This is unfair

Yesterday evening, when I wanted to play in my games, LittleGolem was not available due to server updates (or whatever it was). The time when LG was offline wasn't added to the games, and I again lost a vacation day. I have just 5 left, and I will certainly time out many games, and every vacation day is very important. I think that either when LG is offline, time should stop ticking in the games, or people should be given back lost vacation time.

Does anyone agree?

Depends on how you want to look at it. I look at it as, time stopped for little golem so time should have stopped across the board, meaning no vacation days should have been used during the time in which LG was down. Course one could say that those vacations days would have been used regardless.

LG wasn't unavailable that long... Furthermore, that would be quite hard to encode.

Your opponents lost the same amount of time (with active turns ofc) so it's kinda fair, but I understand your complaint.

Maybe I'm more active than the average, but in my opinion there's plenty of time given to the players. You just have to log in every second day for a few minutes. And you always have the option to purchase a membership, which gives you even more vacation time. If you really worried about those matches (and the downtimes :-P), you should consider that option.

MRFvR: It'd be hard to encode, but there are available solutions. For example give one bonus vacation day after the downtime finished, or add 24 hours to the all ongoing games. Obviously this wouldn't solve those cases where the player timed out during the downtime, but this would be extremely rare.

Well LG wasn't off for long, but I was late less 1 hour (minutes aren't shown here). If I was able to log in, I would have been on time.

somar96, why waiting the last minute to play your move when you have 240 hours?

If you keep 40 hours at least in each game, you wouldn't lose vacation days like that. And if you keep 220 hours in each game, you hardly need vacation days at all.

I was off for chess training session for a week, so the time in my games went under 3 days. Having 240 games in progress, it's hard to play in all of them every day abd gain time, so I just play in enough games to not time out. And it works, if LG works :-)

I understand, but you forget that it's still quite usual for website to go down for a couple of days, or for an internet provider to have network malfunction. Therefore, this kind of accident is bound to happen. It doesn't matter if it's the fault of the provider or of the site, it's just that your strategy is suboptimal. You could play in just enough games as to keep more than 40 hours in each one. it's almost the same, but with less reliance on external factors.

The best way is of course not to start more games than you can handle in a day, but it's tricky, I've never managed to do that yet.

I would suggest giving back some time for downtimes. You are given 240 hours, you can use them as you wish. You shouldn't have to lose because the server decided you couldn't use your last two hours to make a move.

First, I want to hear more about this chess training session that lasted a whole week! When? Where? How much did it cost? What did you learn, etc.

Second, I personally think that the amount of time per move AND the number of vacation days at this site is just way too generous. I hate waiting 10 freakin' days for some of my opponents to move. I recall playing chess by MAIL 30 years ago and I rarely had to ever wait anywhere near that long of a period of time for my opponent to respond.

Finally, I can't believe how some people have hundreds and hundreds of games going on at the same time. If some of these people are my opponents then no wonder I'm not seeing a reply for a week or more at a time... they're busy making moves in their other games.

I think Richard should require a membership fee for anyone playing more than x number of games. And to me, "x" would be about 50! If you're playing 50+ games, I think you should pony up some money.

(My opinion on the matter must be seen carefully since I have 184 games right now and am not a member for the time being)

@Ed Collins - That's not a good idea for oh! so many reasons. Before playing here I used to play at a site called WarNetGame (that only provided an online version for Brazilian 3-6 players board game "War"). They were a semi-free great site until they started to limit non-payers and the number of available players dropped quite rapidly.

Semi-free (as I understand it): you can use the services for free but contributions are welcomed. Usually contributors have a few extra advantages over non-contributors.

I think the limit of 50 is rather arbitrary, it depends a lot on the amount of time per day you spend playing LG. I had times with 450+ games running, and - Ed Collins - did you - or anyone else - ever wait on moves from me?

I typically find 60 - 100 moves waiting on the morning, at lunch time, and in the evening, and I typically make all of them, except about fifteen days a year (where I'm travelling).

What happens is that always about 60% of my games sit in the queue for my opponent, and count down the time; about 30% I win on him timing out.

So, often enough I have no moves to make (even though 300 games running), and I go into monthly tourneys and the waiting room and start new ones.

So don't blame people by the number of games they have running, but by the percentage that is sitting in 'their move!.

@Ed Collins - it was a training session for best Polish juniors who qualified to play in European/World Youth Chess Championships. Everything was paid by Polish Chess Federation. We had 2 lectures with GMs/IMs every day (on various subjects so I can't exactly tell what I learned) :-)

240 days to move and 20 vacation days might seem much to most people, but to proffessional chess players it's too little. I play at least 6-7 tournaments a year. Unluckily, in Poland most of them I have no Internet connection. That's over 60 days, excluding those training sessions (up to 3 a year, 1 week each). This means I'm away at least 80 days a year, and the 20 days of vacation is simply not enough...

let's shed some light on the other side:

I also think it was unfair that someone who had -193 hours - and thereby should have lost about 9 vacation days for not showing up and playing - only loses one day and then gets set back to 25 hours. So all the people who should have already won their games against the high-negative-hours-players now have not won them.

Now you can argue that playing is better than winning by timeout, and I might agree. Still it is unfair.

BTW, who said life is fair?

Sorry somar, but I still can't see why you feel yourself entitled for more vacation days.

If the games you play here are important for your professional chess carrier, then why don't you purchase a membership? 1.5 EUR / month shouldn't be a problem for you or for your chess federation. You get more vacation time, and you don't have to worry about the timeout losses.

In case these matches are just a hobby for you, and you don't wanna pay money for it then well... none of us has enough time for our hobbies.

I didn't say I was "entitled for more vacation days". I just wanted to point out the problem - it could happen to all of us, and I'm hoping it will be considered by Richard.

Somar is right. The way initially stated it, he put it more strongly and with more of an implication that it absolutely needs to be fixed than I would agree with. But the underlying point is still correct. There is an implicit promise (of no monetary value) that one will be able to play one's games according the the schedule explained in the site information. Little Golem is very enjoyable, so we're all here, but none of us would claim it's without faults; this is one of them.

An easy fix would be after a downtime, add everybody the amount of time the server was down. Maybe rounded up to a full hour or so.

There is still a situation where no amount added can fix it - assume you have a time window of one hour in your schedule to make your moves, and then you will be offline for longer. Now if the server is down this hour, it doesn't help you to get it back, as the hour afterwards, you cannot play. There is no perfect solution for this, you could always construct situations where this makes you lose on time, no matter how much extra time you go. That's just part of the risk in live (and on LG). And according to Murphy, the server will be down at that time, if you have only that one hour window.