Vote Chess

I think this would give too much power to admins. I think I would rather be victimized by drive-bys and stupid votes than by admins. I am an admin in several groups and I wouldn't want that responcibility.

Admins can set when to vote? That might be a workable idea. 2 day and 3 day games could be set so that voting was only allowed during the final 24 hours.

It has been pointed out by chess.com staff that the reason we are not allowed to see the votes because; whatever move takes the early lead will be the move that most drive-bys will vote for. While this is might be true in the big public vote games on the main page I do not think it would work that way at the group level. I played in a few vote games at chessgames.com a couple of years ago and you could see the votes and you could change your vote and that system worked just fine. And no one complained about it. After all, it makes sense.

Another idea is that the move each member has voted for could be displayed next to thier name on the {Team Members] list. That might help discourage drive bys and stupid votes if people had to own up to thier voting. I really do not see any reason for secret ballot. You don't keep secrets from your teamates. The whole idea is to work together and talk about it.

The whole idea... is to play a beautiful and intelligent game of chess.

The vote game list could be just like my list of online games. When it's the opponent's move it's at the bottom of the list, when it's my move it's at the top of the list maybe with a little tick mark to show if I've already voted. Just because I've already voted doesn't mean I wouldn't want to go back and have another look.

I mentioned this before in another thread, I think:

You should not be allowed to vote until you have posted a comment for that move.

Good idea!

I am participating in 43 currently active games.

I lowered my vote chess activity lately and it's under 20. But it used to be 30+ not long ago.

Amateurs!

I have 24 pages

 I agree!

It's so annoying though if your tracking comments and then you leave a comment and no one comments after you that you time out!

I say there should be a reminder. My group with about 30 members had a game time out (it was mate in one and nobody responded to my question "resign or not?") and another timed out on move 1 when nobody responded to "e6, e5, or c5".

The system as it is now rewards drive-by voters. For instance, if there is a tie between two moves, the one that was voted for first gets the tie, meaning that drive-by votes are rewarded whereas someone who looks real closely at the position might be shafted.

In a recent game my team was being badly beaten when suddenly the opponent team dropped their Queen. Two moves later they resigned. A look at the archives revealed that on the move which dropped their Queen there had been four votes for four different moves (and no discussion). Three of those moves would have won the game for them while the fourth move which lost the Queen had been voted first and was therefore selected by the vote chess software. So, Yes! The current system rewards the drive by votes and the votes which are not given much thought. It is very frustrating to play vote chess when the odds seem stacked against you by the very system which is being used to facilitate the game. I really commiserate with those who have given up playing vote chess.

I do agree with you to an extent here about drive by voters ... however more and more "vote chess teams" are popping up all over this site where drive by voters are not tolerated.

This is the reason I am pushing this because simply my team does not have drive by voting because they have all joined due to being sick to the back teeth of them!!

(getting to the point of my post now)

Because of this when we ask the team "shall we call for this move now" if nobody replies to this game note then the game is going to time out. Unless it is down to one of the admins to check all the games but with a new system in place where a player could come online and check all their moves and then check all their vote chess games afterwards then this will prevent 100's if not 1000's of vote chess games timing out and make the whole experience more enjoyable!!

It's clear by now that the big vote chess players want some kind of alert for imminent time out and the small vote chess players want the same. The ball is in chess.com's court I believe. Thank you, chess.com!

Yes, that would be another nice feature: in cases of a tie, the last vote wins rather than the first.  Early votes do tend to be for classic blunders.

Or in the case of a tie the super admin of the team having the deciding vote?

 That also might lead to some problems what if the team decides something early and drive-by's come later?

What I mean is in case of a tie.  If the team decides something, it is usually going to take them some time to discuss it.  In the teams I've played for, the early votes tend to be just silly moves that the drive-by has not thought through.  People who deliberately hold their votes usually take the time to read the discussion before voting.

Also the secret ballot tends to limit the ability of drive-bys to influence the final outcome.  Drive-bys by definition do not post comments, and since they are unable to see how the current voting has gone, usually end up reading the comments of the more thoughtful posters before making their decision.  Also non-reading drive-bys tend to vote for a wide variety of different blunders instead of just focussing on one move, as the careful readers do.

 yea I get your point

I've got 42 pages. 

Yeah, it's a good idea.  Might be a little harder to implement tho, and so we may need to concede on this one.    This would actually make things much more difficult in Speed Vote Games where time becomes such a crucial factor.  If someone in the chat room is shouting, "VOTE NOW TIME'S RUNNING OUT!!" and everyone scrambles to the board, you wouldn't want everyone to have to post a comment in order to cast a vote.

I've seen this EXACT situation happen MANY times!!!  In fact, I think THAT specifically is what this thread was originally about.  We DO get alerts thruout the game, but there's still a weakness in the system, and I think you just hit the nail on the head.

It sounds like everyone is describing 2 separate problems (games timing out and drive-by voters controlling the game) both of which stem from the same issue (players who DO try to discuss things first not getting back to vote on time) and can both be solved with the same fixes (preferably a "Vote Chess" page that looks and acts like the "Online Chess" page, the ability to change your vote before the time runs out, and a public record of who voted for what move (or at least the OPTION of making the votes Public/Private)).

Exactly!! The games could be sorted by time remaining, just as our Current Games are listed on the My Online Chess page.  It could look like this:

White Team - Black Team - Game Name - Moves - Time Left - Status

The status could be: Waiting / My Move/ Voted

At the bottom of the page, you'd see My Recent Vote Games set up just like it is on My Online Chess page.

Amen, Wormrose, Amen!!!