Tourney vacation status
presently im am in the same quandry, The guy makes a (A) move per week, back on vacation really frustrating!!!!!!!!!!!
just dont understand, (SHAKING HEAD) anyhow I'm compiling a list of peeps not to play with in the future.
My tournament games went on vacation. Because I'm a member it automatically does this if my games go below 24 hrs lefts. I don't think being away for less than 3 days is being rude to others, or spoiling the tournament. I am committed to it, but this is turn based correspondence chess and not live internet chess. Each has it's advantages and disadvantages. Maybe a tournament vacation time should be allowcated, not as long as normal vacation time, but long enough for people to take a bit of time to attend to their life :)
I understand the site rules for vacation time. I have no problem with them except in the case of tournaments. Maradonna's idea about a seperate 'tournament vacation time' has some real merit. If it was set to a week or so, that would give folks time to handle something unexpected without making the wait so long.
Regardless of what some of the other posts have stated, I still think it's rude to hold up a tournament by using vacation time. It's not against the rules, but that doesn't make it good form.
Not allowing vacations in a turn based chess (is not practical, even if desired) because of the length of the tournament 6 to 12 months. We had to face this very issue when we created the code for our tournament module.
The approach we took (since I have run tournaments and know the associations that run tournaments) was to create a model (mock tournament) and then throw all the possible problems you can throw at tournament (TD) and then write your code to meet those conditions. I am happy to say that we have been told that we have the most realistic tournament code (mimics the experience of a real TD) for a Swiss system and combination of a Swiss round robin system on the net today.
So if you think about it in terms of what can happen in a real tournament then apply to a online tournament you will see that no allowing vacations (absences, temp withdrawals etc) is really not practical or fair even if it is desired.
As the one who went on Vacation in the tournament with Nathan 74, I can tell you that I was away for a weekend and unable to make any moves, so went on vacation rather than lose all my games- now a week later, the tournament is still going on so I don't think I slowed it down at all. I would agree with some provision for shorter periods of vacation for tournament play. Part of the fun of this site is the casual nature of it- I think taking away vacation time would ruin that.
Vacation or not, Nathan74 kicked my butt anyway.
Consigliere: you used your vacation time in what I would call a very responsible and polite manner. You took what you had to (couple of days if I remember correctly), and then you came back and finished your games. In my very first post about the vacation issue, I let my irritation about having to wait at all get the better of me. My current stance on the vacation situation has nothing to do with the way you used your vacation time, infact, the way you used it should be a model for it's use. Just as Maradonna proposed, we need a shorter 'tournament vacation'.
A bit of a disclaimer here: I don't want anyone who reads my stance on this issue to think that I am griping or complaining about the rules/site/admin/whatever. That is not the case. My only goal here is to hopefully point out where a rules tweak could work for the benefit of the site. I haven't been with chess.com for very long, but I love it. I have had nothing but positive experiences with the players I have met so far.
If a person can't commit to playing the tourney's through, they should not register. It's just plain rude to go on "vacation" and leave everyone hanging. No class people.