Suggestions for 'Manage Members' n 'Automated Vacation Time Protection'

I wld like to make the following suggestions :

1) Manage Members :

Although the current recently updated/added options in the drop down list of the 'Sort by' menu ,are fantastic,I still find it takes some time to 'search for/find' a particular Member .. Could we have a ' Search Member' Option like on 'Friends' Page ? This wld definitely save a lot of time.

2)Automated Vacation Time Protection Trigger System ( for Premium Members) :

I don't know how the current system works but it seems that we get one or mutiples of 'U r abt to loose on time' warning .. then not long after,the Vacation Time will be triggered but is this determined by the no of hours left for our games,starting from the ones with the least amt of time left,ie ? (if so,how many games does it take into account ? ) ... cuz sometimes when I come back to reset my vacation status,I find that I only have 2 or 3 hrs or less ,left to play tons of games that are about to time out simultaneously ( tho,at other times,I have like 5 or 6 hrs or more) .. and sometimes it's not enough/ample time/rather exhausting ,to play a lot of games within the period of time left ! 

Is it possible for the system to take into account ,the number of Games we have ,that are having very little time left n then start the 'Vacation Protection' accordingly ? ... This will ensure we get enough time to make our moves for those games,as well as not causing any wastage of our precious Vacation Time.

Currently,it's not very reliable for members with tons of games,to rely on the Automatic Vacation Protection and if one puts him/herself on Vacation too early,we might waste too much of it.

Tnx so Much.

of course right

Careful what you wish for. I would guess a vacation system that tries to leave players enough time to play their games would put you on vacation every time it came to you.

how? I don't get it now

It does not do it now because the auto-timeout protection system does not calculate anything. It is not supposed to set auto-timeout protection until less than 90 minutes remains in your most urgent game. If you have to play 300 games in one day it does not care.

As I understand it, the original poster wants chess.com to figure out how to pace the games, by pausing the games sooner if necessary, to not be overburdened after auto-timeout protection.

Here comes speculation on how this would be implemented.

Let's say you can play 300 of your 800+ games in a day. (Very difficult with the one and two day per move games butting into line.) Let's say the powers that be set up a simple system that calculates the average player needs 3 days to play 300 games. Every time the system rolls around to your account and you have less than a 3 day cushion, you would be on auto-timeout protection.

I think we should think in terms of hrs rather than days .. n maybe allow an average of 5-10 min or less per move/game ?

The debate is not about "normal" members. Just Kacparov and a very few others. 

Let's say Kacparov has 300 games of his 800 where it is his move. (This is likely more than 300.)

300 * 5 minutes / 60 minutes per hour = 25 hours. So the system would want to leave Kacparov a 25 hour cushion when he had 300 moves to make. (Kacparov actually plays about 300 moves in a few hours not 25 hours.)

With 1 day per move games, Kacparov will rarely have a cushion greater than 24 hours. He would be on auto-timeout protection almost 100% of the time.

How abt if the system only takes into account a fraction ,say 1/3 or 1/4 of the games where it is our move ( with the least amt of time left) ,and not all of them ? ( normally,we don't play them all in 1 shot,anyway)

when I go off, I usually have 700 games with 0 seconds left...

What does that mean ? ... 0 sec left implies no more time left to move = time-out ... on 700 games all at once ?? How can that be ?

vacation bug!

I have never used automatic vacation yet, so perhaps what I am about to suggest has been already done (just ignore this entire post then).

IMO, after the automatic vacation kicks in, the returning player should be able to make moves without having to turn the vacation off (as is the case with the deliberately set vacation time which is presumably turned on after playing moves in the most urgent games and leaving enough time in the others).

Also, the automatic vacation algorithm should use some hysteresis and turn the automatic vacation off when the time left in the most urgent game exceeds some number of minutes that is greater than the time used to turn the vacation on.

Here's an example of a 90/180 minutes hysteresis setup:

Suppose that the vacation starts automatically when you have 90 minutes left to the most urgent game, a couple dozen games with <120 minutes, and several hours or more in the rest.

You come back from vacation, play the moves in the first game (the vacation stays on), then play the moves in the aforementioned couple dozen games. As soon as the most urgent game left in the queue has 3 or more hours of time left, the vacation turns itself off automatically. Hopefully, you can make progress in the rest of the games without triggering the vacation on again.

The thresholds when the automatic vacation would switch itself on/off should be settable in the user's preferences.

Note that it is in the user's interest to turn the vacation off as soon as practical, so this entire setup is not likely to be abused.

Tnx .. LegoPirateSenior ... great suggestion .. could work,I guess !

I once tried to do something like that when I found that I had to play lots of games after resetting my auto Vacation Time Protection that had been triggered .. I played a number of games then put myself on vacation again to stop the time of the remaining 'abt-to-time-out' games,from running ... then played again n repeated the sequence alternately until I finished all my moves in those games ... managed to make it tho ! (even tho the 'go to next available game' option was not working correctly then and I had to return to the 'online games' page after making my move in each game )

.. so if we hv the option to keep the time protection on whilst playing our urgent games ,that shld stop the time running for those games until they r all played !

.. and if we r able to set the no of hours we wish before the system gets triggered,that wld be juz awesome n really user friendly ( we can then,adjust the time required accordingly and to our best interest) !!!

Alternatively,the system cld take into account ,say 1/4 of our most urgent games(abt to time out,ie), allow abt 5-10 min for each ( in reality ,we need only a few sec for some games but longer for others) , and add a certain fixed amount of time ( maybe 2 hrs or so) , to make up for the time running whilst those games are being played after turning off the Auto-Protection  ...  and trigger itself accordingly ( like I suggested above).

.. would definitely be better than the current 90 min for tons of games abt to time out , with the time running !

Year. I thought premeum members get 90 days vacation!! 

They gave me 30!!

That was what I originally thot too .

Nope,they don get 90 days ... they get it capped at 90 days ... means they can hv a max of 90 days with the 2 days or so,a month , added each time. ( compared to Basic Members who can hv a max of only 30 days.)

Your request has been heard! I've added search functionality to the Group Manage Members page and you should see the update come through later this week or early next week.

Yay ... Tnx So Very Much .... Hontouni Arigatou Gozaimasu !!!

That's the best idea I've heard yet for the vacation dilemma :)

Searching is now up on Manage Members.

Let me know if you have any problems!

Ok .. tnx !