There are ZERO reasons tournament games have "Skip" other than some people abuse it for personal advantages

[Calmon70]

The tournament organizer put even messages on his tournament page: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=267364

esspea:
Reminder: DO NOT SKIP players who are playing slowly and are out of time. There is more than enough time to naturally finish the race even if some people run out of time. Skipping does not speed things up as you still need to wait for all other games to finish before the next round starts.

If someone is not playing at all, please message me directly.

esspea:
Hello Everyone and welcome to the tournament. Just a reminder to NOT SKIP people who may run out of time.

There is more than enough time across the 30 days for everyone to finish, even even multiple people run out of time. Skipping undermines the results and you still have to wait for the next game anyways.

If someone isn't playing at all, please message me directly. Usually after talking with them they start to play and can finish the game naturally on time.

Thanks and good luck!

But of course nothing helped, because people forget it, not even read, ignore, etc.

[menettm]

Hi there. I have not researched all the various suggestions for making tournament skipping, uh... less bad. And while I don't think it would necessarily and automatically solve the ultimate question of who advances and who doesn't, one very obvious fix - to me, at least - is...

Make the person who presses the SKIP button automatically be eliminated.

At the very least, this would mean that pressing the SKIP button would clearly *not* give any advantage to the person doing the skipping.

What do y'all think?

Then nobody will use the Skip button to no be eliminated !
It is better and more simple to suppress the Skip button to have the same effect

[blhootz]

Then nobody will use the Skip button to no be eliminated !
It is better and more simple to suppress the Skip button to have the same effect

Sure, I agree it's better to eliminate the skip button altogether. I just suggested it as an alternative measure, aiming to discourage the practice.

[nik592]

Then nobody will use the Skip button to no be eliminated !
It is better and more simple to suppress the Skip button to have the same effect

Sure, I agree it's better to eliminate the skip button altogether. I just suggested it as an alternative measure, aiming to discourage the practice.

For one thing, this would only be applicable in a tournament with multi-player elimination - typically, the person who is skipped is eliminated. The problem occurs when the tournament has to choose at least one other player to be eliminated from a game that does not have a reliable result.

Hiding the skip button in all tournament games is simpler than trying to make sure tournament games only with multi-player elimination also eliminate the person who skips (and otherwise fall back on current handling to only eliminate the person who was skipped/came last). It also still leaves you with who gets the third elimination when there needs to be one?

Besides, it makes the button useless - yes, it would discourage skipping, but what's the point in a useless button? And I guarantee you it'd fill the forums with people complaining about the stupidity of having such a button with such consequences.

[Oxmeister]

While I agree that the situation you describe is poor and unfair, I cannot agree with the title that there are zero reasons to skip in a tournament. I've played in some tournaments where the whole round of games need to finish to allow progression, and a single repeat offender falls way behind and times out every game they are involved in, needlessly keeping people waiting. In these cases, skipping is the only remedy.

The games will end on their own when the maximum time set in the tournament options is reached. Yes, this may mean some games run longer than others, and rounds can be delayed waiting on that one game. But the same would be true if every player managed to carefully use their allotted play time (ie. no one goes into the red until right at the end). Having a maximum time for games means that tournaments don't get stuck indefinitely, and having players stuck for a while between rounds is better than having players booted unfairly (and potentially people eliminated almost randomly). Besides, if a game runs to maximum time, the player(s) with the least time remaining will be eliminated - so this has the same result where the person who held up the game the most won't move into the next round anyway.

In other situations, either real time or near real-time games, a player using additional time will be able to use this advantageously (additional thinking time). We can all agree that some players are far too keen to skip, and use it to advance in a game they otherwise look like losing (poor form), but there are also circumstances where it's fair game.

They can only take additional thinking time if the other player(s) isn't using all of their thinking time (if all are using just the amount they have, the game will either complete just in time, or perhaps time out just before ending). While it's unlikely that everyone is going to use all of their thinking time, meaning some buffer is available, one assumes a player using less than their allocated thinking time is either a good enough player to figure out their moves in less time, or doesn't care (or know enough) about the quality of their moves - and additional thinking time may not have helped them. Furthermore, there comes a point when additional thinking time doesn't provide any additional benefit.

To be fair, your second point is the only one that MIGHT have a valid point, but I would argue that that could be worked around by allowing skipping in tournaments only for real-time play, and/or where a game has only two players. Where things typically go badly is in turn-based and/or where there are more than two players.

Thank you for letting me know which of my points are valid.. I would point out though, that all of your counter arguments fringe on the game maximum time limit, which only limits the extent of the problems I've pointed out, rather than negating them. If you disregard the player clock, , one player not adhering to their time limits can hold up 31 who are ready to go, round after round - where you stand on that is ultimately a matter of opinion, which has existed as long as the hobby.

[nik592]

Thank you for letting me know which of my points are valid.. I would point out though, that all of your counter arguments fringe on the game maximum time limit, which only limits the extent of the problems I've pointed out, rather than negating them. If you disregard the player clock, , one player not adhering to their time limits can hold up 31 who are ready to go, round after round - where you stand on that is ultimately a matter of opinion, which has existed as long as the hobby.

True, but whether a player is eliminated by booting or by having the least time when maximum table time is reached, the result is the same. And once that player (or players if there's more than one) is gone, the remaining pool should include fewer people who aren't taking their turns. This is assuming that people in negative time in tournaments actually ARE not taking their turns. The other issue around tournament timings is that people who go into negative time frequently do so because there simply isn't enough time allocated for each game in a tournament (again, this is typically a problem in turn-based tournaments as far as I understand - I don't play real-time tournaments, so I'm not aware if that's a problem there, though I wouldn't expect it to be). One of the proposed solutions to that is to allow longer maximum table time for turn-based tournaments, a suggestion that would be pretty easy to add, but is also ignored. But if skipping is needed in real-time tournaments because there are really that many people holding tournaments up, then I can't see an issue with keeping it there, unless someone who plays more real-time than me can argue a reason for it not to be there either.

[nicch]

Tournaments vary on the amount of time given per player, and I guess players are not considering this before joining. Yes there may be times when real life causes issue, but a lot of time it's the same players who simply join tournaments when they can't honour the time commitments.

There is a problem with multi player games rather than 2 player and I'm not sure just disabling the skip is the answer.

[Ceaseless]

What if players don't want to play a game with slow players going out of time? They can skip the player and no longer have to deal with that game anymore.

[Calmon70]

What if players don't want to play a game with slow players going out of time? They can skip the player and no longer have to deal with that game anymore.

How does it help to advance to the next round of the tournament? You have to wait for the other games to finish anyway.

And the far bigger problem: By skipping in a multiplayer game, you remove this one player, but what about the rest? They are doomed by the skip because the placement is based on account time and no longer related to the actual outcome.

When the game is ended by the tournament system, at least the time factor plays a role: it ranks from the least time remaining (last) to the most time remaining (first).

[Ceaseless]

What if players don't want to play a game with slow players going out of time? They can skip the player and no longer have to deal with that game anymore.

How does it help to advance to the next round of the tournament? You have to wait for the other games to finish anyway.

And the far bigger problem: By skipping in a multiplayer game, you remove this one player, but what about the rest? They are doomed by the skip because the placement is based on account time and no longer related to the actual outcome.

When the game is ended by the tournament system, at least the time factor plays a role: it ranks from the least time remaining (last) to the most time remaining (first).

The goal was to get rid of the slow player and end the game, maybe even to hit their reputation. You can wait for the next round of the tournament without having to deal with that game or player anymore. Playing a game with more than 2 players in a tournament system is a recipe for disaster, but players should already be aware of that going in, there's nothing to be done about that. The only solution to offer there is to stick with 2 player games. There's no great way to rank players if someone wants to slowroll the game to the point where completion is a problem. A player playing at a reasonable pace getting outranked because of time isn't really a good outcome either.