chess_loves

Dear friends,

In recent times, games lost on time in team matches have been badly hurting Team India. This match seems to be going down the drain already with 15 timeouts. We won this match narrowly by one point in spite of 13 timeouts. With one more timeout, we would’ve lost it. There are many more matches that are following a similar trend. It is about time we did something about this.

Timeouts can happen due to genuine reasons or carelessness. Genuine reasons can be many such as temporary unavailability of internet, travelling, work load, exams..etc. If you already know beforehand that you won’t be able to attend your games for certain amount of time, you can turn on the vacation feature to pause your games. To learn more about how to do that, click here. Premium (paid) members get auto-timeout protection which means that if your time is low, your games will be automatically paused until you log in. We understand that not everyone is able to afford the premium membership or have the time to use all the features that come with it, so take it only if you can.

Carelessness and irresponsibility has no place in teamwork. Everyone has to understand that it is a team match and performance in each game affects the whole team. If someone loses on time without putting a fight, it will dishearten other players who are putting so much effort to win for the team. If a member is a regular timeout candidate, then he/she should not join a team match. That member can just play individual games, results of which affect only him/her. We rather have someone else, who doesn’t give free points, play in place of a timeout loser.

From now on we will introduce the following procedure to reduce timeouts.

1.   If a member has timed out in a game for any reason, it is his/her responsibility to let other team members know why it happened. We suggest that he/she voluntarily post the reason in this foum. If the reason is genuine or if this is first offense in a long time, no action will be taken against that member. We hope that it won’t happen again.

2.   If that member doesn’t come forward voluntarily, he/she may be contacted by an admin to find out what happened. If a proper reason is given, no action will be taken.

3.   If that member doesn’t reply or if the admins feel that his/her reason is not genuine, one or more of the following will apply.

a.  That member will not be allowed to play in any more team matches.

b.  Member's id will be added to the list of timed out players.

c.  In extreme cases of persistent timeouts, he/she may be removed from the group.

Be a team player and don’t let the team down.