Should Chess.com Change How Vacation Works?

The idea of making a drastic change to the way vacation time is accrued, such as using ICCF rules (30 days for 10 moves, +vacation time) or Go rules, as has been suggested, is appealing, but it would involve changing how the time on the games are shown for all players. It would also entail educating all these players on how to use the system.

While the benefits of using postal time controls for postal chess are real, the costs and the complaints that will ensue as a result of such a drastic change make these unappealing for a large site that already has a cc system in place.

I still think the best practical option for the site is to reduce the maximum amount of vacation time to 30 days per year (rolling), and make the vacation time the same for all players regardless of premium status. 

I also agree with @MGleason's point that new players (less than 3-6 months on the site) should have less vacation time because there are so many accounts that start a game, then abandon it right from the beginning. If a player is allotted one week's vacation time until they've been on the site for 3 months, then 2 weeks until they've been on the site 6 months, then the full 30 days, it would resolve most of the issues. 

The vast majority of members here are amateurs (which means they play for the love of the game). Most players have no experience of serious chess, either over the board or in correspondence. Many players don't seem to understand that cc chess is meant to last for several months or even years! They want their games to be over quickly, and accept the site's time controls as they are. They just want their opponents to play quickly too, especially when they are losing. It would be a mistake to make fundamental changes to the site's cc (online) time controls. 

But, all players should have the same amount of time to make their moves, regardless of how much they pay to play here. 

I totally disagree, paying Members do so for additional features/perks and this includes vacation time.

In particular, the Premium membership benefit of having Time-out Protection for Daily Games is the main reason I subscribe to this Site.

A commercial website needs to be run as a business, not on the basis of some lofty ideal of "fairness".

I think time out protection is what most paying members want, rather than more vacation time. I would be happy to have the same total vacation time, but keep the time out protection. It is one of the main reasons I am a paying member also

It would be nice to know how vacation time actually works!

Not that I need or want to take any, but it seems like the vacation kicks in automatically if a player hasn't visited the site for a wile, and then they have some games start which they would time out in but for time out protection... but if you want to actually CHOOSE to go on vacation... how do you do it?

YES! They should do that.

What is vacation? Is that like where someone goes a way and never ever comes back again?

Yes, for premium members like you vacation does indeed kick in automatically to prevent you losing on time (provided that you have vacation left). Non-premium members don't have that feature and lose on time if they run out without putting themselves on vacation.

To put yourself on vacation, go to your daily games and then to your settings. One of the options is to pauze your games. Choose that and save the settings. You are then on vacation until either (1) you change your settings back, (2) you make any move in a daily game, or (3) your vacation time runs out.

If similar features occurred in timed games, it wouldn’t be tolerated. Imagine only premium members being allowed to auto flag their opponents, or to play on increment while non premium members weren’t allowed that luxury.

There are far fewer people who play cc here than play live chess. But the time controls and having vacation automatically kick in should be available to all.

I agree with @SmyslovFan to the extent that it's not a good idea to grant players any artificial advantage which helps in their games and can influence the result on the basis of whether they pay for membership or not. The automatic-vacation facility, putting you on vacation to stop you losing on time, is definitely a result-influencing advantage, and I admit to profiting from it myself a few years ago when I accidently let my time run out in a few daily games. Whether the amount of vacation you receive is a serious result-influencer in Daily is something I'm not sure about. Vacation time is, of course, not intended to be extra thinking time but rather to cater for our busy lives outside chess, but I can see how it might also be used as extra thinking time by some players.

OTB everyone is a premium member, they have membership fees and entry fees and such. In addition there isnt vacation otb. In your examples online both premium and non premium auto flag and get increment. 

It seems to me there are two ways of thinking about this. 

One group of people thinks no one should ever time out on a daily game, and they are coming at the idea from this angle, thinking 'how do we make sure I never have to time out no matter what happens'

The other group is thinking: people who don't play a move should time out, and are thinking from this angle: 'how do we make sure that someone who is not playing will actually time out in a reasonable amount of time' 

So one group says 'lets limit it this way' and the other comes back with 'but what if I have knee surgery and also my internet goes out and I can't go to the library because my knee is injured and...'

There is always going to be a situation where you need more than X amount of time to play your move, no matter what value you set for X. Just like in a Live game where someone might knock on the door at a bad time, or your kid might start crying and cause you to lose: these things happen. 

In my opinion, we need to let more people time out in daily chess. The use of vacation is a spiral that causes more use of vacation in a never ending cycle. Consider this scenario: 

Every tournament I've ever been in eventually comes to a standstill because of vacation. I'll finish my games, a few weeks will pass, I forget about the tournament for a while, eventually I go back to look at it. I scroll through the groups and find that 90% of the games are finished except for a few people, maybe 1 person in every couple groups, who still have all their games to play. More weeks pass. I forget about the tournament. I start more games, maybe join another tournament. In the mean time some of the new games I've started are also taking very long because my opponent isn't moving. I don't have any moves to play so I start a new game or two, because I want to play some chess. The games stack up. Then, weeks later the next round of that tournament I forgot about finally starts, and I have 10 new games to deal with. "Sheesh, I can't keep up with this," I think, "I better use some vacation..."-- and now I'm part of the problem. People waiting on MY games are going to get bored and start new games... until they have too many to deal with, and THEY need to use vacation, and on and on. 

I don't know what the exact fix should be to the vacation issue, but I am of the opinion that if we try to prevent everyone from timing out in every scenario, we're not going to fix anything. 

But isnt the simple solution to your problem just not to play 3 days per move? If you dont want people taking their time for moves there is the option of playing 1 day per move games, or joining tournaments where the average move time has to be 12 hrs or less to join. When I play 3 days per move I very much like having several days per move, When I want more moves I pick a faster time. 

Much of what you are saying is true, but I do not think it has much to do with vacation time. (Although perhaps I am misreading your suggestion)

In reference to playing at two different speeds, I do that often because if I am winning I can usually find a move to play confidently in just a few minutes, but in a tough or losing position where I am trying to find tricks I may have to check the game several times before deciding on what move to play. But I could see how some people are simply stalling.

I guess my finl point would be that I do not think there is much chance at all for a complete overhaul of the timing system which is why the topic is specific to vacation time. Do you think there is a change within the current system that would address the issues you bring up?

I think there are three kinds of people playing daily chess:

1. Those playing casual games at a slowish (i.e. non-blitz) pace in a format that fits their schedule and doesn't require them to sit down for an hour to play a long game.

2. Serious correspondence players who want to dig deeply into every position, make full use of books and databases, and play at as high a level as humanly possible (i.e. without engine assistance).

3. People who play a large number of simultaneous games, putting relatively minimal effort into any one move.  Many of these people are playing lots of tournament and/or team match games, and are thus hunting trophies for themselves or supporting their team.

I believe these three groups will have somewhat difference views of what the time control and vacation time should be trying to achieve.

1. The first group will be somewhat tolerant of people who need to be away for a few days, but will generally want to keep the game moving along.  These people might be disappointed by a cheap timeout win in an interesting position, but also might be annoyed by someone moving very slowly, especially in a lost position.

2. The second group will be quite patient with people taking their time, as they often take quite a bit of time too, and so long as someone doesn't abandon a game or try to let it sit indefinitely in a lost position, they're expecting daily games to often run for multiple months.  These people will often be disappointed by a cheap timeout win in an interesting position.

3. The third group usually want to keep their games moving along quickly, and, since they're not as invested in any one game, they won't usually care about a cheap timeout win in an interesting position; they also don't greatly care about a cheap timeout loss except in how it affects tournaments, team matches, and rating points.

3.a. There are a small subset of the third group that play a huge number of simultaneous games (in a few cases, over a thousand).  These people are overwhelmed with their many games and tend to only move in the games that are closest to timing out.  This results in moving slowly and often in occasional random timeout losses.  Keeping the game moving is not a high priority - in fact, if the opponents move slowly, it gives them more time for their other games.

Of course, not everyone fits precisely into exactly one of those categories, but my impression is that those are the basic categories, and that that's where much of the difference in opinions comes from.

Basically, we have differences on the following:

1. How disappointing is it if an interesting game is cut short by a timeout (win or lose)?

2. How important is it to keep games moving along as quickly as possible, or do you expect your opponent to take their time for deep analysis?

The way you answer those questions affects your view of how vacation time should work.

I think @MGleason is close to the truth. The vast majority here play cc (Daily chess) as if it were just a slow version of a timed game. Few do any real research into positions and just play the best move they can find in a few minutes. My guess is those are the people who complain the most about vacation abuse.

Originally, correspondence chess was a way to play without having to worry about time controls. Of course competitive cc requires time controls, but they should be designed so that the fewest games possible end in time forfeit.

That attitude towards cc is historically the closest to the original spirit of the genre. It is my own attitude, but this site isn’t necessarily beholden to tradition and the spirit of a style of play that predates the internet.

I personally do not see vacation “abuse” as a major problem. But I know the squeaky wheel gets the oil. 

I hope the site remembers the original point of cc, and doesn’t try to speed it up in a misguided “need to let more people time out in daily chess”.

The plea by a lot of people here, @NelsonMoore most recently, to make vacation time a setting per game instead of for all a player's games, is incomprehensible to me. That would have been necessary before the days of internet chess servers, but it isn't now, and I cannot see how it helps. It makes the personal administration of your vacation a lot more complicated (far more to check to make sure all your games can survive it when you have to leave the site for a while), it doesn't fit with the reality of what vacation means (we go away from all our games, not individual ones), and I don't see how it speeds anything up either. Being able to take blanket vacation for all ongoing cc games is one of the big advantages of playing on a chess server. There's no need or point in removing that.

Some players do require a period away from chess, Nelson. You made the point earlier (#325) that your own religious requirements put you in an unusual position sometimes when you cannot log into the site for a period. It's a good idea to remember that in fact lots of players have special requirements, and a site like this one needs to cater for players with many different circumstances. (In my own case, I will share that my elderly mother lives in an area with no internet access. When I visit her I must put my games on vacation. Some of my holidays are on cruise ships where internet access is extremely expensive. And often I genuinely want a couple of weeks away from normal life, and that includes my chess games.)

You mention the need for tournament organisers to create tournaments which allow vacation but aren't held up too much. I don't really see that making vacation a setting per game will help very much there if at all. Reducing the amount of vacation players get in general would help, of course, which is another matter.

I think vacation time should only be granted with consent of both players.

 not bad. 

People would abuse that by refusing vacation time to get a cheap win from an opponent who has a genuine need to go offline for a few days.

And some people do genuinely go offline, away from internet, from time to time.  Sometimes people want to go to a remote area and completely unplug from internet, everything, for a few days.  Sometimes work, family, or religious requirements force people offline for a few days.

I rarely use vacation time, but one time I did was after I got married - I didn't want to have to keep up with my chess games on our honeymoon.  After we got back, I came off vacation time and resumed my games, and my opponents did not suffer greatly from having the games last a few days longer than might otherwise have been the case.

Matt?