Abuse of fast turn based option

[SiRan90]

Vut all of this is still in the hands of the player who joins the game, just don't join games where the play time, or the amount of turns, doesn't fit your available hours.

[Meeplelowda]

Vut all of this is still in the hands of the player who joins the game, just don't join games where the play time, or the amount of turns, doesn't fit your available hours.

But don't you see, this person is using some kind of mind control to make people join inappropriate games. It's pretty nefarious.

[Ken Corbin]

Vut all of this is still in the hands of the player who joins the game, just don't join games where the play time, or the amount of turns, doesn't fit your available hours.

But don't you see, this person is using some kind of mind control to make people join inappropriate games. It's pretty nefarious.

Whatever they is doing, it is working out quite well. They have a win/loss record that is as close to perfect as I have ever seen.

I've been active on BGA for 5 years and consider myself pretty knowledgeable about how it works. I've played real time games and turn based games before, but I had never run into a fast turn based game and just accepted it like any other turn based game. Then spent the rest of the game trying to figure out why I was so far negative with the clock. I did loose that game fair and square, the other guy got lucky in card draws so I never got ejected. I invited them to a new game with a "normal" turn based option, thinking maybe they did not understand what they had select, but that was ejected. The next day they were back with another oddly timed fast turn based game at which point I realize this was a deliberate strategy. Since I now knew how it worked, I accepted the game and worked very hard at both winning it and keeping more time on my clock they they had. There response was to suggest that I possibly was more interested in real time games and offer to abandon this one. Then repeated the abandon game request for every turn they took for the rest of the game.

I guess the point of this long story is, if someone as experienced as I could fall into this trap, pretty much anyone could.

[Shivaware]

Then repeated the abandon game request for every turn they took for the rest of the game.

Okay, this is the kind of behaviour that would drive me up the wall! If it were up to me, they would have this message in their profile:

This player has been banned from BGA. (forever)

[Ken Corbin]

Then repeated the abandon game request for every turn they took for the rest of the game.

Okay, this is the kind of behaviour that would drive me up the wall! If it were up to me, they would have this message in their profile:

This player has been banned from BGA. (forever)

Very understandable. But however obnoxious this may be, they are not violating any of the current BGA standards of conduct. That is the beauty of the whole scheme.

[ChiefPointThief]

Vut all of this is still in the hands of the player who joins the game, just don't join games where the play time, or the amount of turns, doesn't fit your available hours.

But don't you see, this person is using some kind of mind control to make people join inappropriate games. It's pretty nefarious.

I’ve called this player out years ago & spoke on this situation in forums (although not calling them out by name here). I will add some info to the topic.

As mentioned this person has “unusual” playing hours for someone who is currently in the western hemisphere. It doesn’t really align w/ any time zone for typical sleeping hours. So they could actually live in a different part of the world or just work overnights shifts etc. The issues lies with their games being 24 moves per day.

So I will share my experience with them. I am a very fast player so I accepted the game. With there not being a ton of players I would assume this person would be happy to get a game with unusual settings. Like mentioned I wasn’t “forced” to join. The playing hours almost fit perfectly with me but was off by a few hours. Here is where the issue lies and how this person is abusing the system. Because if the playing hrs don’t perfectly match this means even if you play at the speed while you are active 2-3hrs are coming off your clock on a daily basis w/ a 12hr clock. So by the time day 4 hits which also is pretty much near the end of the game their opponent is low on time.

This is how this person is abusing the system. What they do is actually pay attention to their opponents active hours. If this person is losing the game they will stall and play their turns while you are inactive to burn your clock and then time you out. I know this is %100 factual because I had 2 simultaneous games with them. The game they were losing they pulled this tactic while taking their turns all day in the game they were winning. In the game they were losing they literally waited until the exact min I logged out to take their turn and timed me out an hour later at the very second they could. Mind you it was only one move to be played & I had a guaranteed victory.

I wasn’t thinking at the time anyone would use such tactics. I honestly don’t understand how this person finds joy in playing like this. But also now I know about time jokers which can stop dirty ppl like this. This person also managed to get top ranks in games because they are manipulating the system by finding a loophole to void almost all their losses.

[ChiefPointThief]

Like op, when this happened to me I decided to look at this players history and that’s when I saw that it wasn’t a one time thing for them but a system of cheating. They used this dirty tactic about 10x in just their recent history. I went to every game they timed someone out and in each game they were 1 move away from losing. Because I’m against cheating it disgusted me this person found a legal way to cheat. & if you don’t want to call it that at the very least it is unethical.

@jellby this is nothing like someone consistently playing below their level.

[Ken Corbin]

That explains a bit more about how they work this. I beat their system by living on the west coast US and staying up until midnight. They always got the last move in each day, but the clock stopped running at 3AM so I only lost 3 hours each night. I could make that up during the day by staying close to my computer and making my move within minutes of theirs.

This also makes me wonder if we are all dealing with the same individual or or more than one player has figured this out. We are all studiously avoiding specifically identifying the perp. But I will mention that their last reported BGA game was on 5/21/25 which is longer than they usually go between games. They may be monitoring this thread and lying low.

[Ken Corbin]

I did open a bug report about adding this to the list of forbidden behaviors. As of now, what they are doing is 100 percent legal. It will take a lot more people upvoting it before anyone really pays attention to it. You can find it at
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=169035

Reporting this as abusive behavior was difficult because the reporting system goes to great lengths to make you specify exactly how the reported behavior violates the BGA rules. And this behavior just doesn't violate any existing rules. I was finally able to file a report as exploiting a known bug, which worked, even though the "known bug" was the aforementioned suggestion.

[SiRan90]

This is just a gripe. If people looked at game settings before joining then this wouldn't be an issue.