So here's the situation. A player goes out on vacation flag. Leaves a message he'll be around 30 days gone for military obligation. He's rated around 1800+. So I wait. Most of his other opponents cash in when his timebank is used up. His rating drops to about 1300. He comes back, proceeds to beat me up in the games, since he is a very good player. So now i'm losing to a 1300 player and losing lots of ratings points in the process. I'm not climbing the wall over this because ratings don't mean everything to me. I'm just beginning to understand all this "optional" stuff like vacation flags and reminders to opponents to move are simply ratings punishment for the consciencous. Either the vacation flags should be a mandatory no time out (for a limited time) and the move reminders should be automatic or (in my opinion) eliminated otherwise we reward the ratings sharks, just waiting for one minute over timebank to jump in for those precious ratings points. Something just feels awry here.
Originally posted by buddy2This has happenned to me a few times as well. I'm afraid it's just something we have to put up with.
So here's the situation. A player goes out on vacation flag. Leaves a message he'll be around 30 days gone for military obligation. He's rated around 1800+. So I wait. Most of his other opponents cash in when his timebank is used up. His rating drops to about 1300. He comes back, proceeds to beat me up in the games, since he is a very good player. ...[text shortened]... ute over timebank to jump in for those precious ratings points. Something just feels awry here.
A valid point indeed. What has happened in the past is the player enters tournaments he is not supposed to enter (like the Banded tourneys) and wins against lower players thereby not giving an opportunity for them to register wins.
You very well know 1 famous player whom I am referring to here 🙂
They should create a postpondment feature . They do that on other correspondence chess sites . (e.g.www.gameknot.com)
This is how it works , you are allowed a number of postpondment days per year ,80 for non-subs usually and 100 for subs. Then , if ever you want to go on vacation , just postpond your games for the number of days you'll be away for and the bank will be extended by that . If you continue making moves in any of your games , the other opponents will be able to cancel your postpondment and proceed with your game.
Once postpondment time finishes , it will carry on with the normal timebank .
Originally posted by DeepThoughtWe wouldn't have to if the site administrators would just move to a new vacation system. Here is the system I've proposed in the past:
This has happenned to me a few times as well. I'm afraid it's just something we have to put up with.
1. Each subscriber to this site is entitled to 21 days of vacation time per year.
2. When a player is on vacation, the time in his games does not run, except for tournament games.
3. When a player is on vacation, he does not have access to his ongoing games (except for the tournament ones).
4. Whenever a player activates his vacation setting, he will use at least one day, even if he turns it off the same day.
Is this proposed system perfect? No. But it protects people who need to get away from the site for a while, it protects their honest opponents, and it discourages players from using theri vacation settings freely just to try to avoid moving in one or two games where they're losing. So who else thinks this would be a good idea? If we can get enough initial support for it, we can bring it to Russ and see if he'll put it to the site for a vote.
These are all good ideas, and of course none of them is perfect. However keeping the "optional" system we have penalizes the people who respect vacation flags. It's like going up to an "optional" stop sign. The people who respect it, fine. But there are people breezing by, who do no stopping. You can't have an "optional" rule without the people who respect them being punished. So make up a $%^^% rule and be done with it. No vacations. Postponments, as long as it applies to everyone. I can't remember in postal correspondence and "optional" rule. Although it did allow for postponments.