Weird time issues with correspondence games

It seems that there is an intermittant glitch with the time for correspondence chess games.  Last night when I went to bed one of my opponents in online (correspondence) chess had about 16 hours left on the clock.  This morning they have over 30 hours for the same game.  No conditional moves were used during this time.  In my other game with the same opponent they also gained time, from somewhere around 30 hours to now over 2 days.  I have noticed this once before, but it was turned around and I got the extra time.  Is this some sort of "feature" that I am unaware of, or is it really a glitch?

If the additional time, in your added time game, appeared when you used less than 24 hours of vacation time then  http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/got-24hrs-added-to-my-time.

The added time is no longer mentioned here  http://support.chess.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/26/0/how-does-vacation-work--how-much-time-do-i-get

If the added time policy is still current then your opponent may have gone on vacation for less than 24 hours.

If your opponent went into vacation time due to another game triggering auto-vacation, they would have 24 hours added to their time when they turn vacation mode off again.

This is working as intended, if that's the case.

Thanks for the explanations! 

Seems like a very odd feature to me though, and I don't quite understand the justification for it.  Why does time need to be added at all?

If time wasn't added then people would lose accrued vacation time if they didn't take a whole day, such as when auto-vacation kicks in. I can't say for sure why they did it that way but that seems like the likely justification.

@Martin_Stahl, yeah, that is the way I understand it too.  But I thought that they made you take a full day of vacation time to penalize the people that were taking too many short vacations?  But now they get the time no matter what, either as vacation time or as added game time.  Whats the point of the minimum 24 hours vacation time taken then if you always get it back in the form of added game time?

The idea is so that going into auto-vacation used to  have the ability to extend games almost indefinitely. If you went into vacation for only 10 minutes, then that was all the time subtracted and that was abusable to extend your lowest time-remaining games.

This way, you are always charged a day of vacation time for it being activated, but since it's used as timeout protection, they add 24 hours to all of your game times. This seems to be the fairest way, since you do actually lose a day of vacation, but all of that time can be utilized if you decide to turn off the vacation setting before the first day is over.

Vacation time and game time are two different things entirely, and shouldn't be interchanged like this.  I can't imagine that it's intentional, and I still suspect it's a bug with the implementation 24 hour minimum for vacation.

My guess is that it could be something like time being decremented from games on a regular, timed basis, and only after that is the check for vacation done, at which point (if it's on) the time is also decremented from the vacation bank and added back to the games.

When the minimum 24 hour vacation rule was added, the last step would have been adversely affected on the first check after it was turned on, erroneously adding the 24 hours that was immediately decremented from the vacation bank in place of the much shorter interval (5?  10 minutes?) that was removed from the game clocks.  Presumably it would then also added back on zero-minutes at a time for the next 24 hours, as the vacation bank isn't decremented again until day two.

Pure speculation, of course, but that's the kind of thing that could give you this behaviour.

Whatever the cause, I think it should be fixed.

I don't think it is a bug, but an unintended side effect. I can't find most of the original discussion it but I'm pretty there was commentary from staff (maybe even erik) about it.

If you go on vacation, it will deduct 24 hours from your vacation bank. If you come back before the 24 hours is up and turn off vacation, then it will credit the games where it is your move the number of hours you didn't use. It really isn't much different than if the person that went on vacation just stayed on vacation that same amount of time. The downside is that the system can still be gamed to drag out some games by going off and on vacation and could potentially add time to games that it wasn't your move in when you went on vacation but is when you go off.

I don't use vacation that often, so I don't know the specifics on how it works. Most is from reading other topics with most of those being around the time the change went into effect.

 Presumably it would then also added back on zero-minutes at a time for the next 24 hours, as the vacation bank isn't decremented again until day two.
Actually, if I understand what you are getting at, the time is decremented every time you go on vacation. So, if you hit auto vacation (or manual) in the morning, it would decrement you bank by 24 hours. Say you came back on 4 hours later and go off of vacation. 20 hours would be added to games that you have the move on. If you manually put yourself on vacation, then it would decrement 24 hours again. I don't think anyone could hit auto-vacation twice in 24 hours with the add back functionality, though it could potentially happen if the game was really close on time the first go around.

So, from a practical standpoint, the implementation isn't all that different than what was in place before. However, there is one big difference with the minimum; eventually the bank will be empty and the auto-vacation (or just regular vacation use as a safety for too many games ) will no longer help and games will have to be played or lost on time.

I don't really see the distinction.

I take a bug as broken functionality. It is fucntioning as expected but can be abused (though abused in a different way from the previous method).

To some people, that is also a bug, so I don't absolutely disagree with your take

I agree with the Grobe on this, game time and vacation time should never be mixed like this.  I understand why they have done it this way, but to me, if you have 2 (or 10) hours left in a game and go on vacation you should have that same amount of time in that game when you return from vacation.

This is getting annoying.  My opponent has now added more than 40 hours to his time (two additions of ~20 hours) and has not made a move in almost 5 days now (for 3 day per move games).  I think part of the problem is that he is in a no vacation tournament, so those games always get priority over other games that can be put on hold with vacation time (probably 87 games in progress doesn't help either).  Just another example of why and how this added time can be abused.

When is a time control not a time control?

Here's another situation, which may or may not be similar.  I'd welcome perspective on it.  In a current game of mine with a 3-day/move time frame, I noted when I logged out last night that my opponent had 17 or 18 hours to make his next move.  Today I log in (21 hours later) and find he has 24 hours on his clock.  I'd noticed something like this before, but since I had a lot of games going, I thought my memory of how much time he had left was faulty.

Is the loophole in vacation time still open?  I.e., could he have gotten an additional 24  hours by briefly going on vacation?

I understand that a player has a right to play as slowly as they want, within the time frame, but if the time control is 'flexible' or shifting, that seems like another issue.