Hello Everyone;

I have had a problem with not being able to join in more tournaments because of my time out percentage is to high( greater than 10% ). So I asked to question to the admin dept. and I received this reply from Chess.com: see below!

Now I understand why players on live chess play /seek/games with really low play times.. If you could stay away long enough you lower your time out percentage and in affect increase the other players. MEAN - affective, But still not a good mirror to the problem Chess.com is trying to police that is players abandoning games while in a tournament.!! Call me weird but should the abandoning of games by each player be a more accurate sign of behavior?.

fortis-unus

The timeout percentage is the percentage of Online Chess games where you have lost the game by running out of time. To decrease your timeout percentage you should play more rated Online Chess games and complete the games without losing the game on time. As you continue to complete more games you will start to see your timeout percentage go down and decrease at a steady rate.

The reason we restrict players in tournaments by timeout percentage is to prevent players from joining in tournaments who might abandon the tournament and games in the tournament.

If you have any further questions or concerns please let us know and we will be happy to help you.
- Chess.com

Supportwww.Chess.com

Since you've only got 3 timeouts you should be able to get rid of that quickly you'll be able to play in most tournaments once you're under 10%, (30 games in your case as long as you don't get more timeouts)

As for the question in the title I've played 79 and never been timed out.

Honestly fortis-unus, your post is a little confusing but here is my version of an answer to what you are asking. The response from Chess.com makes perfect sense. I was in tournament where a number of people timed out and it was no fun to be involved. I play tournaments for the challenge of meeting new players and new challenges not to start a game and wait 3 days for the game to end on a timeout. I looked at your game profile and you have 15 completed games of which 3 of your losses are timeouts a ratio of 20%. If you complete the 17 games you have in progress your rate will be below the 10% level and you will have established a reasonable level of involvement to demonstrate a commitment to completing games started. Now, instead of losing on timeouts, you could have exercised your vacation option which allows you to comeback at a later date and you would have had 0 timeouts. As far as your suggestion about abandoned games, isnt that what a timeout is? If you just let people announce abandoned games, then there would be an untold number of games where people who are losing would just stop playing. How would I or any other member get to remove those games from our files or get the credit for a win richly deserved? I hope that you have fun playing and I look forward to seeing you in tournaments soon. Cheers.

become a member imo, saves you from timing out if ever you need it

yes, except time out protection doesnt work for unrated games

Once I had a lot of games running and I already had used up some of my time, then catastrophe struck me and I had to stay in town after school. I lost A LOT of games, my rating lowered with several hundred and my timeout was up at 30 %. I just did not have the patience to play that many games before I could continue to play tournaments so I resigned all my games, closed my account and opened a new one.

mvh Fredrik

fortis-unus I guess you are confusing two things:

Timeout during correspondance chess due to not moving for something like 3 days per move (default time limit)

Running out of time during live chess due to thinking too much and exceeding the time limit of let's say 5 minutes per game for exemple.

You cannot join most tournaments if you have to much of the first one, the second one has nothing to do with it.

If you cannot play for more than 3 days, you should put your account in vacation to avoid the first kind of timeout.

Go to:

http://www.chess.com/home/echess_settings.html

and then click on "PAUSE MY GAMES!"

Hope this helps and best regards

Alex

I DID FIX THE PROBLEM,

I had to play as many online games as i could that were rated. I did what I could since my then time out percentage 14%. I tryed playing the unrated games with new commers to chess.com but that did not work and majority did not even finish the game or did not play at all. THE ONLY WAY TO FIX A TIME OUT PERCENTAGE THAT WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO PLAY IN TOURNAMENTS IS TO PLAY ON LINE RATED CHESS GAMES AS MANY AS YOU CAN TILL IT DROPS AT A RATE OF 1%PIONT PER 2 GAMES. THE END!!