What would you do?

[muddypawprints]

I am curious what others would do in this tournament situation.

A single-elimination tournament started five days ago. 3 days per player, 7 days per game. In the first round of the tournament, your opponent is the first player, and they wait 5 days to make their first move. Do you:

A. Play at the rapid pace your opponent is trying to, running the risk of them winning the game and knocking you out of the tournament.

B. Let the clock time out on the game. Since you will still have positive time on your clock, you will win the game and move on in the tournament.

C. Other (explain)

I can see A. Playing for the love of the game. Let the better player win.
I can also see B, as your opponent knew when this tournament was starting when they signed up for it and should have been playing prior to 5 days into it.
I don't like to kick others out of tournament games. (Playing in different time zones, life emergencies, etc. will sometimes take effect on a person's moves.)

[Stu_1977_SEmelb]

I usually just play. You don't know what drama people might suddenly have going on in their lives, preventing them from finding time for games. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. If they can still win even when they've almost run out their own clock, well then kudos to them, I guess.

If I find that they appear to be online a lot but still not playing for some reason then I might start to match their pace and if starting to get annoyed about their slowness enough then yeah, maybe let them run out of time. Particularly for tournaments, as you say.

What really irks me is when people skip the turn of a player who has only just barely gone over their limit — (particularly when that player might have the misfortune of being in a timezone which is the odd-one-out to the rest of the players and is often working or sleeping while the rest of them can play; seems to happen to me a lot... US, US, US, Aus... guess whose clock is the lowest... ) — sometimes by a matter of minutes or even seconds, especially when the game is nearly finished anyway and there's still plenty of time on the rest of the clocks to finish it, and thus nullify the entire game result after everybody else has become invested in it and would like a proper conclusion – and especially when these same players are notoriously slow for playing their own turns (makes me think of Roger playing Jenga against Hayley); I just give them a red thumb and hope that I never encounter them again.

[muddypawprints]

I usually just play. You don't know what drama people might suddenly have going on in their lives, preventing them from finding time for games. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. If they can still win even when they've almost run out their own clock, well then kudos to them, I guess.

If I find that they appear to be online a lot but still not playing for some reason then I might start to match their pace and if starting to get annoyed about their slowness enough then yeah, maybe let them run out of time. Particularly for tournaments, as you say.

What really irks me is when people skip the turn of a player who has only just barely gone over their limit — (particularly when that player might have the misfortune of being in a timezone which is the odd-one-out to the rest of the players and is often working or sleeping while the rest of them can play; seems to happen to me a lot... US, US, US, Aus... guess whose clock is the lowest... ) — sometimes by a matter of minutes or even seconds, especially when the game is nearly finished anyway and there's still plenty of time on the rest of the clocks to finish it, and thus nullify the entire game result after everybody else has become invested in it and would like a proper conclusion – and especially when these same players are notoriously slow for playing their own turns (makes me think of Roger playing Jenga against Hayley); I just give them a red thumb and hope that I never encounter them again.

I wholeheartedly agree! There are people who advance through tournaments simply by skipping other players, and not from their own skill. That isn't fair to the entire tournament. I was actively making a move once, and my clock went over. I tried to submit my play only to find a player had kicked me. Ridiculous

[mrdoctor]

Just play the game. If you finish, great. If you don't finish, then at least you win in a fair way.

[Max Power 357]

I try to avoid skipping in either tournament or turn-based play. Especially if we're having a good/close game. I'll usually let them know in the chat that I won't skip them. As long as they're making an effort to take their turns I'm ok with some overtime.

Only thing w/tournaments that I try to keep in mind - just because I don't mind waiting I/we could be holding up several dozen other players waiting for our table to finish. Might want to check the tournament page & see if you're the last table!

[Gulchen]

"the rapid pace your opponent is trying to,"


Is this

your opponent would hopefully play rapidly for the rest of the time
or
your opponent put some message in chat

?



If the former, I would go with ​ ​ ​ C. Kick ​ :

I don't see a point in giving the opponent false hope here, and as
MP357 brought up, this could also avoid delaying the tournament.

[nik592]

I'm not sure I agree that letting the game run to max time qualifies as "delaying" the tournament - the tournament has specified each game can take up to x days, if every single game (or even any) does, why is that a problem?

That said, if a person waits 5 days to make their first move (without explanation) isn't a great way to run your tournament play anyway, and depending on the game, there's a good chance it will run over max time anyway. So it may not apply here. But I am also probably a little sore about the subject, being the target of a booting after running just 48 minutes over time, due to timezone issues, in a tournament game where I was regularly playing moves, and possibly would have finished within the time constraints (though I admit, it may have run close to max time).

In this specific situation, I'd be going with A. but my motivation for playing on BGA, tournament, arena, whatever, is because I like PLAYING games. I want to see how the game plays out (most of the time - I've had a few games playing against people so far above me in ranking, it's like we're playing different games, and their moves leave me with minimal choices - those games suck). On the other hand, when someone disappears for days at a time, that's the point at which I contemplate booting someone anyway. So it's possible I would have booted them before it got to that. I'm not in favour of option B - that just feels a bit passive-aggressive in my opinion.

[danielvictor]

I usually play quickly when my opponent is playing quickly anyway.And often lose because of that.

[RobertBr]

Just play the game. If you finish, great. If you don't finish, then at least you win in a fair way.

It sounds like the original poser is talking about a two-player game. In which case clocking an opponent who fails to play for five whole days is a completely fair way to win and as legitimate as any other win.

To OP. Either just play what you are comfortable with or clock them. Unless they have offered a specific reason and you want to help them out (which is fine and very sportsmanlike of you, but not something you have any obligation to do in a competition) then I can see no reason for you to alter your play to accommodate their failure to turn up on time (no-one would do so in real life so I cannot see a reason to do so online).

[Max Power 357]

Ironic that, after posting here several days ago, I find myself in the "Ultimate Clock war" tournament!!!

...or at least that's what it should be called.

1st round, 42 games, games finished ZERO. Every game either someone got skipped or it was a clock out.
Round 2, well on it's way to being a repeat of round 1.

Whomever wins this thing might not even have to finish one game.