Change to Vacation Rules?

I’ve had this happen a couple of times. I start a new game and the opponent accepts it. But then then either don’t move (when they are white) of they don’t respond after I make my first move as white. I have sitting in my queue now that has been there for about a month because the player went on vacation and had 3 months of vacation pending.

Seems that if you were planning to go on vacation you wouldn’t “start” a game.

I’m suggesting a rule that if someone goes on vacation and does not play a single move for more than weeks, then the game is forfeited.

Make sense?

I value my vacation time, but I do try to avoid starting a match just as a vacation begins.

Premium members get automatically placed on vacation when low one or more games. It's a feature that can't be disabled.

Looking at your opponent, they only have two games and no previous daily games. It's very possible they didn't understand what they were getting into and never will make a move.

You can abort the game without penalty.

I hate vacation mode! I think the opponent should have to agree to the vacation. When the game was initiated both player agreed to the terms. One player shouldn't be able to unilaterally override those terms.

Currently the implementation is that all random seeks have vacation available. Tournaments can be set up to not allow it

Random seeks should have the same "no vacation" option as tournaments do. Why not Martin?

It's been requested a lot through the years and I believe it's on the roadmap but I think it must be a very low priority.

It's also possible vacation mode is activated by an emergency or other disruption (hospital, bereavement etc) so doesn't necessarily mean they started games knowing they would be jetting off and pausing them.

Anythings possible. But in my recent experience a player went on "vacation" 1 move into a 24hr game. Its now been weeks and were on move 6. (for context he's a new player, never completed a 24hr game, actively playing shorter formats, 800ELO) Vacation is taken at irregular intervals for irregular durations. The last few were within minutes of the clock expiring. It not chess. I really see no reason for vacation at all. But if it must be, like for unavoidable circumstances, why can't the opponent have a say (like accept a draw or to cease the game without consequence). I can think of no other sport (or game) or any area of life where this would be allowed.

Premium members are automatically placed on vacation when low on time in one or more games. It's not something that can be turned off. So if a member just gets busy or forgot about the daily game, they're going to get placed on vacation.

Also, newer members often don't really understand Daily Chess and eventually just stop playing the games, mostly timing out. If they're premium, that might only happen one their vacation bank is exhausted.

This explains the behavior of my opponent. He's new and probably on "vacation" unintentionally - That makes me feel better. I thought he might be slow playing to get me resign. However, it makes the "feature" by chess.com more ridiculous. Isn't timing out part of the game? Doesn't this feature skew the outcome to those who pay more? I am still scratching my head….

my opponent was abusing "vacation mode" too he keeps activating it after he makes a move. the tournament started November and we're still on move 20 in 4 months!! smh, and even frustrating is that I have to play another game against him and will probably take a whole freaking year to finish.

20 moves in four months is a reasonable pace for correspondence chess.

Yeah, if you're using snail mail service. This is electronic on-line, no excuse.

What do you mean? Vacation turns on automatically for premium members when low on time in one or more games. Vacation can also be manually triggered. Only the games where the player is on the move have vacation status and games where the opponent moves will also be placed on vacation at that time (excluding games in no vacation tournaments of course)

You cannot abort a game if you have made your first move, and then discover that the other person is suddenly on vacation. In these cases the game should be immediately aborted by chess.com and neither party's ratings or scores affected.

With the exception of tournament games, daily games can be aborted up.until 4 moves have been played

Actually, I haven't played Daily in a while so it's possible that the abort option goes away now but games have to be at least 4 moves by both players to be rated (excluding tournament games).

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8614310-the-game-ended-and-my-rating-didn-t-change-at-all-why

• Daily Games

In Daily chess, the game is not considered to have 'started' until 4 moves, so if a game ends before the 4th move either by timeout or resignation, there will be no rating change. Checkmates in less than 4 moves will cause rating change!

This is not true if you are playing the mobile version of chess.com. In that case the abort selection goes away as soon as you make a single move. Maybe that needs to be fixed? I did find that on the PC version you can abort the game as you said. Thanks for pointing out that possible way to get rid of those pesky games.