How do people force start "my" game with fewer players?

[Arnott]

Say I've set up a manual real-time 4-player game of Super Mega Lucky Box. And after 20-30 seconds, I've got two other people who have joined. So we are all now waiting for one more person before we can start.

Except every once in a while, it seems like one of those two players will do... something... and the game starts with 3 players. Which is not what I wanted.

How does this happen? Aren't I the table administrator? How can someone else start "my" game with me still in it?

[Jellby]

Are you sure it's one of those players doing it? What I see sometimes is that another player joins and quits, but somehow the game start is triggered and you get a game automatically starting with fewer players than requested (although at least in real-time you get at least the confirmation screen first).

[Arnott]

I guess maybe that could be happening. It makes the most sense, anyway. But there have definitely been a few times where I was totally looking at the screen when this happened and did not see any sort of "blip" that would kinda have to occur in this scenario, yeah?

[Jellby]

Yes, you should see it in the chat too (player X joined the table, player X left the table).

[Arnott]

I will look in the chat next time. But again, I'm pretty sure there was nothing there. Thanks, anyway, for the reply