Has Chess.com ever had a worse idea than Vacations?

I tried an energizer bunny pic earlier, but to no avail...

The original Police Academy is hilarious...

Good stuff.

+1

Good stuff, yes, but it doesn't seem you want to learn from it.

I will obey Master Ubik42

Your will is my will. Any deviation from this is a sign of not showing my allegience to the Ubik42 Nation and will not be tolerated by you at all. Master Ubik42 i want to learn from you vast knowledge of chess. Have mercy on me Ubik42 i mean Master Uik42.

Sounds like that is what you like to hear. As i said move on. I even agreed with one point and the hammer and nail is still in hour hands.

NOW you are talking my kind of lingo. This is what I want to hear.

It's time to break the omertà surrounding The Vacation Police's sottises, as well as the ignis fatuus of their fanciful, imaginative fairy tales.

On another thread, once, someone said  "The Vacation Police use a litany of euphemisms, buzz words, and doublespeak to help it provide the pretext for police-state measures." This phrase struck me so forcefully that I have often used it since.

So, will you now join our cause, royalbishop? Help stamp out the vice that is "no vacation" tournaments. Don't do it for me, dont do it for yourself. Do it for the unborn genrations. It is a noble cause.

All hail Master Ubik42

His cause is just and the only way. Any who defy him will be delt with directly by him. Long live the Ubik42 nation.

Selling vacation to the rich (and on top of that kicking it in automatically) is like selling air or water because like air, vacation is a necessity in life too. It does not seem to be the proper thing to do. Having said this, chess.com is a commercial site and it has to somehow make money so that all of us can continue to enjoy playing chess here. So really, it is difficult to blame them since many members become paying members only to have advantage of more and auto-vacation.

I am sure in heart of heart even chess.com knows that it is unfair to provide means by which some players get an advantage over others, not to lose due to time-out. After all, a player who has better skills should win in any game, not the one with deeper pockets. But as I said earlier, it is difficult to blame them as they too need the money to keep the site running.

1. Now there is an avatar I can get behind.

2. I am pretty sure 99.999% of chessplayers who bedcome members arent doing it to get a competitive advantage, they just want the convenience (among the other benefits of course). I have no desire to win a game because I can take vacations and my opponent can't. I certainly don't choose opponents on that basis. If anything, I have a preference for playing members because I have a higher degree of confidence they will stick around and not abandon the game.

When turning on vacation time, Or auto timeout protection is activated, all vacation times will be a MINIMUM of 1 day.
This means if you are only on vacation for 5 minutes,  24 hours will be removed from your saved vacation time.
If you are on vacation for 23 hours, it is 24 hours.
But if you are on vacation for 25 hours, then it is 25 hours on your time used.

The 'One Day' minimum only affects the first 24 hours you're on vacation

When the clock reaches 90 or less, auto vacation is activated.  This then removes 24 hours from your vacation time and adds it to your clock time. So it will show as having hours remaining rather than minutes.

By removal of 24 hours from vacation time, in turn adds 24 hours onto the game clock, hence the time difference. One day is still lost from vacation time though - when the alert arrives to you, there is infact less than 90 minutes remaining on the clock, but the 24 hours vacation time added to it shows when you log in and remove vacation time.

This is to prevent "vacation" time being used to just manage an over-loaded games list. -

Is it really reasonable for vacation time and clock time to be exchanged in this manner? Seems to me it only exacerbates the problem the minimum is trying to solve.

Erik posted on this at length when it was added, there are numerous discussions on it from then

Kohai, could you clear up one thing that seems to have been a sticking point in this thread - is there any restriction on vacation use or is each player free to use it as he or she chooses, even if, as an example, a lengthy vacation is taken one move before an inevitable checkmate, or in the middle of a tournament?

Hi Jac1yn,  STAFF  Thank you for your response, and I totally believe that you and your colleagues do care .   It's your career, you life and something you enjoy.   Of course you individually care a lot !  But from Chess.com's business model point of view, there is negative incentive for them to implement measures to speed up tournaments or individual games. 

The above parahraph came form another forum.

The text below largely also came from another related forum, but I'm happy to see in this forum, Kohai SATFF's clarification.

Player's slow playing "encourages" other players to literally buy membership to get vacation and thereby offset their previously applied time & effort in current games.  Their other alternative is just to start playing more games, but this just sucks their (time) investment in further.

All this is a fine business strategy for Chess.com. It makes more profit this way.  However, lets not pit  against player as in the "Chess.com - Vacation worst idea" forum, when it knows slowing tournaments/games is inherently (but to a high limit) more profit for "Chess.com".

Chess.com knows how to advance tournaments to the next level when a non advancing player cannot affect the advance of the others, and will consequentally speed up tournaments.  Why not just do it ?

Chess.com knows how it can monitor, track and analyse suspected vacation abusers.  Why not just do it ?

Chess.com knows that allowing players an unlimited number of games will minimize some people's ability to practically play more than one move in a particular game within the maximum allotted time... and while that's within the allotted rules, who needs to play 440 + concurrent games ? 

How about possibly playing 3 moves a game within the period for a mere 100 concurrent games ? Chess.com sets the rules, but how about some thoughtful ones. Ones that balance open & honest profit against tournaments that might exceed my life expectancy :)

Again, it's in Chess.com's interests to slow down games to the slowest level to generate maximum membership profit whether these games include vacation or not.  

In order to make it a more level playing field, the auto-vacation could be programmed by chess.com to kick in for non paying members also. This could be an option in the profile. Thus many of the games lost on time out could be saved. Then the only difference between premium and non-premium members will be the amount of vacation earned.

Auto-vacation is a big selling point to some though. People have paid for memberships with this feature as part of the package. Chess.com would be handing out a lot of refunds if they changed it now.

My deeper pockets should allow me to buy more books, more powerful computers and chess programs that help me in improving my game. I am rich and I do not have to be apologetic about it. However over the board, it should be my skills vs, yours. I shouldn't win because when I defaulted on time, I was saved by a third party (auto-vacation) while you weren't. That wouldn't be fair.

You seem to be assuming I am against the idea.

I am simply saying that it is impossible to implement on this site without a huge amount of upheaval. People paid for a membership in which auto vacation was an advertised selling point. Chess,com can't change that now even if they wanted to. There would be uproar.

Even phasing it out as people renew there membership would take a year. During which, half of the people with diamond membership would have auto vacation and half wouldn't.

How do you suggest tthey do it without losing a large amount of business?