No vacation time team matches

Hi Chess.commers,

I've suggested to Chess.com that they create a facility for group admins to stage team matches that can have a "No Vacation" time setting.

What do you think?

Mike (wallyjack)

That not many people will support it.  Nor might many not enter a match with the restriction as to lose games on time will keep some good players out of the games. Possibly making a match so lopsided that the team cancles a match instead of playing the other team because of that restriction. Nor taking that chance of losing a match on time because of such a restriction.  Just my thoughts...

I think it could work. There are no vacation tournaments, and yet people still enter these. So long as it remains an option, rather than a condition of all team matches, there is no reason why it would create problems such as those mentioned above, or at least not beyond anything already present in the Team Match system.

I think the no-vacation option for matches would be a good idea.  I would never enter one myself, but I'm all for options that allow people to find game parameters that best suit them.  Complaints about vacationing opponents are very common and the availability of some no-vacation matches might reduce the frustration of some anti-vacation people.

Although the availabilty of no-vacation tournaments doesn't seem to have helped on that particular front . . . 

Using vacation time can hardly influence the progression of a match. "Online" games are meant to be long anyway, and they are such. That's what their concept is - to be able to take your time when it's comfortable to you, and to be able to play many different games simultaneously.

Consider a 3 days per move game - if it is played for, say, 40 moves until its end, that would be up to 240 days, or 8 months. How could a vacation of 5, 10, even 15 or more days be comparable with that? After all, it's the equivalent of several moves more or less, and playing a bit more accurately instead would have the same effect over game length, but would be much easier to achieve and would have better results too.

Also, it's hardly possible for one to be able to play for all that time without temporarily abandoning the site for some reason. I also think that introducing "no vacation" mode in tournaments would either result in few people playing them, because they won't be certain not to need a break somewhen, or in many games lost due to timeouts should such people join anyway, which will affect negatively at least one of the teams. It would be a risky enterprise.

But as long as not all tournaments are forced not to allow vacation, there's nothing bad in creating "no vacation" itself as an option. The teams and the players will be able to decide on whether to play or not. But I think the risks of participating in such a tournament are higher than the possible benefits.

There are already no-vacation tournaments.  WallyJack would just like that option extended to team matches as well.

Yes, I meant matches. My mistake.

But the problem is the same - would teams benefit enough from that setting in order to justify the risk of losing on time.

Especially if we have in mind that the longer one game goes on, the higher the possibility that one player would need a break, and also that the most "equal" games would tend to last longer than the rest of the games. So a team may win the easy and lose the hopeless games quickly - those being the games between unevenly skilled opponents that should generally end fast, but have timeouts in the decisive ones (between relatively equally skilled opponents) that could make the difference.

But again - as long as participation is voluntarily by both teams and team members, there's nothing bad with having it as an option.

I see what you are saying Glex, but that should even out over the long term. A single team is unlikely to be affected completely in that way; it is more probable that the score from decisive games of the type you specify being roughly even, which would be the probable score anyway. With regards to long games, people should be aware of the possible effects. For instance, I will not enter anything with no vacation time if I know that I will not have access to a computer over that game's likely duration. At any rate, these should also even out over the long term, meaning the overall impact on a team will be minimal.

Yes, in the long term it should even out. But teams that have more regularly active members will perform better in those matches, but as long as that's up to members' and team match participants' management, it's not a flaw of the match setting. Those type of matches will require a different approach, and maybe a separate rating system, as different time controls' rating in live chess for example.

Anyway, it will bring variety and more options to choose between. It will be up to the teams and the players to make a decision whether to participate or not, and it would be a sort of an additional time control that is available for play.

You sent this in on a support ticket before you posted in here. I replied saying I'd pass this along.

It is already being looked into :)

Another possible solution aimed at increasing match or tournament progression speed is introducing a "X moves within Y time" setting. This way one could play, say, 5-10 moves within several days when being able to, then have a break for several days, while the match or tournament will keep its pace, and there will also be a more comparable speed between all of the match or tournament games.

I would like it if such time controls get introduced in live chess too, for example 30 moves within 30 minutes, then 15 minutes to finish the game. There could be also players that would play a control of 40 moves within 2 hours and one hour to the end of the game too, or another more "classical" time control.

The underlying factor to all this is that it was just suggested that they add this feature. They are working on live chess for team matches, and the new chess.com beta.  This is so low priority that the chances are slim we would see it any time soon.  The discussion, even though lively, is moot even for a test match unless chess.com decides to take time away from what they consider high priority to put this feature in.    

Presumably the first player not to meet the requirement would lose the game?

This seems like it would allow people to be able to plan for spans of a few days where they know they won't be able to make moves.  But it won't work, because your opponent also controls how many moves you can make.  Suppose 10 moves in 10 days is the requirement.  Player A has White and moves first.  Player B waits until day 9 to respond and is ready to access the board several times over the next 2 days to get in his 10 moves.  But he has responded on the 2nd day of a 5-day trip by A during which A will not be able to make any moves.  It's A's turn and he will hit the 10-day mark not having made his 10 moves.

Please read post 12

I meant a control where both players' times are measured separately, like in live chess but with large time controls (several days), and with requirements how many moves should be made within a certain ammount of thinking time, but every player to have his own time to spend that is independent on the opponent's play.

For example, both players A and B would start with having 10 days thinking time for 10 moves. As player A has the white pieces, his time starts going down. If he moves, say, 12 hours after the beginning of the match, he'll have left 9 days and 12 hours. Then player B will spend 9 days, but those will be taken out of his own time. When he plays his first move, he'll have a day left, and his opponent will still have 9,5 days (like in live chess but with larger thinking times). Even if player A is on a 5-day trip, after he comes back he'll have 4,5 days to finish the first 10 moves. At the end, if both players have reached move 10 without having spent more than 10 days, they'll get 10 extra days to their times to play the next 10 moves, and so on; if someone surpasses 10 days thinking time before having made the 10th move, he'll lose on time.

In other words, the average speed of the tournament stays the same while the thinking time fluctuations for each move are up to the players' consideration as long as they don't surpass the total thinking time left. In this way, it will be made certain that all tournament or match games would have reached at least a required number of moves within a fixed ammount of time (which is not certain if vacation is used instead), but without the thinking time being necessarily evenly distributed between all the moves. In this example, it will be certain that by the end of the 20th day after the beginning the game will be on move 10 or further, where it would have been in a 1 day per move game too. But in a 1 day per move control one can't be absent for 2 consecutive days because he'll lose on time, even if he's moved quickly before; in a 10 moves within 10 days one can play intensively several days, then don't play several others. Both systems will guarantee an average thinking time less than a day per move, but the latter would give more flexibility.

Currently there's a system that measures average time per move, but as a global characteristic of each player. Probably thinking time in a tournament or a team match or a game can be regulated in a similar way, by keeping track of thinking time used and the number of moves played.

The main reason people currently use vacation time or time out (in matches, tournaments and games in general) is because they have uneven distribution of their thinking time that can't fit in with the maximum time per move. Yet usually their average thinking time per move is lower than that ammount. Therefore a time control that allows more flexibility in time usage while preserving the average speed the same, like 10 days for 10 moves instead of 1 day per move, would reduce (or even eliminate) timeouts and vacation time usage necessity.

Yeah, that would work fine.

Personally, it doesn't matter to me as I'm not one of those who throws fits over the lengths of tournaments.  The only thing a little disconcerting about tournaments to me is if you do advance to a second (or subsequent) round you have no way of knowing what date it's going to start up and if you've just taken on another set of games and then Round Whatever starts up you can suddenly get more games added to your current list than is comfortable.  But even your time scheme wouldn't make any difference to that since the start-up time of the next round would be determined by how many moves were made in the longest game, which is an unknown factor.

So yes, a tournament would get done faster, and one could look at that as an opportunity to play more games.  With the current system I just enter more tournaments at the same time, and still end up playing more games but in a larger variety of tournaments at any one time, and I like the variety.  I realize that's not currently an option available to free account holders, but who said things should be as convenient for them as for paid accounts?

Still, I always like the idea of lots of options for parameters, making a range of tournament settings offered so people can find tournaments best suited to their wishes.  Time formats similar to yours have been suggested in quite a few forums and would almost surely be popular.

Great idea.  I'm sure many, possibly the majority of players, would like to play matches without vacation.  I would almost always choose such a match over the alternative.