Proposed measures against abusive vacation

One of my opponents has put himself in vacation for more than a month on this position (I am Black):

This clearly is not a genuine vacation because:

1) he connected regularly since he set the vacation (I checked it),

2) he could have resigned before setting the vacation, showing respect for his opponent.

This is totally unacceptable because it abuses of a nice facility such as the vacation for an ill-purpose. If this is left unresolved, it will only encourage more "bad players" to do it, impact on the quality of the site (therefore discouraging normal players) and can even pose problems by delaying some league competitions.

Would it be possible to set-up a system to review the vacations, in particular looking at :

(i) the position on the chess board (any chess software can give an evaluation of the position)

(ii) the time the vacation has been first set-up

(iii) the number of times the "player in vacation" connected since he first set his vacation.

Depending on a given limit criteria, the player that abuse of a vacation should be penalised, either by

- being prevented to use the vacation facility for a prolonged period (e.g. 6 months or 1 year)

- banning him from the site in case of recurence.

I would appreciate if an admin could reply to this message, and if chess.com could take appropriate action to prevent this sort of abuse in the future.

Many thanks.

There is no rule that states you can't be an a-hole

Also, as a standard, the computer should check past games of you and see if in this position you have consistently won against a person or if you blundered constantly.

Your comments are totally irrelevant.

Stick the game in the fridge and forget about it. Eventually they will run out of vacation. Keep enough other games going to keep yourself occupied. You will encounter a fair number of vacation abusers. Don't let it faze you. Nothing can be done about it. It is within the rules to use vacation as one pleases.

This is what I do, britesorb. But as I mentionned in my message, if I opened this post, this is not for the game itself nor my grading, I don't really care about it. It is more for the principle, the fact that more and more sore players may feel encouraged to act like that with a feeling that they can get away with it.

Up to a certain level, it can easily spoil the site, and even in some cases pose problems, for instance in annual league matches with tied results.

So are yours, buddy.  Maybe you need to realize that your "principle" is flawed because no matter what, you will never truly know your opponent's motivation for their vacation.  Lets be practical, who is going to spend their free time calculating the various statistics of a player's vacation use?  Because your feelings got hurt?  No, you started this whole forum because you want to revolutionize vacation, a solid system. You should know that your opponent's vacation will inevitably end, and you'll get your desired rating points.  And that chess.com can't take away a person's right to vacation or an account because of a statistic, generated by assumptions.

Rookover, since this is a clear case of vacation abuse, it should be sufficient to open a support ticket and chess.com will just declare it a win for you.

Thank you, Sred. I'll keep it in mind if it happens again.

Joe,

I understand your point of view, but you make several mistakes of judgement:

1) It didn't hurt my feelings at all; I even found that laughable.

2) I also don't care at all about my rating points, even less considering our difference of rating (it would have been really mean to care about the gain of one point! )

2) These were no assumptions. In this case, everything proved that he made it on purpose. It is you that are naive not to see it. For instance do you think his vacation was genuine when he was connecting every day for short periods during that time? Why would he do that in your opinion?

3) My propositions didn't reduce the right of genuine vacations. Read again what I proposed at the start, you will see that it involve a careful analysis of the situation, and has sufficient safeguard to prevent a wrong decision to be made.

The only point where I agree with you is the amount of work/effort it would have generated for a somewhat small impact.

My opponent eventually lost in time anyway, probably because every time he connected the clock was ticking a little bit more (he had only 53 minutes left at the beginning of the process). And by the way, now that he has lost his game on time, he is no longer on vacation... 

Next episode: we have the return match to play! 

Rookover, 

I apologize for not being clear. Refer my numeric responses to your numeric points above (I assume your first #2 is meant to be a continuation of #1)

1) I know this, hence the sentence after my antagonistic question.  It was a joke.

1) I was speaking most generally.  Friend, you made it clear from the first post that you were not concerned so much with this specific example, but the principle.  In the same way, my reference to rating points is not meant to be correlated to your example, but the principle.

2) There were assumptions in this case, though they were most likely accurate.  No matter how likely, you cannot call your claim fact, because you will never know your opponents motivations.  Now in this specific case, you are most likely correct.  So report it!  Again though, I am not speaking specifically, but generally, as your first post suggested you wished to speak.  I am starting to feel you are contradicting yourself, are you speaking of this case specifically or in general?  Don't call me naive, I'm not.  I was just speaking generally, like you asked.

3. Yes they do

Yours truly,

JoeTeix

I am glad you recognise your own errors of judgement, Joe.

Be careful when you use jokes, irony or cynism in an otherwise serious  discussion. They can easily introduce confusion, which does not help a good debate, and raise temperature and antagonism when perceived as a mockery or lack of respect. As an exemple, I personally perceived most of your posts as agressive, hence my reaction.

Now, this debate is closed. End of story.

I have had opponents like this. Is quite common.

Ideas to fix it would be

1. No auto-vacation  (I know, I'm not super happy with that one either)

or 2.Require that when a player comes off vacation, he or she must make at least one move in each of his ongiong games, to re-enable vacation. (Providing it was his/her turn at the time they returned.)  -- This ones not so bad.

I made no error of judgement, you made an error in perception.  Though I could have made things easier for you and spelled it out better.  And you are hypocritical; you commented "Your comments are totally irrelevant."  I took offense.  This was never a debate, as you apparently have paid no meaningful attention to a thing I have said.  Finally, you have no call over when the debate is over, because you never participated in it.  Don't let your emotions cloud your reason, for I believe this to be the case here.  Now, if you would like to truly learn how to debate, I can suggest various books on the subject, if not, just ignore this post as I'm sure your sensitivity will once again cloud judgement.  Good day to you sir.

I like #2 really well.

but wrote:

I have had opponents like this. Is quite common.

Ideas to fix it would be

1. No auto-vacation  (I know, I'm not super happy with that one either)

or 2.Require that when a player comes off vacation, he or she must make at least one move in each of his ongiong games, to re-enable vacation. (Providing it was his/her turn at the time they returned.)  -- This ones not so bad.

I like #2 really well.

varelse1 wrote

I think 2 is a very good idea

Annoying iPads, I was trying to repeat your quote and point out your second idea is very good, but the iPad mixed it all up.

I often have long vacations holds that are legitimate: recently for illness and also often for foreign travel where I may not have wifi access. I think we need to leave the policy as is. Eventually a player's vacation will run out. Only those players who aren't paid Chess.com members have small numbers of days. I think a more serious problem is in 1200-1400 tournaments, where "new" members can joint a tournament at 1200. The range should be 1201 - 1401 or 1201 to 1400.

I am a diamond member, and occasionally, I will forget to log on, so my games will be put on vacation for no apparent reason.  However, after these incidents, I have tried to regularily log on, and if I am online, I try to get my games off vacation and continue the game.

I do get irritated when a person does not time out (I'll admit it, sometimes I'm desperate for a win) due to the fact that they are a premium member.  However, this is one of the perks of premium membership (automatic vacation time), and there isn't really much we can do about it.

As for the game in question, the person could easily be on a true vacation in a place where there is spotty wi-fi, and when they try to connect and get off of vacation, either (1) they are afraid they will later time out and log off or (2) they are unable to get enough reception to turn off vacation.  I do think, though, that this is abuse of vacation time.