AlliumCepa: I am under the impression that the “available for paying members only” message is out of date, I have seen automatic vacation working for brain pawns that I’ve played against. To be clear, when I posted my earlier message, your profile just showed “10 days”, it did not show “using the automatic vacation”. So checking that box has certainly altered what is displayed on your profile, and based on my observations of it working for other brain pawns I expect it to also work for you if it becomes necessary despite the claim on the settings page that it is “available for paying members only”.

AlliumCepa: Your profile indicates that you don’t have automatic vacation turned on, so it won’t automatically use your vacation days to prevent you timing out. You can turn it on at this settings page.

Artful Dodger: Outside of joking, I’d nominate Maharajah Chess (just the black player, obviously). Ludo deserves a mention too as a game that usually relies on luck more than skill.

To add a third reason of my own:

3) We have PMs and discussion boards for talking to people, but when playing I don’t want to waste time thinking up a reply to the random messages my opponent is sending, especially when there are other games waiting where it’s my turn.

I also couldn’t access this site for an hour or two this morning. Perhaps it only affected certain locations? The 3 of us reporting this are all from England.