Oh I forgot to make 1 last point. Any game less than 6 or maybe 8 minutes should not have the "jerk" button. Worst case you are sitting and waiting for 5 minutes. Im not sure where the line is but blitz games shouldnt have it.
Also filing a complaint on the offender is worth doing. The site admins would have stats to see if the offender was a habitual jerk time out player.
perhaps a new setting shoudl be intact- how many minutes a move- say 1 min a move in a 20 minute game... no move in 1 minute and the person loses
sometime (like me) i am in a live chess game and i have to eat dinner, so i leave the games for a few minutes, and then the opponent (not naming names) are you there??? COME ON!!! any year now!!! i said "sorry, had to eat dinner" and he says "do i give a ****, MOVE"
Ever considered saying you have to eat before you leave and go to eat.
Just a wild idea.
Anyway, I say, just ban those that abuse the system. The whole idea of scaring people enough so they won't do bad things. Seems like the best to handle things on the internet ihmo.
2 option is good and also there can be 1 more option.
If any move is played after 5 min there can be a alert so that the person who is waiting can look at his work assuring himself that once if at all the other person comes and plays he will be alerted with some music or sound.
Neither option. Just live with it; in a real game, they can sit there and smile at you until their time is up.
I think the 'are you there?'function is a good idea but it should be a button.
the button will appear after five minutes of thinking. The opponent has the option to press it and then the 'thinker' has to respond.
The advantage of the button versus the automatic is that you can agree on a larger break in the game. for example: a player has to watch over children. When there is something wrong he can chat: i have to look after my children I will be back in ten minutes.
In that case an automatic are you there will lead to lost of a good game.
A button will give both players fun and a good game.
I agree with this and think that it is the ideal solution. It being a button that shows up after five minutes sounds great to me.
I'm against all of this. People agree to a 20 min game. I take ten mins. on a move, I don't want to be interrupted in my thinking, at all. The "button" doesn't solve a thing there, and it makes me have to chat. I sometimes don't want to chat, I want to play without having to be checked on every five minutes or having to tell my opponent what is going on in my life. Sometimes I'm not getting something to eat, and I'm not watching babies. If I'm having sex, do I now have to lie about what I'm doing? You have 20mins, 30, 60, etc., that means the opponent should be ready to play 40mins, 60, 2hrs., without having to say a word, or be interrupted by buttons. In my tiny opinion
you don't have to chat but it is a possibility.
lots of people complain that they get in a game and then their opponent starts to lose and then... they just sit there and make them wait out the clock.
this can be addressed in two ways:
1. sportsmanship score (holding off on this for now)
2. confirmation "Are you there?" after 5 minutes of no moves, with 30 seconds to respond.
sportsmanship score is just tricky. but the "are you there" doesn't prevent abuse (like someone just being rude and having to stay there hitting "YES" every 5 minutes).
is it annoying to have to hit YES after 5 minutes of thinking? 5 minutes is ample time for a quick bathroom break or something like that. but is it annoying? does it help? or does it hinder?
How about if you start to lose then kill the clock it's considered being a bad sport and after 3 offencise your baned! Of course unless your legitamently thinking...
The concept of sportsmanship is different for every culture, so instead of trying to determine who is a sportsman and who isn't:
Why not have separate time per move indicators for each type of Live chess-blitz, bullet and standard-?
There's an Average time per move indicator for Online chess, already...
Players should be able to set up an open challenge with a maximum time per move desired.
That way, we would take away any subjectivity as to wether the player is or not a time burner. It's just statistics.
It can be easily automated, and we all would have the chance to understand those numbers at will.
I think that would solve the problem.
I think this problem is with the opponent that bails out and not with the way the game works. I don't there there is any fix needed. Ultimately a player that just stops moving in a lost position is allowing the game to end sooner than if he moved and you moved etc (unless it were mate on the move or something).
I think a sportsmanship rating could only work if it had 2 components: 1) "flag" an inappropriate/bullying chat session from a game (rather than single out one line which may have been a response to something worse); and 2) an objective look at games where a player loses on time where the last bit of time was a big chunck of time. The latter would have to show a trend over a lot of games, I would think, because if ever you needed to take time to calculate it would be when you're losing.
And I think most of the other options involve too many if's, plus they are error prone, and many wouldn't be automated:
If there's an admin online. If the admin is competent enough. If the admin is not tired after a whole lot of work and just can't think right for the moment! If the player is considered to be "burning time". If the person saying their opponent is burning time is rightfully acting.
"If you're legitimately thinking". How could anybody know that?
Plus, anything could happen: A glass/cup full of <gap for a liquid here> falls on my lap. Or on the floor. Or I might have a child who gets hurt. No time to chat. Or, I let my opponent know that I'm going away, but he/she clicks the button anyway (tricky, isn't it?).
So, as I'm solving the problem, I fail to click the I'm here button. Game lost, complaint submitted, sportsmanship reputation ruined, whatever.
We need something automated and neutral. Numbers are neutral enough to me. :)
There is one slight problem with getting admin to decide if the game is won after your opponent walks away. How do you determine if the admin making the decision is competaint enough to make said decision?
Yes, that could be a problem. For now the live chess mods as far as I know aren't required to have a particular level of chess competence, or TD certification.
i think the "are you there" function would get quite annoying and be abused a lot.
i really like the sportsmanship idea. for example, after playing someone you have the option to vote for them (either positive or negative). you can only vote for a person once (in order to stop abuse), but you can change your vote in the future if you are so inclined.
then people's profiles can have this stat that others can see and use for live chess. if a person has a lot of negative votes from people because that person is constantly annoying others, one can simply avoid them.
it would take a while to impliment, and it wouldn't be an easy fix, but i think it would help.
I gather all this is about "live chess"? Since I have not played it I might be mistaken, but I don't understand why an opponent's reluctance to make a move would be such a big problem. Of course, I can see why it may be frustrating if the win is around the next corner. But to impose some extra "rules" where a chess.com arbitrer comes to rescue is - I think - doomed to fail. Likewise, I agree with trigs that an "are you there" function can create problems. Giving sportmanship "points" might work, but - again - I wonder if it isn't too much bureaucracy for such a small problem? Burning your fingers once will automatically prevent you from accepting a game with that player again. Yet, I agree that if this phenomenon is very common, then some special action might be wanted.
If they are going to leave the board for 5 minutes, they should write "Be right back" or something. If not, we should stick to what you said.
i think one thing that will fix this is the ability to play more than one game at once - this is now possible in the next live chess (beta version here: http://live.chess.com/live )
How about something like a shot clock in basketball? You could decide on the time increments and if you have not made a move within the allotted time you lose. It was used in pool to stop opponents deliberately playing slow (5-10 mins per shot) to unsettle their opponents. I am not saying it should be available for all games but maybe an option to have or not to have. I am also thinking this could be a new(?) variation of chess.
yes, i think that you should do the "are you there yet?" button!
Thinking about a sportsmanship score...
If the score is public (I know that's the point, but just hear me out) then you'll see some people "race to the bottom" trying to get the lowest score out there.
How about making the score private? You could add thumbs-up/thumbs-down all over the site.. in games, forum posts, blog posts. Or you could forget all about the thumbs-down, and just do a thumbs-up, which is basically the Facebook like button all over again.
My point is twofold here. First, if the site were to release a sportsmanship scoring system in phases, where the first phase had a non-public score, they could look at the data to see if it's working at all. (They could even have a limited rollout, if that's something that's technically possible for them.) Second, there might be a way to design it such that there is a way to see feedback, but to avoid the race-to-the-bottom problem I mentioned.
This very scenario happened last night to me in a 15 min game. My opponent was dead lost and just let 13 minutes tick off. I think a possibe solution could be a fuction of the total game time. An example is in a 15 minute game if more than 1/3 of the total game time (5 mins) has ticked by then do a "are you still there" popup with 10 to 20 second response time or actually have the opponent waiting get a choice whether to pose the question or just continue waiting. In a sixty minute game if 10 to 15 minutes have passed then pose the question. I believe both examples give ample time for the opponent to make a reasonable move. More than likely if it takes more time than 1/3 of the total game time the opponent is just being a jerk.