rabbitoid: I support this request. And I would consider tournament games, too, if the player normally makes their moves quickly.
In any tournament, there is always one player who takes the full time limit; so, if your opponent is NOT that player, let him have extra time.

tonyh: The only problem with doing that for tournaments is you will get those people who purposly take a lot of time, and a friend of theirs to give them even more time. In my opinion, for tournaments, the time limit that starts should be the same time limit throughout.

Private, non-tournament games - then if both players agree, then I see no problem with it.

BIG BAD WOLF: I agree. That's why I added the limitation.

BIG BAD WOLF: If, as you say, the relaxation could be misused, then the slowest player in a tournament would not be allowed to have this benefit - and possibly the second slowest as well.
In my view, slow tournament players present much more of a problem than this very welcome 'gift' of extra time!

tonyh: But how would the computer know who is the "slowest" 1 week into a tournament? Towards the end of a tournament, it is easy to see who is playing slower then others - but what if on day 1, a couple people decide to mess up everyone else and they give each other 30+ days extra for a move. Again, just looking at worse case.

Unless you start to "brand" players as slow/fast, which is misleading since everyone currently plays within their time limits so would be unfair in my opinion.

BIG BAD WOLF: You are using a one in a thousand possibilty to argue against a perfectly reasonable benefit. So be it. Happens all the time in real life, so wht not on a website!!?

tonyh: If it were all rooks playing, I don't think it would be a big deal. But with knights and pawns who have limited tournaments, it could create a bigger problem. The only way I would support it in tournaments is if everyone in the tournament agreed upon it. I don't want to sign up for a tournament that I think will require a move a day and then have someone change it to seven moves a day or something. It essentially is unfair to pawns who have to plan what tournaments to play in based on time limit and what other tournaments they want to sign up for.

gambler104: As I understood rabbitoid's original suggestion, the increase in time was purely temporary, to enable a player to get over a sudden problem,(like a PC blowing up!!)

tonyh: Time extensions are good and this option has been proposed before. Our conclusion the last time it was sugested was that in the case of a tournament the time could only be mutually shortened not mutually extended. The reason mutuall shortening was sugested as being allowed was to allow friends that play often to move there games to the begining of the game list sorted by time left.

The reason this featur should not be allowed to extend game time is perfectly shown by this game which was started in 2005 and is still going.

How about if a player in a tournament needed more time for a good reason, a request could be made to all running players in that tournament, and can only be given more time by a unanimous decision. If the player making the request didn't have a good reason, or was otherwise being the 'slow' player, they would not stand a chance of getting a break. This option is most likely a bit much as far as the programing goes... but I thought I'd throw it out there.

tonyh: I dont see any need for any extension on time limits , if anyone has a problem with thier pc or problems at home then there is auto vacation which will always kick in.