Old Thread: IMPORTANT Change Coming to Vacation Use!

 you probably also need to explain that MINIMUM  does not equal MAXIMUM

After years of reading threads on the internet I have come to the conclusion that many people failed reading comprehension....

Yeah, and it's so simple, For every hour you don't make a move you lose a day of vacation.

 LOL  This is sure to cause a stampede !

 yes, looki at artfizz's post #67

Questions:

Scenario: A player has 20 days of vacation left. He is about to go on his summer vacation. On a sunny Friday evening, he makes moves in all of his games and sets himself on vacation.

When he leans back in his chair, he notices that a friend in one of his games has answered with a move already, and that responding to this move will be easy and will not take much time.

So he turns off vacation mode, makes a move in that game, and turns vacation back on. This is repeated 10 times in total, because in that game with the friend, these next 10 moves turned out to be quick and easy moves.

My first question: How much vacation time will our player have left at the end of this beautiful Friday evening, according to the new regulations that are about to be introduced?

a) 20 days

b) 20 days - 11x1 day = 9 days, because each time vacation is turned on consumes at least 1 day of vacation time.

Second question: After this, on the same beautiful Friday evening, our player gets a phone call telling him that he has to cancel his summer vacation for some sad reason. So he sets himself off vacation again on this Friday evening, and he remains off vacation for the entire next month. How much vacation time will he have left one month later?

c) 19 days, because switching on vacation on that Friday evening once has cost him one entire day of vacation

d) 9 days, because each time switching on his vacation on this Friday evening has cost him one day of vacation each.

(to both c) and d) should be added the number of vacation days that are usually added to the vacation time of this player per month, of course.)

Sorry about the misunderstanding. My question was not to all users what they believe the answers are. My question was to those who know what the answers are, e.g. Erik, because they know how this is going to be implemented.

Great solution to "vacation abuse"

Great change!!

Could you make that a little clearer please.  A drawing may be helpful. 

Thanks, Erik.

I agree, great change!

maybe a pie chart?

 I just wish it could be made to apply to our place of employment. For every day of vacation we earn here, we're awarded one from work, as well.

If this is a concern for you, then you need to play games with slower time controls.

Really, that statement goes for anyone else whining about this change of policy, as well.

no

If you use vacation at all then you are a bad bad person who needs to go to detention.

correct

Thanks, now I have understood at least one essential part of the intended change.

I would like to remark that this change is quite extreme and counterintuitive for people who do not know that regulation yet, so introducing this change will require a very clear and easily visible way of informing all people, old and new on chess.com, about this new regulation. Otherwise, it will become a constant source of need for explaning to people how the details of the vacation system works.

Adding language problems in a highly international community, I see myself saying to many people (in case I were asked to explain to them how vacation works here): Try to avoid using vacation if you can, unless you are sure to have understood all the details of the regulations here.

I admit that I have not been able to explain the meaning of the term "vacation abuse" to experienced chess players who have asked me in astonishment what this was supposed to be.

bsrasmus, do not mix up confusion with counterintuitiveness.

There is a possibility to introduce a new rule that is easily understandable if it is explained clearly enough, and if people have read and understood this new rule. This causes no confusion whatsoever, but it requires people to read and understand this new rule.

And there are many rules that are self-explaining because people can guess them or expect them with their common sense anyway as soon as they are starting to use the system. If a new rule does not fulfil that criterion, it is what I called counterintuitive.

It is very counterintuitive if vacation time could be reduced faster than real time elapses. I think Erik is answering  "b)" to my question 1 above, so vacation time could be reduced by 11 days within one evening only. I feel this is so counterintuitive that I would predict many people starting to flood chess.com staff with bug reports saying that their vacation time was doing strange and unexpected things.