Should Chess.com Change How Vacation Works?

I agree with Smyslov's post #80 ...when you says auto-vacation is an understandable feature, but that it does set a form of erm... inequality in a chess game, given that one of the fundamental concepts of chess is that players are allotted (as far as possible) equal conditions and opportunities.

In my case, I have started managing my time online very badly only since I have been premium.

When I had a basic membership I never used my vacation time and also, quite incredibly, hardly ever lost games on time. Since I have auto-vacation, this has put so to say bad habits in my head.

I love my premium features very much. The only premium feature I am not so fond of is in fact auto-vacation.

That is what this is  

"automatic vacation for everyone" I agree.

Maybe just once for each match or for each month, just because sometimes we can have unforeseen circumstances. 

"automatic vacation for everyone"

There's a serious drawback to this: lots of people join the site, start a bunch of games, get bored, and abandon the account.  Those games will now go into auto-vacation mode and take a while to time out.

If auto-vacation mode is made available to free members, that issue should be addressed, perhaps by not giving it to members who are new to the site, or by making their initial allocation of vacation days extremely limited.

The initial vacation time is just 7 days, and free members get just 2 days per month.

I don't think that can be a big issue, but it could be solved giving the automatic vacation just for members with at least one year in the site, just to say something. 

So far, there is only the following settings-possibility for tournaments: with or without holidays.

Maybe there should be only a change in the tournament settings Options: That you can also adjust how many vacation days can be taken in one go - then you have to make a move.

Instead of just "vacation", the screen could show "still x days of vacation" Count the vacation days down for fully transparency.

In general I think the problem isn't so much the amaount of vacation days, as the amount of vacation days in one go. I think it is comletely insane to take 45 days in a row vacation time when participating in a tournament. Two weeks at most or so should be ok for 95% of the players here!

It comes from a staff.... Terrible idea.

What if my opponent in such a lost game is a patzer? He may miss the win, I may draw or even win. There are times even among grandmasters in which they miss mate in 5 or 7 or so. Svidler once missed mate in 1 against Anand.

As such, this proposal shoould not even exist.

thanks jd! i was just wondering if you had thought of it

1. Chesscom should not have any say on users' vacation time. When I play daily game, chess.com is just a post office through which I and my adversary send the moves - how much can we go into vacation? Post office does not and can not have a say on it. It is up to us.

2. Likewise, auto-vacation should be available to all. If I do not submit my move to the post office, the post office can not declare my opponent won the game.

All of these should be up to organizers - match organizers, open seek organizers, tournament organizers.

Chess.com is more than a post office.  If your opponent cheats or is abusive, you won't ask the post office to do anything, but chess.com will - and should.  The post office also does not track ratings, etc.  Chess.com is more like a combination of a post office and a correspondence chess federation.

It's quite reasonable, in an unrated game, to have an option for no time control.  But not in a rated game, or people would simply stall lost positions indefinitely.  Also not in tournaments, as people could hold up the tournament indefinitely.

it should be like the person taking vacation should alert chess.com 5 days before itself.person should have 30 days( like it is now).The person should also not be allowed in chess.com for the vacation period (which they have mentioned to chess.com ).this will stop people from using vacation unnecessarily when they are losing.

What if something happens unexpectedly that you don't know about five days in advance?

Then, at best in that case (daily chess scenario ) chess.com can be claimed to be a combination of a) arbiter - moderator b)post office dedicated and specially designed for correspondence chess due to it offering chances to track your rating and etc. It is a like calculatory machine and a post office. Now, if we are playing a game with assigning an arbiter - moderator with a special machine tracking our progress, we will set the rules and the moderator will abide by them. Not vice versa, a moderator can not say "You two will play blitz, 3 second increments only." We will agree to play 5+3 and the moderator will supervise according to the rules we have set.  Not the other way around. It is same for daily chess, we two want to play daily? We will set the rules, you and I will agree on the total number of days and submit our rules to this special post office and the post office will simultaneously supervise us according to the rules we have agreed upon, not according to the rules it has dictated on us

As for possibility for opponent stalling the game infinitely, our special post office can offer us to define game conditions beforehand: You issue a rated correspondence chess game challenge or correspondence tournament? Then you will set the conditions (like in the example below):

* 2 days per move

* Sides can have 10 days of vacation in total during this game.

* I play black

So, you want to avoid a player that may go on vacation till eternity? Just check the challenges you accept, check the tournaments and in case a tournament or a daily game seek does not feature any limit on the amount of days sides can go to vacation, simply ignore that challenge and create your own featuring the criterias you want to play under and issue those challenge, someone who wants to play under the same conditions will/may accept your challenge  Now you do not need to worry for the possibility of your opponent's eternal vacation

There are many practical problems with a site offering vacation time by the game. Such a system works in postal chess, but is too cumbersome for the internet where people play for different reasons and may have 100s of games going at once.

The site needs to stop giving people with premium memberships *competitive advantages* in correspondence chess. The way to do that without angering the premium members is to give everyone the same benefits. 

I recommend a uniform 45 days per member. @MGleason made a good point about new members lstarting games then abandoning them. This uniform 45 days of vacation could be awarded after six months or a year as a site member.

One benefit that should be dropped is the insurance month. I don’t know if it is still active, but I have seen this in the past. After a Diamond member has used up all of his vacation time, it still takes a month before their game is forfeit. That needs to stop.

Btw, ICCF internet rules give each player 50 days for every 10 moves, and 45 days vacation time per calendar year.

The advantage of that time control is that it allows the player to decide how to use his or her time, and it gives both sides ample time for their moves.

One key disadvantage compared to chess.com is that games can drag on for much longer than here. This site is less serious than ICCF, and is right to keep a simpler format for its time controls.

Insurance month? has never been such a thing since I've been on the site which has been 10 years now. 

I saw some titled accounts get closed (the reasons were undisclosed). Their vacation time ran out, then they had an extra 30 days beyond that before they forfeit the game. It could have been the way the vacation time was shown in v2, but the explanation at the time was that they had an extra month.

I've never heard of an insurance month either.  Diamond members accrue five days per month, so if you go into vacation mode, as your three months run out you'll accrue another 15 days, plus another 2.5 days if the extra 15 days runs over the 1st or 15th of the month (it usually will), or 5 days if it runs over both the 1st and 15th of the month (it rarely will).

So extra vacation time accruing during vacation time could add up to another 20 days.

Add in 10 or 14 days for a slow time control and a titled player could have an unfinished game hanging around for up to four months.

on the other hand, every time you go on vacation a whole day is subtracted from your vacation time, even if you are paused for say 1 minute; so if your games get paused, and then say you make one move; then have to stop, and in that short time a second game pauses, and after say an hour you go back to play again, again make one move in one game, then leave again, and a third game gets paused and so on and so forth, you may in theory consume entire weeks or months in only a few days

Correspondence chess measures time in days, not hours minutes or seconds. This is standard across the correspondence chess experience.