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trouble picking up a correspondence game

I've had trouble getting correspondence games going. I had one going from a few days ago that I think might have been abandoned (has a little less than a 1 day out of three left to play... all moves to this point came within a few hours and we're only a few moves in now.) Because this one seemed to be going well I decided to open a few more games and maybe a 960.

First few games I posted the seek (generally 1 day) and went off to do other things. I kept the window open, but hadn't done that with the game I've been playing for a few days now. When I checked back my seek was simply gone.

I tried again and kept it open. I saw it get picked up, opened it and was white. I sat there to consider my first move (960 so I didn't really have an opening to choose from.) This time I witnessed the game abort.

My next attempt I made sure to type something in to ensure that the other player knew that I would be there to make the first move if I was white. I played a couple of moves and walked away to do other things.

When I came back the opponent had replied in kind, and a following line, "Play." . . . and the game was resigned. These things aren't time stamped, so I don't know how long it was before he asked me to play and subsequently resign. Couldn't have been more than an hour. Pretty much the same situaion happened the following attempt..

My last attempt this morning I tried something a little more direct. This time I was black and typed in the chat something like, "before we being, you do realize this is a 1 day correspondence game, right?" (Probably could be taken poorly, but I couldn't really come up with something that didn't read like that quickly.) White had already moved, but luckily it let him get out without penalty.

I emailed the developer about this situation, but the more I think about it the more I think it's really a people problem. At best, these are people that simply aren't aware they're picking up a correspondence game. Though the icon, ability to filter out games you don't like seems like it would be enough to minimize this occurance. At worst, people want the game both ways... they don't want to worry about the clock, but at the same time expect their opponents to move quickly. Kind of defeats the purpose of having correspondence at all.

As I said, I emailed the developer about this, but this post isn't really about suggesting features to address these problems. This is more a discussion on what is going on and what can we do to address the problem on an individual level. Is this just the way of things? Might it get better over time since correspondence is still kind of new here?
We have plans to address the issue of players unknowingly joining variants and correspondence matches. It's just dev has slowed the passed few days.
Awesome. If it's purely an issue of people mistakenly picking up the wrong type of game, I wouldn't mind probably. At least, I would simply inform the developer and wait until fixed. Being free to use, my feeling is, "it will get fixed when it gets fixed."

My concern though is that this isn't necessarily the case. Obviously we can set filters to avoid this stuff. But even if we assume people are using the default filter, you'd at least think that a person might not so easily overlook the time control; especially since in at least two of the cases i'm referring to here, time seemed to be an important issue for them. This points me to the conclusion that maybe they knew the time control when selecting the game and chose to play and then abandon/resigned when it became clear that it was going to be played as such instead of a de facto clock-less live game.

Obviously, I could simply be misunderstanding the situation, or maybe I simply got unlucky this morning. However, if my understanding is correct, then this could be a problem. How could a site deal with the situation where the prevailing attitude is that correspondence is essentially a super long time controlled live game? If this is the norm, then it kind of makes the correspondence setting unusable for that purpose.
I joined only a week back, basically for correspondence games, and I never had any problem getting games... but i play 2-days-or longer games, mainly 5-14 days (1 day game - i often sleep 20 hours at a stretch so not a good idea for me...)

i think i finished 9, and 22 more in play! so maybe 1-day-a-move games are harder to find?

Yes, I think the 1/day a move is your issue. People are reluctant to pick up a game like that because things come up on a weekend or the like and we might not get in a move in 24 hours. So most people opt for the 2/day but still play one or two moves a day from what I've seen. Maybe try a 2/day and see if your luck improves.

The other issue might be when people see a 1/day game in the list, they may incorrectly be thinking of it like a 1-day clock -- i.e. the whole game must finish in 24 hours -- hence the people picking it up and getting frustrated when you don't move in a hour. They may just not have a good grasp on what the 1/day game means.

Also, as MoralIntentions said, definitely consider joining the team, it will help you connect with people who actually want to play correspondence.
I would like to take this time to thank Clarkey and Thibault for creating and maintaining this wonderful chess site. All things considered there have only been minor glitches now and then. But are always addressed quickly, I for one appreciate your combined efforts!
agree with that - and one point - too many ppl today - incl me - are so rushed they should but actually dont read the rules - i *didnt* realise this was a non-engine site even for correpondence games; before my games got stopped being rated! used to play at ficgs and have fond memories but frankly investment in or access to expensive - insyituational/corporate/state - hardware to run (say) stockfish + lomonosov-tbs makes a difference as far as competition is concerned...

great site.

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