between playing a challenging move that causes your opponent to have to think after they passed, and playing a move in your own territory that only challenges your opponent to respond with another dumb move, or another pass in time.
However, I totally agree that the best solution is don’t play absolute time.
However, that doesn’t change the answer to the original question, it just offers a different solution.
IMO, the answer to the original question is still “no, it’s not”.
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This feels like an artificial distinction in the status of moves.
I can understand that there is prohibition on wasting time by playing moves that drag out a game with absolutely no chance of changing the result. But in this case you are saying that some moves which could change the result in one way, within the rules, are ok and other moves which could change the result in another way, within the rules, are unacceptable.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. My answer is that this is totally fine. The caveat for me is that you need to be “sure” and I doubt this can be the case as often as people think.
@txwolf clarified that by dragging on he had in mind making complicated fights or forcing yose rather than playing in own territory and such which to me makes it absolutely acceptable.
edit: typos
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I agree with this.
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There’s a big difference in how you win on time in Go and say for example Chess.
A lot of the time with speed chess (say with absolute time or small increment) one can flag the opponent when they still have a chance to win by making moves that they have to think about. One can force them to try a mating sequence under time pressure, and while some sequences like using two rooks are quite straightforward, others like with a bishop and knight can be more complicated, and realistically the opponent should know how to do it if they don’t want to call the game a draw.
While I don’t necessarily like blitz games and games with absolute time like bullet chess because I think they just lower the quality of moves after a point and more or less turn into a flagging contest, it’s clearly a popular way to play, and while it’s not for me I don’t see the issue with others enjoying it and getting a rating etc.
In Go one can drag out the game for hundreds of moves past the reasonable end of the game. It’s worse in Chinese and area scoring rules than Japanese rules, because playing in your own territory is equivalent to pass for “most” of these moves and yet doesn’t have the equivalent signalling of “I believe the game is over as there’s no more meaningful moves to play”. At least in Japanese rules filling in your own territory loses you points, so if you are winning you can eventually lose the game this way. If you are already losing however one can do this to drag the game out and potentially win on time for example.
The equivalent in chess of this, would be in positions where the game is clearly a draw, like for example having just two kings left on the board, and then forcing your opponent to play until the game is officially a draw. That is, playing the position out until the 50 move rule kicks in or threefold repetition for example.
I believe behaviour like this would be considered unsportsmanlike in Chess as the equivalent would be in Go. You do tend to see, even in blitz games, players offering and accepting draws when the result is clearly a draw.
Of course when one player can in theory win if the opponent blunders, one often sees in chess players trying to flag the opponent. I guess this could be like playing all the Ataris and throw-ins that don’t work just to see if your opponent can answer correctly under time pressure, and this might be a gray area.
Actually I just spotted this in the chess wiki page
If only one player has exceeded the time limit, but the other player does not have (theoretically) sufficient mating material, the game is still a draw. Law 6.9 of the FIDE Laws of Chess states that: “If a player does not complete the prescribed number of moves in the allotted time, the game is lost by the player. However, the game is drawn if the position is such that the opponent cannot checkmate the player’s king by any possible series of legal moves, even with the most unskilled counterplay.”
under draws in timed play Draw (chess) - Wikipedia
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This would be a good rule - is there an equivalent for Go? that would seem to make a clear distinction between playing on to work the clock when the only moves are in one player or the others fully secured territory. But it’s maybe more complicated in Go since all the ko threats and such would need to be removed first - i.e. the set of games where a win is not possible “even with the most unskilled counterplay” is a lot smaller than the set of games which would typically end with two passes but for this time-shenangians.
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Apart from having to remove all ko threats, you run into the issue that one player could conceivably accidentally fill in their own eyes in the time scramble! So there are basically no positions which are won for sure (except those where superko starts coming into play to limit the number of legal moves).
If we make the assumption that the players don’t fill their own eyes, we can check how much of the board is “pass-alive” (alive even if the opponent gets arbitrarily many moves in a row, see Benson’s algorithm), and work from that somehow.
Fox has its “AI referee” which is a practical but not very elegant solution. It potentially runs into the same kind of issues people were discussing about the KataGo scoring system here.
GoQuest has something called “technical knockout” which sometimes triggers when the position is completely hopeless, at least in practical terms (assuming no eye-filling moves). I’m not sure of the exact criteria they use though.
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I still stink at Go so my opinion may not be worth much, but I play Chess at a decent competitive level and to my reasoning the clock is as legitimate a tactical field as any other.
My opinion: While a game may be considered “won” at any point, I do not believe it is unsportsmanlike for the disadvantaged player to require that their opponent “prove the win”. If victory is truly a forgone conclusion, then the clock should be largely irrelevant.
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About chess blits with absolute time. What if the game is obviously a drawn endgame and the opponent keeps on playing to flag you. Is that allowed?
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