The numbers behind Tournament vacation time.

Dear Chess.com staff and players... First of all I am sorry to bring this extremely old issue back to life, but I'd like to share with you some thoughts about it.

I'm playing the 2nd chess.com tournament and my group is probably in the top 5 slowest group of all. I consider myself a very patient player and I consider rude to ask someone to "hurry up" in chess. However patience has a limit.

I'll put to numbers what's going on. A suscribed member has 60 days vacation. He's playing a tournament with a 3 day/move time control. Now.. this person takes all his time to play AND once every 2 moves he will go on vacations for at least a day. So for him, the time control is 3.5 days/move

Considering an average game in the 1600-1800 range is about 38 moves... this means a match with this person will take: 38 x 3.5 = 133 days.

Now.. that would be if I played immediately, which I don't. I'll take about 1 move/day on someone playing this slow (I get plenty time to think lines).. so just add. 38 x 1 = 38 days (obvious). So thats a total fo 133 + 38 = 171 days a match

or in other words: more than 5 months

My question is.. did you guys do this math before allowing vacation time on tournaments?. You'd probably argue that vacation time eventually expires, but even in the exposed case... the guy only used 17.5 days of his total time. Allowing him to delay 2 more Tourney rounds and still have more than a week vacation time left. (and on a 5 month per game, by the time it expires he'll get a reload).

So besides the ranting... I don't say ppl shouldnt be able to take vacation. Most of us have a life beyond chess. But please! can't you at least limit it for tournaments?

Of course, I can just "stay away" from tournaments that have allowed vacation time, but thats not the point. The point is: Most ppl DO NEED some vacation just in case. But you can grant them that without causing a huge time extention to the whole tourney.

How? well there can be different ways to encourage ppl to think before going on vacations in every move. For instance; allow a certain total hours vacation per tourney (balanced). That is smaller than de total of the player account.

I hope you at least think it throu. I believe there are better options than the absolute extremes "Vacation allowed- Endless tournaments" or "NO vacation at all - tornament for ppl who won't leave the room in a month".

Thanx for this great site, and sorry to be a pain in the **s.

while we're on the subject, i've been meaning to ask: can we have 'death tournaments'? you know, where if you lose the game you have to actually die? just thinking out loud thanks for listening people

You mean knock-out format tournaments?

no, i mean death tournaments. in which people die.

lol justice avocado.

+1 @omicron

Your argument is totally invalid, Omicron!

You are complaining about a guy who takes 4 day to play instead of 3. That is not a big deal.

You said that, becouse of this, the game will last for 5 months (witch is quite fast for a 3 day time control, becouse YOU are playing fast). Well, you should have thought about that time control before you entered the tournament. If the player is taking his time to play, there is nothing wrong with it.

His use of vacation time is strange, but there is no reason for you to complain about the long game.