Should Chess.com Change How Vacation Works?

For me, the single biggest problem with vacation time is the inequality in time between premium and non-premium accounts.

If it were suggested that premium acct were to be allowed an increment but non premium accounts weren’t in live games, there would be an uproar. It’s not right to give some players more vacation time than others just because they pay more, have a higher rating, or work here.

chess.com needs to make the playing field equal for all. It should do so in a way that is not onerous to premium accounts, which means increasing vacation time for many non-premium players, but it doesn’t need to be 2 months per year.

To me the problem is that there are no middle ground between allowing maximum vacation time and not allowing any vacation time. That is why I think it should be integrated into the time control. Give those that needs a lot of vacation time the option to do so, while also giving those that needs less the option for that too.

Trying to find a middle ground by changing the cap will not solve the problem. A 30 day break is more substantial in 1 day/move games than in 14 days/move games.

Even legitimate vacations can slow down tournaments a lot.

It will be harder to track vacation for each game, but I think it is worth it. The UI mainly needs to tell the player the vacation time they have available which are the lowest.

The problem is not the amount of vacation.  The problem is those that abuse it when losing.  If you have a history of vacation abuse when losing, implement something that prevents people from going on vacation after blundering, etc.

It won't be quite fair assuming that every player is abusing vacation who is losing.

I mean; the automated detector can analyze that a player is behind by points or losing badly, but that cannot be interpreted that the player is abusing vacation. Some genuine players can be punished unnecessarily if following the automated detector.

Also, the opponent is free to report their doubts; even then how the site be sure to punish them manually?

I think; reducing the maximum limit would decrease incidents.

I use close to the maximum time on every move. Using all the allotted time isn’t abuse. It would be abusive if I only played that way when my position was dead lost. As soon as I realize I have no chance, I resign. 

I don’t expect my opponent to be the same as I am. If I’m playing cc, I expect the games to last months, or even years.

My humble opinion: it should all remain so as it is today, but less vacation days in a year: not more than 10 days for free members, not more than 20 days for gold premium members, not more than 30 days for platinum and diamonds members.

I have a couple of daily games and my opponents are on vacation.  I've seen one online a couple of times - so they're only on vacation for certain games/types of games.  They're not losing.  It doesn't really matter.  I can wait them out.  But the games are cluttering up my list and going nowhere.  I don't know why they would bother to do this.  Perhaps if you are on vacation - you can't play anything?  

Well I'm playing someone who is on vacation but appears to be online a lot of the time.  So, is what you are saying, he is on vacation for all his games - but maybe doing something else eg lessons whatever?

Two interesting options ... I like them.

There are some areas I travel through a few times a year where I have no access to internet. Vacation helps in this situations. I've basically used all my vacation, so it's nip and tuck for me lately.

I forgot to mention, there are many times when I trip my vacation on due to the busy schedule I have with the big engineering project I'm working on. However, I always try to move as soon as I can because I know people don't like waiting around.

To many people are complaining for vacations just because they are too anxious to wait the opponent's response, o for playing a game during more than a few days. I even read somebody saying vacations mustn't exist. I'm sorry, but I think these people aren't really understanding what Daily Chess is.

The only reasonably complaining, IMO, is against people abusing of vacation, but we understand abuse in differents ways. The real abuse is when somebody in a complete lose position unnecessary (and intentionally) prolong the game using vacations.

Even long periods of vacations or a high frecuence of these breaks are not neccessary an abuse (nor and advantage as somebody was saying).
Honest people, with stressfull works, family or economic or health problems (i.e. the live), or traveling frecuently or with bad connection (yes, there are lot of places around the world with no internet, believe me!) need a reasonable period of vacations. 

And it doesn't mean they don't be connected to do something else, as play live, read an article, do some tactics, manage a club, etc. They (we) want to enjoy chess and Daily is probably the best modality for do it.

The bad use of vacations must be less than, 1 each 10 users? (just for saying a number, this should be measure in some way); in fact I don't remember any case in all my games, but perhaps it's because I didn't feel the simply use of long or frecuent vacations is an abuse.

At this point I would like to hear the opinion of @JDcannon. He asked the community for contributions; is he doing something with this or we are just talking for nothing?

1) Please, show me how often this hypothetical situations happens (have you measured?)
2) Report that guy!

Such a strategy works in chess960 or possibly a thematic tournament. In the case of thematic tournaments, usually good research skills are enough to offset such a strategy.

That is in interesting idea, vacation being allowed after move 10 and before move 50. Preventing stalling in the opening and limiting games where people stall in lost endgames 

It would be nice to at least be able to see how much vacation time a player has left... that way at least you would know when they are going to time out!

You have to be impressed with how someone joined an hour ago, and already has trouble with people going on vacation to stall, and someone can be a member for 7 years and doesn't know how to figure out how much vacation someone has.

For those asking, just press the "info" tab in your game and if they are on vacation it will show you how much they have left.

You also see their vacation time before you accept a game. 

What would be the purpose of seeing how much vacation time each person on the site used on each of their games on the site? 

I have wondered if that is true as well

You can see that if they are currently on vacation and you are playing them. Under those circumstances clicking on the info button on the game will show how much vacation your opponent has left.