crosseyed:  what happens on the 16th

beach: No one should be pressurised to make more moves because a player only has a few games running and bored because they have too much time on their hands which is why this discussion has arisen once again. I eagerly wait to see what happens after the 16 November.

Aganju: No thank you to the Fisher Clock I got caught out with that without knowing.

Aganju: I liked the last paragraph lol.

Walter Montego: This is a good start, but consider also what kind of game you set up. If people chose 10-wins-match, and the game is one with many moves, it can still drag for years.

But generally, yes, Fisher Clock is the thing to use. You can fine-tune it to your wishes pretty nicely.

Carpe Diem: True but it is futile knowing the history of this site.

Walter Montego:  good response

Fischer Clock is how you do it.
Try this:

Start 4 Days 7 hours
Bonus 1 Day 18 Hours
Max Time 11 days 1

A shorter max will definitely force a faster game. These parameters make the players move three or more times per week. Vacations and weekends have no baring on it. And, as always, the fast players can finish the game in a couple of hours. If someone quits the site, the game will end in 11 days. You can use a longer start time to give more time during a round change or series of games for matches.

Aganju: I don’t like the idea of the blacklist, I hate the idea showing someone guilty, as in court. I prefer an effective action as do not allow to join tourneys or games (for anyone) while you have a game where it is your move. I think it’s short with one game because there’s always an opponent on line. Five games would be perfect. Indeed, with 500 games running, the player will block himself.

crosseyed: Maybe, maybe not. But taking part in the discussion isn't mandatory.  

Carpe Diem: Nothing is going to change so what is the point of people making all these suggestions?

I wonder if removing weekend days would help, or if that would cause more problems than it solves.

pB: i agree that the time per move is a bit vague with the option of weekend days and vacation days added ... if you really want to be naughty you can even switch your weekend days while playing giving you 2 extra days once in a while ... just to frustrate your opponent :-)

about players knowing what they signed up for ... maybe they didnt know at first ... but i believe people learn from experience .. or at least i hope so ... and after some tournaments which are too slow for their taste they will think twice before joining a tournament which might be slow

due to a busy real life i am retiring on this site, and also on dailygammon, just finishing my running games/tournaments ... which migh take years, but i cant stand to lose on timeout :-)
i am only playing now on jijbent.nl (i think the english version is yourturnmyturn.com ?)
i think there the default for tournaments is 1 day per move, and a max 6 day pool
even then tournaments can take quite long

you are/were quite active on dailygammon as well .. what do you think of the timecontrols there ?

out of curiousity : about how many players are we talking who "abuse" the time control on this site ?

if i have an opponent who plays too slow according to my taste (rarely happens, but sometimes it does just before i go on vacation) ... i then send him a polite private message asking him if he could move in my games first

if an opponent sends me a message asking me to move faster, i then make sure i always move first in his/her games before i move in the others

about the speed rating per player: i suggested this years ago as well as i think its very useful and very informative .. but you have to take into account the different game types .. an average speed would make less sense that an average speed per game type

playBunny: Yes, I prefer this idea of a tournament with a predictable duration than to be measured in my moves. I think I don’t like the idea that people could see how fast I am, because sometimes I’m not. I agree with you, it’s not logical that a tournament with 3 days/move can be played in 5 days. 3 days are 3 days ! It’s why I rarely join for more than 3 days because I know it can be 5 days. But I must be honest too : as rook, we see the things differently than other memberships : I don’t like slow players but I don’t really pay attention because these players don’t block me.

SL-Mark: Speed ratings would be very useful. It would be especially useful if the speed ratings could be used to estimate the expected duration of a tournament. For my "Some like it fast" tournaments, I wouldn't care about the time control if I could specify that I only want players who are likely to allow completion within, say, six to ten weeks. Then I could set a 7-days time control to allow for Life's unexpected emergencies, safe in the knowledge that the usual course of events would be frequent moves by all concerned.

@Mélusine: Your concern wouldn't be as much of an issue as you might think. A fast player with occasional lapses is still a fast player, different from the once-a-weekers with their busy lives and in a different Universe to a crawler with hundreds of games.

For instance, if you play a game and the opponent is online and makes their move and it comes back to you, you might get to play the next turn. Someone with hundreds of games will never do that unless they are specifically giving priority to games with those who are online. Playing twice in one session would be very beneficial to you speed rating, having most games go to the end of a huge queue would be detrimental.

Carnie: I play at the pace I want to, not to pander to you because you only have 29 games running and are you are impatiently waiting for players to make a move.
By the way I see one of your cronies has 2079 games running at present. I see she has gone quiet. Have you complained to her about all her games?

Carnie: The there are people who leave the site and that delays games/matches being completed.

BGBedlam: Surely a solution would be to put a limit on the maximum amount of games somebody can play.

For sure. The idea of "unlimited games" is an impractical ideal. I think the limit should be literally what you said, the number of games that people can play - and a person who is continuously playing at the limit of the time allowed has probably got more games than they can play.

It's obviously not going to be a hard limit. A hundred Ludo games is much more manageable than a hundred games of Chess (unless it's a player who more or less likes clicking Chess pieces at random ).

Carnie: Get real! You are peeved because your lost a match that you should have one. That I understand and have some sympathy for you on that subject. But you are now harping on about games and time limits because Fencer did not acknowledge you.
If it did happen that you have or had been held up for two weeks by some players in the short time you have been in this site then I am amazed you only have 34 games. Surely all these players with SO many games would still be on your list of games. Oh wait I know what you are going to say. You resigned ALL of them.
So that being the case why are you still harping on about it? I know and see you spend a long time in this site. So with only 34 games you must get bored. So you post about something that has been discussed so many times and will never change.
By the way I did have you on hide but I kept seeing your posts in the main discussion board. So I still could not avoid you, so I decide to take you off hide. I am sure you see my posts too in the main discussion board. So you don't fool me by saying you don't read my posts.

Brian1971: That is most likely true Brian.

BGBedlam: Why? There are already some limits for certain memberships.
There are some people who spend most of the day in this site playing games. Then there are some others who spend all day that are the moaning about how many games some people play.
Whatever nothing is going to change now,
So the people moaning about people playing lots of games just have to accept.
It does not bother me how many games some players have.

Hrqls: there are also people with busy lives who don't have hundreds or thousands of games going on

Sure but they don't therefore affect hundreds of tournaments and hundreds of other players.

I would further suggest that the number of busy lives who almost always play at the very last minute is minimal. As I pointed out to Roberto, the time controls are not as labelled. The 5-day time control is for 7, 8 or 9 days, not for 5. A game-hoarding slowcoach will often take the full 9 days when it occurs whereas a busy lifer will not.

Hercs: the players do (or should) know what they signed up for

Why "should" they? Did you nod knowingly above, when I said that a 5-day control is for 7 to 9 days? Maybe you did but do you think that it's common knowledge?

Hercs: for prize tournaments: the creator has chose the time limit for a specific reason

Lol. Do you really think that tournaments that can take decades have been given a thoughtful time control? I suspect that most tournament creators do it naively.

Besides, even when they are carefully chosen, the tournament can still proceed very slowly. I used to create tournaments with limited time controls called "Some like it fast". The idea was that they could be over within weeks and thus be suitable for fast players and Pawns. But a slow player can make those take months instead of weeks, perverting the intent, spoiling the enjoyment and degrading the membership of any Pawn who falls foul of them.

The reason that I reject "but they're playing within the rules" as a poor excuse is that it misses the point, which is that the rules are not fit for the purpose.

Roberto Silva: There's no need to shout, Roberto, and it's clear from what you say that you only have a limited understanding of the issue and no interest in improving that impoverishment. I see no value in any further conversation with you other than to point out that you, like many people, do not seem to realise that the so-called 7-day time control is not for 7 days between moves, it's for 9, 10 or 11 days depending on which day of the week the move is made.

This whole discussion is moot. Brainking will be on auto-pilot soon and no changes will get made by anyone.

BGBedlam:

Pawns,Knights,and Bishops have a limit on games started. I doubt Rooks would be happy about being limited. I vaguely remember a site penalizing players who timed out of games but I can't recall details.

crosseyed:

Surely a solution would be to put a limit on the maximum amount of games somebody can play.

SL-Mark: I don’t agree with this. I’m a rather fast player because I’ve few games, usually 50 or 60. When I connect, all my moves are made in the same day. But sometimes, rarely, for personal reasons, I can’t connect for several days. So, with your system, I could be penalized for joining in a tournament. On the contrary, a pawn playing rapidly every day could join it. I think it's not good that a paying member has less benefits than a non-paying member, because it is still a paying member who makes the site live. I understand that some people can’t or don’t want to pay a subscription, it’s their choice, but, for me, tournaments must be open for everyone, people have just to be vigilant about time.

What about incorporating a player speed rating?
Each player would have a speed rating, e.g. between 0 and 100, 0 being infinitely fast and 100, playing at the time limits.
The rating would be calculated and averaged for each move made as follows:

Time Taken per Move / Time Allowed per Move

and added to their overall rating:

(Total Time Taken per Move - Total Vacation time used) / Total Time Allowed per Move / Total Number of moves

For tournament creators, they could add a minimum required speed rating.
For the entrants, the pending tournament could also display the speed rating of the slowest player, so they have an idea how quickly it may progress.

Roberto Silva: Well put and I agree with all you mentioned.
But I also agree with most of what playBunny posted.

playBunny: People are signing up for whatever amount of games that they can handle, under the time limits provided. If they sign up for games with a "7 days per move" limit, it's because they expect to make a move once every 7 days. What they do with the amount of time in between is their own business, if they choose to play 1000 different games in the meantime, it's entirely their business, and you have no right to tell them what to do with their lives.

There are people who like to play fast, there are people who like to play slow. The game caters to all, everyone can chose the game speed they like.

But when you sign up for slow games, and then complain that people are playing slowly, then you are complaining about a problem you created for yourself. It's not other players' fault that you signed up for those games under false expectations. Demanding that other people cater to your own time preferences, even though they went to the trouble of specifically choosing time limits where they didn't have to, is quite arrogant and disrespectful. The world doesn't revolve around you and what you like or think is 'right'.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE SLOW PLAYERS, DON'T SIGN UP FOR SLOW GAMES! If you sign up for slow games, people are going to play slowly, because that's the very reason why they signed up for those games in the first place. Again, I can't see what's so hard to understand about this basic fact.

Carpe Diem:Re: crosseyed: Could be that Carnie is talking about past situations.
I see she has been in this site just over a year. Still fancy harping on about the past if indeed she has suffered in the past.

Carpe Diem: One of them is enough: Search for any running tourney from before 2012, see which games are running. it is typically a single player (or two) that keep such a tourney still in round 1 (although different ones in different tourneys). Just try it. I did it multiple times.

Carnie: If there are people with several hundred or even thousands of games who are still signing up and playing extremely slowly, I could see how that would be frustrating, although I'd be surprised if it was common. The way I arrived at the situation was that I was (and am) in several fellowships, and signed up for a lot of games at one time. A message for one tournament would come to me, and I'd sign up for a bunch of games, and then another message for another tournament would come before the first set of games started, and on that went for a little while. So I was signing up for more games not fully realizing how many I was committing to (obviously still my own fault). 

Carnie: I looked at your profile and the games you are playing and I think your peeve or moan is unfounded. The only player holding you up is me and both the games have 3 days limit. My last move was made on 4th November. So my next move is due in 20 hours which I am sure I will do today. I doubts if any of the players you are playing have hundreds or thousands games running. I have 958 at present and I do my best to play as many games as I can in one day.
Update I have now made my moves on both games at 8pm UK time.

playBunny: I don't disagree that it can be a problem, especially when, as you mention, it takes up the slots for a Pawn that's new to the site. But I also don't think it's fair to pin the problem completely on those who are playing within the designated time limits. The solution might be a combination of things - make it more clear to people the repercussions of signing up at certain time limits, and for signing up to multiple games in multiple tournaments, perhaps have some allowance to give pawns some more games to play if they are maxed out with games that are taking forever. 

playBunny: there are also people with busy lives who don't have hundreds or thousands of games going on

those players can also make their moves within the time limits, but maybe too slow for others

i understand your point about pawns not knowing what they signep up for, and i also can go along with you for the prize tournaments

but for all the other tournaments, which is the most complaining about, the players do (or should) know what they signed up for, and specifically: they had the chance to join other tournaments with a time limit that better suits their taste, or create their own tournaments with their own time limit

for prize tournaments: the creator has chose the time limit for a specific reason

(and please keep this discussion cicilized)

Roberto Silva: I'm getting sick and tired of all this constant whining of people who sign up for time limits they don't like and then complain when people aren't playing fast enough for their liking.

And I'm years past being sick and tired of people who think that their inability to understand this issue makes their "advice" of any value.

How many Pawns come to the site and join a tournament not knowing that it's going to take years and they won't be able to join another tournament? What's your solution for that?

You say not to join if the time limit is too long but what if it's a prize tournament? You're saying that people who can't wait years - sometimes decades - have to forgo the opportunity that such rare tournaments provide.

To add insult to injury, many of the excessively slow players who have joined those tournaments were Black Rooks who had no need of the membership that was to be won. In my book their action is either thoughtless or selfish and neither is a good thing, whether it's "within the rules" or not.

You have sympathy for people who have such a busy life that they can only play one move every nine days (seven day clock with weekends off). Do you really think that many of these people exist? Nine days between each move?

You say that people shouldn't have to "give up their busy lives to indulge others" - but you're ignoring the real issue - which is people indulging themselves with hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of games that they cannot play except at the very limits. Their life is busy alright - busy with too many games! And it's other people who suffer for that indulgence.

Do you begin to see that it's not as simple a situation as you've imagined? Do you begin to understand that STFU is not a solution?

Your question is my question.... Why is it so hard to understand?

playBunny: You are naughty.

playBunny: That's what different time limits are for. If you sign up for a "7 days per move" game, then complain that people are taking 7 days per move, you shouldn't have signed up for them in the first place. Why is that hard to understand?

The site allows all possibilities for people to sign up for time limits they are comfortable with (with vacation days to cover for any unseen emergencies, so you can sign up for short time limits without fear of losing games if you get sick or the like).

I'm getting sick and tired of all this constant whining of people who sign up for time limits they don't like and then complain when people aren't playing fast enough for their liking. You had that choice when signing up! Thinking people should have to give up their very busy lives to indulge you in some silly game seems quite arrogant and disrespecful to me.

heavenrose: i just want him in peace is all

I've just consulted a medium and he said that dien will suffer eternal unrest if he doesn't get to hear people's last thoughts and to know how he touched their lives.