Vacation Errors

I have been put on automatic, involuntary vacation twice (at least) because (supposedly) I had only 30 minutes left to move. In all cases, I did not have so little time. Once I had 20 hours. Most recently I had moved and my opponent put himself on vacation apparently when he had 32 minutes to play. In addition, I no longer use up vacation time in minutes, but only in days. This is a very big problem for me. What can I do to have my account's proper amount of vacation restored and also return to minute increments?

Hi!  Whenever you go into vacation it'll remove a minimum of 24 hours from your time bank and add it back onto the game that triggered vacation.  So you'll see the game after this has happened- the 20 hours- even though it was at ~90 minutes when auto-vacation triggered.

So you can't use minute increments- to avoid using vacation to manage game load, you may want to work to reduce your number of games or play at higher time per move, if simply being cognizant of the rule is not enough to help you manage the games from here onward.

I still can't understand what the rationale behind this is.  Vacatation time and time per move are two completely different types of time -- why would they be exchanged in this manner?

Because it is a "fun" site and so Chess.com is putting the fun back in fungible.

Oh, I thought this was a case of putting the "Um...." back into clumsy.

That seems a reasonable explanation -- if so it would seem it's an unintended consequence of the way vacation is implemented.

Presumably, then, we should expect to see the difference between 24 hours and your actual time spent on vacation added, not strictly 24 hours every time, and even then, only for cases where less than 24 hours was spent on vacation.

The main problem seems to be the vacation kicking in too long before actual time runs out.

It would be a huge problem for somebody playing only 1 day games, and only logging in for maybe an hour per day at the same time.

90 minutes or 2 hours is just too much, there's still plenty of time to make a move.

I was (am?) a big fan of this system, but it has to work properly.

It should be consistent with the way they handle partials of regular, self-clicked vacation time, right? I would hope. I never checked on my own allotment after I returned from legitimate vacation (i.e. non-autoset) so I do not know whether rounding is figured in.

For example, if I clicked it ON and happened to come back 36.5 hours later and click OFF, is 36.5 hours deducted? Or is it 35 or 37... or worse 48 (since more than half-way through a 24-hour day)?

I would think that 1-day games should be considered/tagged as No-Vacation games. If not by definition, certainly that is the intention more than 99.9% of the time. Thoughts?

It will deduct 36.5 hours in this case.

But if you come back after say 18.5 hours, it will deduct 24 hours.

@rooperi - yeah, I finally stopped being lazy and saw the official example provided:

 
When turning on vacation time, 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

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

It's already granted as such: to be able to make any type of game No-Vacation.

But what was proposing was that 1-day games can only be No-Vacation.

What's the point in creating or accepting a game you intend to finish in a game if you plan to go on "vacation"? A lunch or dinner break? A nap?

I'm not being snarky, just wondering if I'm missing a scenario where vacation should be "allowed" for a 1-day game.

And puh-lease don't give me "what about a family emergency or crisis?" If it truly was an emergency, the last thing on your mind is if you'd lose rating points on an online chess site. If you do worry in that case, you seriously have your priorities messesd up and are in a very small minority (oft labeled Lunatic Fringe) and should not be factored in when implementing GUI options.

I have to start working on my priorities asap

I apologize. I take back much of what I said there. I was in a wrong mindset.

I was thinking that for 1-day games, the intention was to have a game in less than a 1 day time frame, but that is NOT what a 1-day game is - it means 1 move per day.

Let me beat you all to the punch if you've been holding back:

I, Sir, am an idiot.

I know, huh? Wished I had earlier.

I think they do have a one-day per game option... it's called "Live Chess" but they won't let you create one for 1440-minutes; you max-out at 120.

I'm not using vacation to manage game load. I have only used vacation time when I was traveling overseas to different time zones, like 14 hours difference, 20 hours in an airplane, etc. However, once I was at my destination, I had to fit game play in around other activities, which are not part of my usual, non-vacation schedule. I repeat, last June in Korea I was able to turn vacation time on and off during a 24 hour period in order to move in one or two games. Furthermore, if you look at my games list, I have games staggered: a 13 day game, a 6 day game, a 5 day game, four or five 4 day games, four or five 2 day games. I am quite capable of managing such a game load, and I'm getting a bit tired of the paternalistic attitude of this website. I am a paying member, after all. 

This is maddening. I'm trying to say that vacation time worked one way when I was a "star" level member and now that I'm a "diamond level" member it looks to me as if Chess.com has reduced the flexibility of my vacation time. First, the idea of vacation time is ludicrous when you're dealing with a game--a game, folks, not business for most of us. When I actually go on a real vacation, I want to play chess. However, when I travel on business I often am in an airplane for more than 12 hours at a time. Try flying from Chicago to Singapore sometime. If I'm playing a one day game which started six weeks earlier, what am I supposed to do? Time out? Resign? Even when we're on the 68th move or something? 

The rule is the same for both gold members and diamond members- the reason you could turn vacation on/off back then without losing 24 hours and can't now is because the rules have been changed on a site-wide level since then.

So it just depends what you think is the best option: keep vacation on for the whole duration while you're travelling, keep it off if you think you can manage the games, or you can use vacation time here and there, but it'll always remove a minimum of 24 hrs. 

edit: here's the other thread about it if you haven't come across it: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/important-change-coming-to-vacation-use

pla

Exactly. Why not let us play a 24 hour per move game and then make a move, pause the game for travel or other obligations, then sign on again, and resume the game with the existing minutes?

Exactly. Wind down