I know sending reminders is the polite and sportsmanship thing to do, but what if it's being abused? For example, in two of my games, I've been playing these two guys since I registered for this site. Both of them are in a single pawn down in a simple endgame, in other words, their best hope is a draw. Yet, they stall, stall, stall, and to be honest, it took us about 3 days total to reach that ending, but now these games have been hanging for about a month. Whenever their time bank hits, I send them reminders, and then they move ASAP, but they only do one move. Then they dissapear again for another 3 or so days, I send a reminder, and then they do another silly move, that makes little sense, then dissapear again. Now I'm wondering if I should even bother sending them reminders anymore, and hope they don't notice these games, so they can simply die off!
Is this the right thing to do? Or in so doing, will I build a bad reputation at RHP?
Send them a reminder once and if they stall again, just time them out. I see the timeout/timebank period as a contract between me and my opponent and if he/she doesn't have a good reason for not moving (like being on holiday, family problems etc.), than that's it! Breach of contract :-) . It may be a bit harsch, but will real chess you have a clock too, and if you run out of time, you have lost...
Yes, I agree. I can't understand way people don't just lose a game with dignity rather than draw things out and hope that you would end the game by resigning or accepting/offering a draw.
One person I played towards the end of the game was making a move every few minutes. I then had a checkmating move next and he/she just left the game (and made moves in other games in the process) as long as possible. I figure in the hope that I would just resign to get things over with (which would obviously be a silly thing to do).
Some other players when they were obviously losing will keep offering draw every move until I eventually checkmated them.
Very annoying!!!
Lau
I used to send reminders but never do anymore. I figure that my opponent knows they signed up for the game, and they have a responsibility to check on it. Also, the argument that accepting a game is agreeing to a contract is a strong one. And no, I don't think it will give you a bad reputation, as it rarely comes up anyway. I don't think anyone can fault you for claiming a win on time, when your opponent agreed to the time controls!
That said, I haven't timed someone out in a game I was losing, only games I was clearly winning.
I don't think it would be a good idea to remove the reminders functionality. It is possible that you could be in the middle of a very interesting game that you might want to play to the end. You might not want to end the game by timing the person out hence you send a reminder. I am sure a lot of players like the reminder function as much as a lot do not.
I just think it is an option that you can use if you want to. 🙂
You could think of it as the same as an OTB game where a person is deep in concentration and not realise that his/her clock is running low. You could then politely point out to him/her that he/she is running low on time. You don't have to do it though and just win the game when the flag drops!
Lau
I just timed out a guy (?) in a game that had been going on for 7 months. I wasn't very conscious of TO/TB when I was new on the site and we started a game with a 14-day TO. Well, for much of the past 7 months, he would only move after nearly the entire time, often on the 14th day. Then, for a while, a couple of months ago he made about 15 moves quite promptly. I think he smelled blood and I imagine he thought it was mine. The ironic thing is that at one point he actually had a winning move, but neither of us saw it at the time. If he had seen it then he could have won. If he had seen it on the next move opportunity, he could have made me try to mate with a knight and bishop. But he missed those two opportunities. For the past month or two, he reverted back to his old form of never moving in less than a week. Finally, he just stopped moving at about the point where he must have realized that I had the win wrapped up. I still sent him a reminder, but when he hadn't moved a couple of days later, I just took the timeout.
Personally, I normally send a reminder if I think there's any possibility of it making a difference, but eventually, the time comes...
Paul