I think once it is determined who will move on in a round, the tournament should go forward even if not all the games are finished.

This would speed up tournaments a bit and doesn't seem like a difficult thing to program. This is also one of the often complained about problems in the forums, tournaments slowed down for one reason or another (vacation or people who won't resign).

Although the thing that annoys me most about tournament play is people constantly complaining about having to wait for other people to finish their games, I would agree with this suggestion in principle. However, this would be on the assumption that although the tournament has progressed to the next round, the other games do continue, in order to fully complete each round.

Thus, those who want to complain again and again about having to wait to progress will be able to play their next round of opponents, and those who are just enjoying their games, despite finding themselves in a position which cannot see them progress, can still play out the remainder of their match(es) to their satisfaction and to perhaps gain the joy of finishing well in their respective group.

Hope that makes sense, I think I started waffling a bit towards the end!

What would happen to all the unfinished games? Will they continue without affecting the standings? OR will they disappear?

ADK

I definitely agree. If there is a tie-break for the top 2, then the other games do matter (to change the tie-break scores of the top 2), otherwise they aren't relevant in the continuation of the tournament.

Of course the unfinished games would continue, no reason to make them disappear. The next round of the tournament would just get paired and those games can start. Of course, this is only done when it's fully determined who moves on, tie breaks and all.

I am in full support of this suggestion

I agree.  There are plenty of times in which one person has clinched the group, regardless of how the remaining games play out.  They should be declared the winner of that group as soon as they've clinched it, and the next round should begin when all groups are clinched rather than completed.

How would this affect the seeding of the future rounds of the tournaments?  Would it mean that the better players will get seeded together sooner, which they would anyway so theoretically it probably wont make any difference?  I was wondering though if it would result in a higher concentration (if you will) of better players in the earlier rounds, therefore lessoning their chances of moving on as opposed to the slower rounds being perhaps not so concentrated with better players making their chances of advancing better.

I could be way off so forgive me if I am, just curious.

you would THINK it is easy to program, but it isn't so :) it's on the list.

sounds like a good idea to me, hope erik and co. can figured it out :)

It wouldn't affect the seeding of future rounds at all.

It sounds like agood suggestion to me....

Isn't CC supposed to be slow? 

It's supposed to give you all the time you need to think about your move. That's different than being needlessly slow. Having both players sit around doing nothing waiting for the game to start isn't the same as playing a slow game.

I agree with Billium248 that in multi-round tournaments, once a player has clinched his group, regardless of how the remaining games play out, he should be declared the group winner and the next round should begin when all groups are clinched rather than completed.

What follows is a current real-world "start-of-next-round" hostage situation.

In the 2nd chess.com tournament (1601-1800) there is one remaining game holding up the start of the third round. In group 6 Paddee has clinched this group with 7 points.
The runner-up Omicron against which Paddee is playing the last game of this round has 5.5 points, so even with a win Omicron can not place better than second.
Both players are over 2000, so their endgame play should reflect their chess experts technique. The rook and pawn endgame that they are playing is an easy theorical draw. Black (Paddee) in his last game move instead of playing for simplification of the position heading for a drawn endgame, plays a non-committal waiting move that can now extend the "endless dance" for as many moves and weeks as Black (Paddee) wishes. This is like the drama of waiting for a last round OTB tournament decisive game to complete, except that the result of this particular game has no impact in the tournament standings and it is just indefinitely holding up the start of the next round.

I can see how chapo60's idea here is good, to me it makes sense.  Once clinched it only matters to the player who has clinched the round whether the next round starts or not, the rest of the players are not moving on, so I say to expedite the whole process this would be good.  The rest can just continue to finish their games as they would anyway.

This just goes to show you that while tournaments in Correspondence Chess sound as cool as their OTB counterparts, for most people, it sucks to have to wait months for it to unfold, which kills all the original enthusiasm for it in the first place. Just know what you're getting yourself into before you complain about how long it takes to finish the tournament. Speed and Correspondence Chess mix as well as oil and water.

And you can only start the next round if it's pretty much single elimination. If the format was Swiss, this would screw up all future pairings. 

This is a post that follows my post here on 3/21/09. I am now complaining about the next round for the same tournament. There is one game left between players that have no chance to qualify for the next round. The game has been clearly lost for over a month (lone King). This game is the only active one for the losing player.
What is the point of all this? There were 3 other games among players with no chance to qualify for the next round that finished 2-3 months ago.

Again the argument is: in multi-round tournaments, once a player has clinched his group, regardless of how the remaining games play out, he should be declared the group winner and the next round should begin when all groups are clinched rather than completed. Players involved in non-qualifying games can keep playing for rating. And again the senseless drama of waiting for a turn-based tournament game to complete, whose result has no impact for the next round's qualifiers. One post makes sense: if you are not willing to put up with this nonsense, don't play in multirounds tournaments in the future.

Another issue that I have noticed is that it's too difficult to plan your game load. You wait for months for the next round of a tournament to start that could start at any time. You're going to be hit with 10 new games at random some distant time in the future after you've already forgotten about this tournament.

Both of the last two posts are very legitimate criticism of the way chess.com runs their tournaments. Like most sporting events as soon as qualification is 100% sure the next round should start.