Oddly enough, within 15 minutes of my posting, one of my opponents i mentioned, who had been on vacation, actually logged in and made his move.
Perhaps coincidence ? 
Vacation abuse
Sort:
I think before you make a decision that will affect many players you should address those who abuse the vacation policy. Instead of changing your whole system, just issue a warning to those that you can defintely track as having abused the system. No reason to make a change that hurts those who try to play fairly and keep the spirit of fair play in in mind for all concerned.
It was the same with me back then, but it was a mate in two, I finally sent a message to the person and she finally resumed the game (didn't resign however, it was a mate in one, with a chec sacrifice that made it in two, and she played for the mate in two, obviously). But maybe in some cases like this it should be possible to appeal to Erik, and furnish the description of the forced mate, which, after engine analysis, if needed to be sure, he could give the win to whom deserves. This might be a good solution for the worst cases, at least.
I don't think it would be so much work as the player has to furnish the solution of the forced mate to prove he has it, and only put the position in an engine for official verification. And this should only be done in obvious cases (which I don't think would be a lot), of course. I wouldn't mind helping, if needs be, but I think it's only a matter of ruling a few cases here and there.
Everybody needs vacation time, 30 to 40 Days would be about right. I do not have a problem with players logging on while on vacation, after all they are entitled to use a PC where ever they are on holiday to look at blogs or whatever on the site.......but they should not be making any moves until vacation is over!........I am a new member and failed to let my opponents know that I would be on holiday for 2 wks, but it was booked at last minute, but will try to remedy this in future. There will always be abuse of the vacation system, if there are complaints about a certain player(so) then a warning should be placed on their homepage for others to see, then if these players do not get games then that will sort this problem out!.....also a good conduct sign could also be placed maybe on a homepage for reliable players, then you will always know that you will get a honest game with these players.
Yeah, restricting vacations to 1 day is silly, who goes on vacation for one day? I think with situations like Etienne's, perhaps Erik or someone could look into the matter, asses whether or not the mate is inevitable, and whether this person is specifically shunning their game with you. Although I'm not sure if this would create an unnecessary workload for you Erik, is this kind of thing regular for other people? Vacation abuse?
batgirl wrote: "(be the better person)" Those are noble sentiments, but somehow, everytime I hear them, I end up dealing with the consequences of someone else's lack of personal accountablity.
Bravo! The "bad" person always ends up with the benefits of our being "the better person" and will never learn from the consequences of their actions if everyone ignores their bad behavior. It just reinforces it because they got away with it. I think it was a "bad" person who came up with "take the high road" to secure an advantage for themselves!
As far as vacation goes, whenever you take vacation it should cost you a full day and not allow you to play for 24 hours. That would solve most of the abuse. What about giving the person on the receiving end of the vacation the option of cancelling the game with no impact to ratings or W/L?
I think the option of cancelling the game is a bit extreme. What if the person using vacation was actually going away and they were winning the game and then the opponent was allowed to cancel the game. That would surely not be fair. We cannot ruin things for the people who obey the rules and play an honest game.
MattHelfst wrote: I think the option of cancelling the game is a bit extreme. What if the person using vacation was actually going away and they were winning the game and then the opponent was allowed to cancel the game. That would surely not be fair. We cannot ruin things for the people who obey the rules and play an honest game.
I agree with you.
Etienne wrote:
I am playing a game right now where I have a mate in two (one really, unless the person really wants to make it two) but then the person went on vacation (after offering me a draw, as a friend, of course). Then I check, the person is online, and not on vacation anymore, great. The last move was yesterday, a 24 hours vacation? Alright. Then I go see a bit later, back on vacation and still hasn't played a move or resigned. I go see the person's game, the person went out of vacation, played the moves in everyone of her game, except mine, then went on vacation again.
Would there be any way to prevent this? It's somewhat annoying... But of course, as the person is winning games right now, when she finally conclude the game she will lose more points and I will get more as she will most likely be higer rated, so she's only harming her own score doing this in the end.
You can call the other player on it, leave an in-game message inquiring about their odd vacation. I don't see how to avoid abuse without excessively hurting honorable players.
In the worst case scenario you can just wait for your opponents vacation time to run out and then you will eventually win the game anyways. A win is a win whether it comes now or a month from now.
wow... thats a little sad. I think se just wants to get the highest rating possible for herself. It is abuse.
My suggestion for this problem could be , we have to have seperate vacation for each game, during choosing the move time control they also to choose vacation time for the particalar game.
This may prevent the abuse, since we can either accept or neglect for particualr vacation time choice.
HotFlow wrote:
Frenchduke...
>Yeah, restricting vacations to 1 day is silly, who goes on vacation for one day? I think with situations like Etienne's, perhaps Erik or someone could look into the matter, asses whether or not the mate is inevitable, and whether this person is specifically shunning their game with you.<
"It's not one day "only" that's suggested but "1-day minimum." Meaning if you put yourself in to vacation to get out of making moves then you have to wait a day to play your other games also. Meaning you can't "hop" in and out of vacation.
Ahh ok, i thought people were suggesting restricting vacations to one day. My bad, thanks for clearing that up. That idea would work.
It seems to me that if one is on "vacation" they shouldnt be allowed to play any moves at all until off of "vacation". Is this hard to implement?
I am sure from a system point of view (chess.com), something could be programmed along the lines
If the person wants to go on vacation then they can only do so when it is NOT their turn to make a move in ALL games.
If they log back in and make a move in a game, then Vacation is automatically disabled and can only be re-enabled if the player makes a move in ALL games.
I think this would solve the original query. Hope this makes sense!!!
I have not yet experienced a problem with vacation abuse but reckon I will eventually. Have many here had this problem?
I got the answer!. Etienne's problem is that he has to keep checking on that person's game to see if they moved and he's not losing on time, right. But they only have one or two moves left which are forced.
The solution is to allow Etienne to make conditional moves (like in correspondence). Then when they do move (at 4am in the morning), the preprogrammed move plays even though Etienne's not on line.
i have two games going, with different opponents.. both have been marked as on vacation for about two or three weeks now.. i'm not sure if they really are both on a long vacation, or if they are the same person [ both started a game and went on vacation same time ] or if they are ever coming back ..
Another opponent started a game, moved five times in one evening, then went on vacation and hasn't been back since.
All i can do is keep an eye on their vacation time depleting and wait and see what happens.
It would be nice to see a note on their profile saying something like
"on vacation - back in ??? days / weeks / months"