A few questions from a newcomer pt. 2

Hello,

I am slowly getting used to this site, but I still have a few more questions!

1.) The first one is in regards to history of private messages. I must have wrote private messages back when I was using this site, but the first message I see is from 22 days ago (when I started to use the site again), so apparently, they expire after some time?

I've sent quite a few messages since then, and I'd like to keep the ones where I was interacting with people, in order to perhaps later contact them and invite them for a game again. Is it enough to add those messages to archive (and are they stored there forever?) and how many messages can the archive store?

2.) My second question is in regards to tournaments - is anyone familiar with them? A few days ago, I joined a Correspondence Chess tournament, which had no starting date visible (so I was expecting for it to take a while to begin), but it started one day later, which once again resulted in myself having too many ongoing games. Do the tournaments start automatically when all their player spots are filled, or can their admins launch them anytime? I am really confused in regards to this!  

3.) And lastly, how does 'vacation' work? At the end of this month, I will be switching places, and so I'll need a few days off, so that I'd not lose on time in the games with short(er) time controls. Would it work to put myself on vacation completely, or would my vacation days cumulate and I'd need to put myself on vacation in just a few games (and would that even work?)?

Thanks a lot once again for reading, and apologies for posting another one of these threads. Every help is very much appreciated!

I wish everyone a wonderful day.

Yeah, that's pretty much me!

Instead of asking a few simple questions, it ends up like this.

Thanks for your message!

1. Messages don't expire

2. It depends on how it's set up. The TD can configured them to start when full

3. https://support.chess.com/article/624-how-does-vacation-work-how-much-time-do-i-get

Thank you very much for answering my questions. I studied the third link in regards to vacation, and everything is clear to me now!

I only have one more additional question in regards to point #2. How do I know how exactly is each tournament configured? Apparently, some tournaments have a strict date for their start (and they start even if all their player slots are not filled), some others do not start until all the slots are filled, and then there are the tournaments that start randomly/manually by their creator(s) no matter whether the slots are filled or not. So, how do I distinguish between these scenarios? I am still quite confused.

Thanks in advance once more!

I took a look at some daily events and I don't think that data is being shown. I didn't exhaustively look and don't play daily anymore, for the most part, so haven't looked to much for a long time to recall if it used to or not.

Thanks again, so joining a Daily Chess tournament seems like a little bit of a lottery, then!

I've just thought of one more question, 4.):

Which is in regards to claiming a win when my opponent runs out of time, as I kinda struggle understanding how it actually works.

In my Daily Chess settings, I ticked the 'claim automatically' option, but when one of my opponents ran out of time today, I was still asked to claim the win manually. I have not done so, and the game disappeared in a few minutes, and I was not issued a win despite of these settings.

I have not found much info about this, and I only read somewhere that wins are claimed automatically after like 60 days, but it has already happened to me that in quite a few games, they were either aborted by my opponent early on, or my opponent ran out of time without making (m)any moves, and I have not got any of these wins.

So if my assumption is correct, the setting only works in longer games, and/or in tournament games (as their stats need to be stored) and not in games that get aborted early on, or last fewer than 2 moves?

If that's the case, it's really weird that I was asked to claim the win in a <2 moves game - it kinda confused me.

Thanks a lot again in advance!

Your most recent win, from yesterday is listed a win by resignation. The setting should work on any non-tournament games.

I don't know exactly what happens for very short non-tournament games that that end on time anymore. I thought they would still show in the archive and just not give any rating, being under 4 moves but don't know for sure that is the case.

Sorry....fell asleep

Sorry @Lagomorph, this one is going to be even longer!

Thanks a lot @Martin_Stahl, I'll just assume that games with not so many moves are not stored, as I had 79 ongoing games yesterday (two less when counting the one I was asking about yesterday, and my recent win that you mentioned which was indeed due to my opponent resigning), and today I am at 70, so 7 more (<4 moves) games seemingly got cancelled when my opponents ran out of time in them, instead of granting me a win.

So, I guess that I'll likely try to join tournaments instead of searching for non-tournament games or accepting Daily open challenges directly, in order to prevent this from happening? Alternatively, I can only accept open challenges from players with a low timeout percentage.

I get that aborting games before they actually start in Live games is accepted (even though your 'trust score' or something lowers if you do that frequently?), but in these Daily games, I am kinda sad that it works the same way because when someone opens a long-lasting challenge and decides not to commit to it, it should be punished by a loss because such game remains opened for a long time and the player who actually wants to commit (and keeps checking for the opponent to move) gets nothing in return for such a long waiting and then the game is just gone for good.

In my case, I could have 'replaced' such games with more (active) games, but you never know if the opponent decides to move after all, and I am too scared of having way too many active games opened, as it would get out of hand if (all) my opponents in the 'inactive' games actually returned.

But yeah, that is just my own opinion and nothing that I could do about it, so apologies for the rant!

Apparently, it really works this way, because yesterday I bookmarked another game that was about to end soon (and about which I was sure that my opponent would not move in it), and when clicking the link today, it no longer works, so it was most likely really cancelled completely and so I doubt I would get the win (in 60 days)...

If such game happens again, I could try to claim the win as I was asked, but I really think that this was a bug (unless this settings only works for Premium members?), otherwise all these wins would have been claimed already (and automatically) due to my settings.