Worst Feature of Chess.com: Vacation!

I never und3rstand why there is a feature like Vacation setting here. I see a lot of people always online although their status seem to be Vacation ON. This is so annoying as I have to wait for my games to continue until these people's Vacation time finish. And this is more than 1 month for each player.

Vacation setting is one of the misappropriation here! I think it is the worst feature to be exist in a Chess site!

I hope it would be removed from Chess.com!

The short answer is that at least some of us have lives outside of chess.  So if I go take my wife and son on vacation for a week, I should loose all of my games?  Of course not.  Everyone needs a break from time to time.  And maybe I don't feel like moving on my break -- but I still want to chat with people or whatever.  Should I be banned from doing that because I'm taking a break?  I think not.

Now that doesn't mean there aren't people who abuse vacation time -- particularly folks who know they're going to abandon some or all of their games and just let them timeout after burning all their vacaton instead of resigning.  I've seen a lot of that and it's obnoxious.  But it isn't a long-term strategy if you're going to stay around because you don't accrue vacation time very fast.

Better might be having a setting where vacation time is limited or eliminated when the game or tournament is created.  That way people who don't want to play with vacation time for either side can play that way.  Might be an interesting feature.  Maybe even allow open seeks to be sorted by the vacation limitation as well as the other parameters.

I totally agree with the last option. We should check if Vacation usage is allowed or not before each game, tournament etc.

there should be an option when creating a tournament: A checkbox or something to allow/deny vacation time for that particular tournament.

I'm heading south for several weeks later this morning. In preparation I made sure that as many of my games as possible were completed in the past few weeks and I've declined several challenges. In addition I temporarily stopped being a greeter. But if there was no vacation I wouldn't be able to finish the two games that I still have going. So I think vacation is good so long as it's used the way it was intended. A bit of courtesy to our opponents is what's needed.

How will you guarantee that your opponent will not abuse vacation option ?

How do you guarantee anything in life?  You just take reasonable precautions and hope for the best.  If you want to play fast:

--> Only play games at the 1 or 3 days per move time control.

--> Only play against people with fast average times per move.

--> Only play against people with low timeout percentages. 

As for the inevitable game/tournament where someone abuses vacation, learn to have patience and remember that it's just a game and that waiting on a correspondence chess game isn't that big a deal in the overall scheme of things.

I just want to say one-thing which you dont want to understand!

There should be an option to set whether vacation is allowed or not before a game or tournament starts. It is that simple! In that way, you can guarantee that your opponent will not be able to use vacation option during the game and you dont need to think or search about all of the history of your opponent before beginning a match or a tournament where all opponents not fixed yet.

I hope Chess.com covers that need in the future!

OK, feature suggestion. Instead of vacation allowances being in days, they should be in gamedays.

So an allowance of 100 would let you stall 10 games for 10 days, or 5 games for 20 days or 20 games for 5 days.

Hmm, maybe an upper limit per game too. 

Worst feature of Chess.com: Other Members!

You will not be calling it the worst feature on chess.com when your family is taken hostage and you have to travel to a third world country without any internet.

Hi ExtraBold,

So someone playing 100 games can only take one day off per year?  Doesn't seem reasonable.

A better way to address this would be with a Time Bank like the sort they have on (dare I say it...?) Red Hot Pawn.  Each game there has an amount of time per move + the extra time in the Time Bank.  If you timeout, your time bank starts running.  If your time bank goes to zero, you lose.  It's like each game has its own mutually agreed upon amount of vacation built in.  Very flexible.  I think Davutuysal would be happy, since the time bank can be set to zero initially.

They have a vacation system there too, but it's only for premium customers (which I'm not) -- especially since they just raised it to $40 per year...  Overall, you get a lot more for your money here.

The short answer is that at least some of us have lives outside of chess.  So if I go take my wife and son on vacation for a week, I should loose all of my games?

A player should plan their life and responsibilities to account for such things.  It is abusive to start a game and then run off.

Another big YES vote for the option of not allowing vacation, especially in tournaments where its use is completely inexcusable and should not, IMO, be allowed in the first place.  Players that make commitments to tournaments and then go on vacation should be shot in the town square.

It's a necessary feature for many of us.  I would support turning off the automatic vacation abuse for premium members though.

I'm on vacation at the moment :).  Fact is... I'll be in a tournament for the next couple months that will take up a large portion of my time.  Focusing on rather casual correspondence games isn't really an option, so I only come off vacation for a day or two to make some moves and then back on it goes...

Am I abusing the system? ... Most people probably think so, but quite honestly, I paid for that vacation time and I'm free to use it as I need. Even if that means I'll be using it all :P.

Some people do have lives outside of chess.com they may be in college or traveling the world who knows. I've only had to use automatic vaction once since i became a premium member. Generally i find myself making moves right before i go to bed. So if i have a 1 day game i know that i have all day until that time to move again so that way if i get busy i give myself a chance to move.

Sometimes people need time off from chess... AND I feel that it is one of the best features because it allows me to do school work and play chess without worrying about timing-out my games!

ADK

There should be a limit on the amount of times a person can go on vacation in a game or tournament - everyone might need some vacation time, but to let nearly every move go onto auto-vacation is an abuse of the system. If there was a maximum amount of, say 3 vacations per tournament then it would still allow for reasonable real life commitments. There should also be a maximum of 30 days vacation in one stretch.

Actually, I plan my life and responsibilities such that chess is this recreational thing I do some here and some there that fits into the rest of it, thank you very much.  Chess is the tail, not the dog.  And while I wouldn't start a tournament with a long vacation looming the very next day, tournaments can take many months to complete.  Who cares if someone goes on vacation between moves 2 and 3 or between moves 22 and 23 or between moves 42 and 43?  It all comes out the same in the wash.  It hardly seems like a shooting offense.  It's just a game, not life or death.  Relax and enjoy it.

I so agree that there should be an option to use it in a tourney you create. Sounds fair. You imagine this feature in over the board chess..I need to go take a s$#%, please stop the clock.