On "using vacation days" on "hopelessly lost games"

Dont turn on the vacation pause!  You are a premium member so just go on vacation and the site will automatically switch your status to 'on vacation' when your first game is almost timed out.  That way you dont waste vacation time. 

I have always encouraged everyone to respectfully resign a lost game when they feel the game is over.

I do not prescribe to anyone which positions exactly will have to be resigned, because this can depend largely on the circumstances, such as playing strength.

And I respect chess.com policy that tends to use adjudications very rarely, because often there is no really pressing need for them.

It is a common misunderstanding with some that vacation use is the culprit. When an opponent of yours is on vacation, just relax, the game is not running away and noone is harmed.

I have nothing against a proposition to start using adjudications in tournaments to start a next round more quickly in some cases. As long as chess.com does not see the need to introduce adjudications there, just relax and do other things. You will be notified when the next round starts.

I can see potential harm coming from this. When I start an online game, I plan to finish it within a certain time-frame, say within a month, when I expect that I will have free time to devote to playing. An opponent who has only played a couple of moves and taken the vacation is in effect forcing me to play the game next month when I might have planned to be away or do something else. It doesn't really take too much imagination to see that such behaviour might cause objective inconvenience for the other side, not mentioning the subjective annoyance.

Correspondence chess is not like that. It is always possible that a game you start can take longer than, say, a month. This is why you can use both your allotted time and your vacation time to bridge the periods during which you have less time for chess than usual. The time control you choose and the vacation time you have will help you also during times in which the start of a new tournament round will give you more games to deal with than usual.

in the case I was talking about, the player logs on every day for months, and NEVER moves in any of his games. If you have time to play that much live chess, you can at least manage to make the minimum moves! I don't mind because I've got plenty of other games to play, and its just hurting him wasting vacation time, but we're at move two after months, and he has over a month of vacation time left.

sorry, actually its move 4 in the first of 2 games after FIVE MONTHS, with the entire rest of the match finished

and our team has swept the other 2 boards. but as I said, I'm fine

I dont think u should stall your game just because u losin,accept the lost and keep it  movin.I have notice alot of players doing that.Man enough to start war then dont back down when losin.My sayin to all players is, DONT BE SCARED TO FACE YOUR FEARS.Thats the only way u can overcome them.            

I think that you are obfuscating. I choose a time control of, say, 2 days per move because I want to finish a the game within, say, (I did put it approximately) a month, someone else who has different circumstances is free to choose a longer time control etc. Vacation introduces a strong element of the unpredictable and uncontrolled that is not really welcome. (Chess is said to be a "full information game"). You are a Candidate Master, if you have agreed to a game with 2 hours per side OTB, can one side make a few moves and then suddenly decide to postpone the rest of the game until a couple of months later ?

That's the difference between OTB and correspondence chess.

OTB you know when the game is going to be over at the latest, or, with increment time controls, you at least have quite a good idea of the maximum duration of a game (except for adjourned games in pre-engine times, of course).

In correspondence chess time controls, games usually take many, many days (even after the acceleration from postal chess to modern electronic move transmission). So correspondence chess is not the one and only activity during the game, but it is played in parallel with normal life. That is why any serious correspondence tournament includes vacation to take into account real life constraints.

For many people, this is a great chance to be playing chess without being forced to plan to spend an entire evening for playing an OTB tournament game, or an entire weekend or a week for an OTB tournament. They simply analyze and make their moves whenever they have some time to spare.

But of course this also means that it will be naturally very hard to predict exactly how long a tournament round is going to take exactly. Take the tournament mentioned above for example. The first round of this tournament is still ongoing, most games are finished, but two players are still playing the first of their two games with each other, taking their time in a very interesting endgame position in which there is still everything to play for.

A completely natural scenario for a correspondence chess tournament, and noone to blame for it. If it is important that the next round of the tournament can start at some desired point of time, then the tournament rules may be written such that after, say 18 months of playing time, all games are going to be adjudicated by a jury of experienced masters. If it is not so important when exactly the next round starts, or if for example there is not easily a jury available to adjudicate all those games, then the solution is to  just happily wait until the round is finished and the next round can start.

In the meantime, you may enjoy playing other chess games, or you may enjoy playing less games for a change until the next round begins and you will be playing more games again. And if you are waiting in eager anticipation for the next round to begin, you may be very happy about the fact that nowadays, the pace of correspondence games is much faster than it used to be in postal chess times, so your waiting time is going to be much shorter that it used to be

Of course, anyone who feels he is too impatient to wait for the entire round to finish before the next one starts, or who wishes to have maximum control over the number of games he will be playing, can be advised to simply take to playing single-round tournaments.

Chess.com offers a version of correspondence chess without engines that is commonly called Online Chess or echess here.

We both know that, and we both know that it does not change the content of what has been written above. So your full quote and your comment look a bit pointless here, unless this may be your way of expressing that you agreed with all the rest of the explanation.

My "best win" came on time against an 2139-rated opponent who has timed out on all his games since, including tournaments in which he had previously qualified for the next round.

http://www.chess.com/echess/profile/NSM2009

I hope this guy is OK.

I see you have run out of arguments and start repeating yourself. GOTO loop, see #46 and #47.

The key thing is to try to be consistent. I lost a lot of games by rushing moves so my oponent would reply quickly. If you are not patientent don't play correspondence, especially because of cheating. I play mostly blitz.

I remember playing a game with much better player, losing a pawn and in meantime improving so much i was able to compete with him (but too late), he was taking at least 5 days inbetween moves while i did 1-2, lol.

The test is obvious, he/she is wining - taking few days to move, they are losing - a month inbetween moves.