my opponent was about to lose on time, but time was restored to 2days

In one of my correspondence games 3d/move I did my move on Friday 12.8. my opponent should lose on time today, but his time was somehow restored to  2days (2days? if it really is two days that mean that i did my move today?)   Hows that possible?

Hmm, maybe your opponent is a Premium member and went on vacation?  As I understand it, the site will allot some vacation time from Premium members when their move time's about up.  

Or if your opponent's a free range member, they may have manually chosen to use some vacation time to top up their remaining move time.

sftac

ps.  Say, maybe only weekdays count?  I've not played an "online/correspondence" game here of any duration, perhaps someone's noticed whether or not weekends do not 'count'. 

There's a "bug" in the 24 hour minimum that erroneously contributes any unused portion of the 24 hours back to the game time if your oppoent comes off vacation early.

A little odd that it would show two days, but it's possible that:

1. He went on vacation with 90 minutes left (the maximum time that will cause the auto-vacation to kick in) and immediately turned vacation mode off and 25.5 hours would show as two days
2. It wasn't your game that triggered the time-out, but the credit was applied to your game nonetheless (not sure if the bug affects all games or just the one that triggered the vacation)

TheGrobe,

Or the opponent could have gone on vacation two times in the intervening duration, in both cases coming back from vacation after a small amount of time, resulting in the remaining time from the minimum one day of vacation being added to all games.

Yes, definitely another possibility.  Good catch.

sftac, NM ozzie_c_cobblepot and TheGrobe thanks for explanations. I know that there is vacation option for premium users but adding time? :D that's little bit unfair. But anyway there should be some limit of this vacation in one single game, this kind of waiting is really annoying.

Yeah, the way it "works" is definitely not right.  Vacation time and game time are not the same thing and shouldn't be interchangeable like this.

blackjokercz, it helps to understand how they got here. I understand that it seems unfair. But read on.

Premium members get auto-timeout protection. In the simple case, this means that they get automatically put on vacation when they might otherwise lose a game on time.

Consider a very simple case, where a premium member has exactly 2 games going. And let's say that they have 7 days of vacation time remaining. Also, let's say they are winning one game and losing the other game. Here is the order of events in the "old" system.

1. Their time is about to run out in one of their games. Site puts them on vacation.
2. They log in, click "return from vacation", make a move in the "winning" game, and then log out. Note that they might have only been on vacation for a couple of hours.
3. Time is about to run out again (from the losing game presumably), site puts them on vacation.
4. Repeat, etc.
5. Note that the premium member can thus keep playing the winning game while continuing to be on vacation "until their vacation runs out" on their losing game.

The problem here is the difference between premium and non-premium. When you're a non-premium member, you have to explicitly "go on vacation". Seems reasonable enough. And when you return from vacation, you have to make a move in every game where it's your turn before you can go on vacation -- becaus the site enforces that you may not "go on vacation" if it is your move in any game. But premium members can skirt this issue.

Given that the site wishes to keep auto-timeout protection, they decided to make it so that every time you went on vacation, you must be on vacation a minimum of 24 hours. Here is the updated order of events.

1. Time is about to run out on one of the games, site puts the user on vacation.
2. When the user logs in to return from vacation, before the 24 hours minimum has expired, the site credits all of their games with the difference. While this looks like it hurts you as the opponent, it actually helps you (read on).
3. User makes their move in the winning game, ignores the losing game.
4. This process can only repeat exactly 7 times (because remember that the user had 7 days of vacation time in my above hypothetical). Because it can only repeat 7 times, there is more certainty on your side as an opponent.

Hope this helps.

ok, thanks :)

Yes, transferring the "unused" portion of the first vaction day to the real 3-day (or whatever) clock makes it seem like they're getting day after day after day of real time, but the long term-effect is their turn takes the same total number of days as if they had gone on vacation for as many days as they ended up having removed from their vacation balance.  I think some of the stallers enjoy it more this way, though-- it makes them feel like they're more actively shafting the system.

I had a fun one a few weeks ago.  The fellow was very cleary going to lose, and on the turn that he was being reduced to a lone King against my King and 3 pawns he couldn't prevent from promoting, he went on vacation.  When he finally started playing again it wasn't like I was having to put much thought into my strategy and moves, so I promoted two of my pawns and set up series of conditional lines, which he would play out, one by one, after letting the clock go down the full 3 days each time.  The final conditional line ended in forced mate with mate delivered by the promotion of my last remaining pawn to Queen.  He played out all the conditional moves up until that very last move that would have triggered the mating move, and then went on vacation again. 

Auto vacation is a cheap tactic and gives one player an advantage over the other. It is the polar opposite of the premoves and auto queen in bullet chess if one player uses that when the other does not it is an advantage that gets u more time. My bullet rating went up like 200 points after putting pre moves on.

Also vacation should not restore any time. If I am playing a 3 day per move game, and I have 1 day on the clock and then go on vacation it should not automatically give me another 2 days.

To those who think it is unfair to add the time: I take it you do not support the idea of minimum vacation time?

Why would you assume that?  Another alternative is simply subtract a minimum 24 vacation hours with no time restoration to real game time.

Actually, I think this:

There are a number of issues with the use of vacation time on this site.  Two of the biggest ones in my mind (if numerous threads on the topic are any indication) are the unfair and sometimes near impossible requirement that basic members must have moved in all of their games (while premium members are not subject to this restriction), and the tendency for premium members to repeatedly go on vacation without advancing their games.

I believe there's one elegant solution to both of these issues:  Don't allow players, both basic and premium, to go on vacation unless they've advanced all of their games at least one move since their previous vacation (regardless of whether it's currently thier turn to move or not).

I am a diamond member i love to play but am sometimes taken away by work the dirty word it lets me use vacation time for those days I never use it to stall id rather play in person its toigh to get into someones head in cyberspace if you want the luxury of vacation whip out the 100 bucks ans support chess.com i love the lrssons the cpu analysis so i know how bad i suck

since i am new and this advance your noves thing is not something i know about could you explain

By "advancing their games" I just mean to have made at least one move in all of their games, regardless of whether their opponent has responded or not.  Currently basic members must ensure all of their games are in a state where it's their opponent's turn to move -- something that can prove extremely difficult for those with heavy game loads, extremely active opponents or opponents who've set up conditional moves.

I like your suggestion, although I'm not especially bothered by vacation, even when used for stalling.  I just play my other games.  I was impressed/amused by my opponent I described above, though . . .

Yes but that is a bad implementation. You could also force a vacation-taker to use all of their 24 hours if you wanted. That's also not very good.

Isn't forcing them to take at least 24 hours very similar to the existing solution?

Personally, I think the current one is rather elegant. It just doesn't look right to those people who don't understand it.

Really?  I find it clumsy as hell, and I really do question whether it was intentional.

Aren't all of these threads by those who "don't understand it" evidence of it's kludginess?