Tournaments with playing hours

[ChrisLS]

I'm a fairly active player, but haven't entered many tournaments. I recently joined an Ark Nova round robin tournament, and it has playing hours that match up with North American working hours.

I'm a classroom teacher in the Western Hemisphere, and while I check my games when I wake up and get home from work, I don't have the opportunity to play during the school day. The problem is that I've been paired with many Eastern Hemisphere people. While in many cases this would be an advantage as I could check my games frequently, the circumstances I'm in mean that I'm using my thinking time while I work. I'm making my choices, and my opponents can respond, then while I'm working they are sleeping. As a result, I've been kicked from three games because I'm out of time, and I'm expecting more kicks as I'm in negative time in several games.

Particularly when combined with a round robin format, this is brutal to my karma. Isn't it possible to prioritize pairing people based on region or something when there are specific play hours? I know part of this is my own fault for not checking the play hours carefully enough to exclude my working time, but it's really frustrating to lose so much karma so fast when I'm playing as frequently as I can.

[Meeplelowda]

Isn't it possible to prioritize pairing people based on region or something when there are specific play hours? I know part of this is my own fault for not checking the play hours carefully enough to exclude my working time, but it's really frustrating to lose so much karma so fast when I'm playing as frequently as I can.

Tournaments don't have automated matchmaking, so how would that "pairing" work?

One improvement that I would support is that whenever a game has playing hours--regardless of whether it's Arena, tournament, or regular--a warning about the playing hours should pop up that you have to click to acknowledge before joining.

They already have a warning and opt-in for beta games, so I don't see why this is any different.

[Mathew5000]

Particularly when combined with a round robin format, this is brutal to my karma. Isn't it possible to prioritize pairing people based on region or something when there are specific play hours?

You said it's a round-robin tournament, so I don't understand what you mean by prioritizing pairing people based on "region or something". (Because you're paired against everybody, right?) Also, keep in mind that just because people are in the same region does not mean they are logged in to BGA at the same time. People in the same time zone do not all sleep at the same time or work at the same time. BGA's "playing hours" is in principle a much better solution than what you suggest. But playing hours does not work if players sign up who will be unavailable during the specified playing hours.

I agree with Meeplelowda that there ought to be a pop-up warning when joining a game or tournament with playing hours. The relevant suggestion is https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=29609 but that has only 11 upvotes in the four years since it was proposed.

As for avoiding being kicked when you are out of time, all I can suggest is use the chat to apologize to your opponent and ask them to let the game play out even though you are over your time limit.

[Meeplelowda]

You said it's a round-robin tournament, so I don't understand what you mean by prioritizing pairing people based on "region or something". (Because you're paired against everybody, right?)

Ah, I read "pairing" as referring to being registered for a tournament, but maybe this is what they meant.

I agree with Meeplelowda that there ought to be a pop-up warning when joining a game or tournament with playing hours. The relevant suggestion is https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=29609 but that has only 11 upvotes in the four years since it was proposed.

Every time I see that link I click on it, only to find that I've already voted for it.

I imagine BGA staff meetings go something like this: "Item Z on the agenda: improving the tournament framework. Oh! We're out of time?! OK, let's table that until Q2 2025."