New mechanism to prevent skipping in tournaments

[BananaHarambe]

Players only get a karma penalty if the other players at the table decide to skip them, which doesn't always happen. If you feel your players should be getting through the tournament in the given number of days, then probably not disabling skipping (ie. allowing skipping) is appropriate, but it will still rely on the whims of the players. You seem to think that people who go over time should be skipped/penalised/etc., but I guarantee some tables will and some tables won't and those that don't will have rankings determined by time.

As someone who almost never times out in non-tournament play, but frequently in tournaments, despite checking in on BGA probably half a dozen times during my waking hours, I don't think feel it's fair to say that players who are over time deserve to lose. I'm not sure I've played in one of your tournaments (I don't play a lot of tournaments at present), and maybe your timings are such that people who are on regularly won't go over time, but that hasn't been my experience with almost any tournament I've played. It really depends on how much overlap (or lack of it) there is between players online time.

These are my thoughts as a tournament organizer that makes 8+ tournaments per month and wants to provide the best overall experience for as many players as possible. The biggest metric by far is the % of games that complete on time. A tournament can only run as good as the players joining it so I use the limited tools I have as an organizer to get the best group of players possible for a public tournament. Player quality can often matter more than tournament settings. For example, I can't prevent any specific nuisance players (cannot name and shame here) from signing up for public tournaments, even if I red thumb them.

If i wanted to make tournament entry more strict I would need to make a restricted tournament group to invite players from and moderate that group. I have no interest in that.

I use the maximum 85% reputation requirement and keep the signup windows around 30 days maximum to make it difficult for low reputation players to join. Maximum 30 days also lowers the chance of players signing up, forgetting about it and leaving BGA for long periods or forever. The 85% reputation requirement will apply at signup as well as 24 hours before tournament start.

I put thought into the game durations and review game completion stats on tournaments fairly often. Today I witnessed that a no-skip 5 day Vale tournament had 30/32 tables complete on time in round 1 and saw the turnover of the last 2 games ending and the new round beginning. Over 90% completion is pretty good considering the games are faster than usual, 5 days instead of 7 days. The signup page has a warning about it being a bit fast. I disabled skips on this one in part to extend the games a little longer and also to avoid penalties for players. The rounds will move fast at 5 days so disabling skips has no real drawback for tournament pace.

Looking at a 3p 2 tournament with 15 day time it has been going great with 36/36 games completed without skips or out of time over the coarse of 3 rounds and now it's onto round 3. https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=401663 I would say this tournament is a success since every game has completed. The longest game in Round 3 was 12 days and the shortest was 7 days, all reasonable for this game. The 12 day had a player go slightly over time, but players allowed it to complete, which is nice (slow player lost anyways).

It's understandable that we will get slow players sometimes and we will try to accommodate them as much as possible. However I should also be respectful to the vast majority of players (>90%) who play in a timely manner and similar pacing to each other. The 52 players in this tournament can handle these time settings and players in previous ones have as well so it would be disrespectful to these players to put the game duration up to 30 days just to appease the occasional much slower than usual player. This would greatly derail the pace of the tournament and I would prefer tournaments to have a reasonable pace and good flow from game to game.

From my experience as a tournament host as long as over 90% of games are completing on time the settings are usually good. When I have tried to be extra generous in the past I found that the slow players than needed additional time would STILL PLAY SLOW and time out regardless of how long I made the games so that may have skewed my opinion. I prefer to have closer to 100% games complete on time obviously, but it all depends on who is joining so I can never guarantee 100% game completion, but I can guarantee better than average tournament game completion.

I would prefer going over time or getting skipped to mean something for reputation so that my "high reputation" tournaments can continue to run with a lower chance of problematic tournament players ruining games. If nearly every tournament on this site because no-skip with the current reputation settings then these bad actors will not get properly penalized and continue to bother more players in more tournaments.

These are just my thoughts as a host.

[Mathew5000]

My impression over the last few years has been that in 4p tournaments with 30-day max duration, there's frequently one player overtime while the rest are under-time enough that the game can be easily finished if the overtime player is not skipped. It's for those situations that the new option (to disallow skipping) is most helpful. I particularly dislike situations where, under the old system, a game starts and it becomes quickly apparent that there are three fast players and one slow player who is unlikely to finish the game within the limit. Then I am thinking, "should I really invest my energy in strategizing on this table when it likely will end prematurely with a skip".

No-skip 4p tournaments solve this problem and give players reassurance that games will reach their finish despite one slow player. My gut says the same thing is true for 3p tournaments.

[nik592]

My impression over the last few years has been that in 4p tournaments with 30-day max duration, there's frequently one player overtime while the rest are under-time enough that the game can be easily finished if the overtime player is not skipped. It's for those situations that the new option (to disallow skipping) is most helpful. I particularly dislike situations where, under the old system, a game starts and it becomes quickly apparent that there are three fast players and one slow player who is unlikely to finish the game within the limit. Then I am thinking, "should I really invest my energy in strategizing on this table when it likely will end prematurely with a skip".

Absolutely. I only join tournaments where there's at least 48 hours of time per player, preferably 72 hours. The only exception is the daily Can't Stop tournaments which I used to participate in, and mostly those games finished easily in the time (even though it's a max of 2 days, but being only 2p and a quick game, it seems to go ok). But almost every longer game tournament I've joined sees me run out of time somewhere around the halfway point or even later. I've had tournaments which were on the last turn, I was over by minutes, the maximum duration was somewhere around the 50-70% mark and someone chose to skip me. To me that's a big difference than someone who is spending a day per turn, when your max duration is only 15 days, and a game is likely to have 15-20 turns each. As a player who regularly gets kicked from tournament games, I'd like the security of knowing that I'm not going to be the way out of elimination for another player just because my timezone doesn't align with everyone else's.

I use the maximum 85% reputation requirement and keep the signup windows around 30 days maximum to make it difficult for low reputation players to join. Maximum 30 days also lowers the chance of players signing up, forgetting about it and leaving BGA for long periods or forever. The 85% reputation requirement will apply at signup as well as 24 hours before tournament start.

This seems reasonable based on the way karma currently works. Even slightly stricter penalties in tournaments might be ok. The biggest issue for me in not being unfairly kicked from tournaments is ensuring there's sufficient time per player for a game to complete. Some games on here desperately need longer maximum time windows. Until that happens, those games are probably better off in no-skip tournaments. If the games you're organising don't suffer from that, then sure, leave skipping on, as I said. As I mentioned, I used to play the daily Can't Stop tournaments - 48 hours maximum, but 2p. I was rarely if ever kicked from those (and usually rightly so). If a game did hit maximum duration, typically I still won based on time. I'd argue skips should not be disabled for those tournaments, but that is entirely not my experience in say a 30-day maximum 4p TTR tournament.

It's understandable that we will get slow players sometimes and we will try to accommodate them as much as possible. However I should also be respectful to the vast majority of players (>90%) who play in a timely manner and similar pacing to each other.

I don't know enough about Vale to comment on the average length of a game. As I say, if 15 days is reasonable for the number of turns, all good. My point is that perceived "slow" players aren't always "slow" players, sometimes they're just "unlucky" players. If someone is checking in for turns 5-6 times per day across a 16 hour waking period, but is still losing 6-7 hours overnight because the player before them tends to play an hour or two after they go to sleep, I don't think you can call that person a slow player. Of course, let's assume a 15-day tournament, say 3p for simplicity, it's going to take 17 (overnight) turns before your time starts to run out, even at that rate. And if the other players aren't losing significant time, the "slow" player should get some quick turns in there as well, so it's probably a good 35-50 turns before you start to run out of time in those cases. If the game is likely to be over by then, skips are appropriate. If not, skips are a frustration for everyone.

There is of course a big difference with someone who only checks in once a day, and is losing 16 hours every time they take a turn. They're going to be out of time in just 8 turns, and as they're not checking in at any other point in the day, that will actually be around their 8th turn. That's a slow player. And you're quite right that people who play like that don't seem to be helped by extra time. Let's turn that 15-day tournament into a 30-day one, well, now they're running out of time on around turn 15. Probably not at the end of a game, unless it's a game which should never be going near a 30-day tournament anyway.

I would prefer going over time or getting skipped to mean something for reputation so that my "high reputation" tournaments can continue to run with a lower chance of problematic tournament players ruining games. If nearly every tournament on this site because no-skip with the current reputation settings then these bad actors will not get properly penalized and continue to bother more players in more tournaments.

For your tournaments, yes, but not for all tournaments, as settings currently stand (better now that no-skips are available). If tournaments were more punitive, I might seriously have to consider not playing them, or at least taking regular breaks to heal my reputation, rather than just because I'm not keen on tournaments or the time commitment required for the moment. And I don't think that's reasonable for someone who is making every effort to play regularly and within time, but is being hit by a poor timing placement with their opponents.

I've heard the odd person say they think tournaments should be considered some kind of endurance thing - like you SHOULD be getting up at 3am to see if you have a turn to take, or you deserve to get booted if not doing so makes you run out of time. I love playing games, but I draw the line at deliberately impacting my sleep for it (and my sleep already suffers quite enough as it is - and sometimes I take advantage of my insomnia to sneak in a few extra turns aka have something to do). I'm not saying you're among those crazy people, but it still seems like a bit of a crazy idea, to suggest making tournament penalties harsher generally to support tournaments that fit nicely within the current allowed settings, to the detriment of tournaments that don't really work with the current settings, especially when settings on the site are so slow to change.

[BananaHarambe]

Thanks for your comments nik592. I totally understand the issue of lucky time loss due having the timer on 7-8 hours while sleeping which effects all 3p+ tournaments since 7-8 hours in a day is already your entire share of the time. I do not consider those "slow players". A slow player could be defined someone losing 12 hours time on a single move multiple times in a game and only making 1-2 turns per day maximum.

3p Vale of Eternity typically takes about 20 "turns" to complete, which is 2-3 turns over 7-8 rounds. I explained this in another forum post recently when someone commented on getting skipped. 15 days is 120 hours thinking time for 20 turns which is 6 hours per turn. Technically some games could go a bit longer like 25 turns, maybe 30 turns is theoretically possible but unlikely. It is a relatively short game turn-wise so this timing is quite generous in my opinion and the chances of going over from overnight time alone are fairly low. I do the best I can with the tools given. If there was a fair way to accommodate rest periods or some other solution to the sleeping problem into tournaments while maintaining a reasonable game duration I would gladly use it.

As a benchmark to calculate how fast players should play to meet the game duration I generally assume that both opponents play twice as fast as the slow player since I commonly observe this in my tournaments. In a 3p 15 day it would be reasonable to assume one player will be slowest and go over time after 10 days. If everyone is playing 2-3 turns per 24 hours then the games should complete by the 10 day benchmark. From experience 80-90% of games are complete by 10 days at minimum. In later rounds after eliminations it is usually 100%.

[Mathew5000]

Here's the message you get in a "no skip" tournament when you click on "This player is not playing: what can I do?":

The salient part of the message reads: "If the player has been out of time for a while, you can try to contact the tournament organizer to explain the problem."

So having recently created a few no-skip Swiss tournaments with large number of players (410841, 410842, 410843), I am now getting PMs from players informing me about a player at their table who is not playing. But there's nothing I can do about it, other than sending a PM to the player who is delaying the game.

I don't understand why BGA put in that line, "If the player has been out of time for a while, you can try to contact the tournament organizer to explain the problem."

What solutions would I like to see? I set out a few options here: viewtopic.php?p=218319#p218319 And in addition to those I would add: delete the text advising players to contact the tournament organizer about a player who is not playing.

[mrdoctor]

I don't understand why BGA put in that line, "If the player has been out of time for a while, you can try to contact the tournament organizer to explain the problem."

It should be changed to 'contact BGA staff - please note that tournament organisers only choose the initial tournament settings and have no further moderation powers for an ongoing tournament'

[Meeplelowda]

I am now getting PMs from players informing me about a player at their table who is not playing. But there's nothing I can do about it, other than sending a PM to the player who is delaying the game.

It's disappointing that the language was written by someone who clearly doesn't understand how the tournament framework operates (the tournament organizer can't kick people) and didn't consult someone who does.

[thoun]

Thanks for the feedback! We removed the problematic line.

[Mathew5000]

Thanks very much Thoun! I appreciate it.

[RazorOz]

I honestly wonder if there could be some middle ground too, where you can't skip a player who isn't either x days over the time limit or hasn't acted in x days. The problem I have is so hopefully more games eventually are going to follow the Heat example of games playing to completion, and under that system it doesn't really make sense to use this option to make it impossible to skip a player, because it's not fair if a player doesn't turn up altogether to have who qualifies effectively decided by pot luck.

Very slow players/players who don't turn up at all is why I avoid running open tournaments altogether, so I can make sure players are active before inviting them, this is admittedly a time consuming task initially though (after your first attempt you can just use your previous tournaments as the basis for the majority of your next tournament), but I'd be much more inclined to run an open tournament if I believed they could be run in a fair manner.