From previous posts I understand that the "I'm on vacation" mode
doesn't stop anyone from claiming T/O's if he/she so wishes.
I think the "I'm on vacation" mode is nice but doesn't solve the
problem.
Playing correspondence chess means playing long games; even with a
3 day time out one game can last more than half a year!
This means you can never go on a holiday without the chance of
being timed out! You can stop playing months in advance of your
holiday of course, but that's not what I (and a lot of others) want.
I want to play chess without having concerns as mentioned above!!
There's a solution, think about this:
In every game there should be a "I'm on vacation" button with the
following restrictions:
- it can only be used by each player once in that game
- when used by a player it adds 21 days (or any other reasonable
number) 'thinking' time for the next move that player has to make
(so it can be used whether that player is to move or not)
- when the player makes his move (after his vacation) the "I'm on
vacation" mode stops immediately, even when the move is made
within a day.
In this way you can go away for a holiday without being timed out!
Russ, is this possible? (Atlantic chess has this feature)
Everyone, what do you think?
Otto
If this option is given we would see a lot more people going on
vacations! Ever notice when some opponents get behind in material
that their number of moves slows way down? I have had to claim a
timeout when I was ahead in material and about to take their queen
when they just never moved again. Now by far most players on the
site would not abuse this option but there are those that would, so any
option that is added needs to be weighted as to how it will be abused
as well.
This option still would not work well for those players who are playing
more games than they can manage. For the same reason that they
won’t email their opponents to let them know they will be on vacation
or whatever, they would not want to go through every game and press
a button. This would be ever time consuming if you were playing a
couple hundred games at one time.
This has been mentioned before but I believe that it is an option that
would help. Currently when the timeout flag goes up on one of your
opponents you can be penalized for not claiming the TO. This is
because the rating calculation is based upon your opponents rating at
the end of the game. For example, if you are playing an opponent
with a rating similar to yours and they stop moving for whatever
reason and the timeout flags start to go up on their games. If, by the
time of their return and their rating has been reduced significantly by
timeouts and you are defeated, then you will lose more rating points
because you were the nice guy! If the rating calculation was based
upon the ratings of the players at the start of the game, then some of
the benefit of claiming early TOs would be removed. At least it would
not effect your rating if you didn’t claim the TO.
My .02
GoodKnight
I can't see how having one chance in a game to go on vacation could
be abused. If the player is in such a hopeless position all they would
be doing would be delaying the inevitable.
I'm not sure that I'd want to have to go through every game
individually to take up this option though. A single check box in 'my
settings' would be nice.
At another site I've seen the 'on vacation' mode is entered
automatically as soon as a timeout situation occurs. It is cancelled as
soon as the player makes another move. Each player is allowed a
limmited number of these move holidays each year.
Rhymester
I think that is the best suggestion I have heard so far to help solve
the timeout problem by having the vacation button applied to the
player and not the individual games. When they press the button or
changed the setting it would apply to all their games. Once they made
a move in any game the setting would be automatically changed back.
This would keep people from 'going on vacation' in a hopeless games
and much less chance for abuse. This would be simpler to use for
those with many games as well as those playing against them. They
would not have to look up a profile or website to see if someone was
on vacation. But, as a programmer myself, I think this would probably
be much more difficult to implement from a coding perspective but it
would be a great addition to an already great site.
GoodKnight
