Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?

[nik592]

So, is it really "fair" to boot someone when the issue is largely geographical?

I used to think the geography was the issue, but it actually isn't. Even if you have all players in the same location, one of them will go to bed sooner than the others, and the clock will tick on their game all night. Of course, you could use playing hours in this situation, but just because all players at one table are in the same timezone, doesn't mean the whole tournament is (which is why 24 hour playing tournaments are used). The ideal is to have players with timezones spaced evenly around the world (eg. so in a 4p, each player takes a turn every 6 hours) and then everyone's clock will tick down equally. Depending on number of turns needed for a game, one or more players may still run out of time, but at this point it would be close to exceeding maximum table time anyway (unless turns are simultaneous). But 4 players geographically situated like that doesn't usually happen. And even if it does, probably at least one player turns up more than once every 24 hours so then their clock will tick less than others (and whoever follows them will likely use up more of their time).

What I wish the tournament rule was, you can only boot someone if "completion percentage of game" is less than "percent of time used".

I.e., if 50% of the total time is used and the game is 20% finished, go ahead and boot someone. The game isn't going to finish.

However, if 60% of the total time is used and the game is 85% finished, you shouldn't be allowed to boot someone. The game is on pace to finish. Let it finish.

I like this. Not sure how complicated it would be to program though. Also relies on devs putting in accurate progress indicators, which doesn't always appen.

[matthias7]

If the person you booted played within the time limit the entire game until the last turn, then I consider that very poor sportsmanship. I think it's selfish to guarantee yourself a win at everyone else's expense (lost reputation, others not being able to continue to see the final results) and unfair (since you may have advanced despite being a worse player than your opponent).

[Charlieboy80]

I've had people 'boot' me before when I've literally just nudged into the red; the game was close to ending anyway, it just so happened that it became my turn at 1:00am in my time zone two days in a row!

I've also been furious when I was blatantly winning, and the last place player booted a different player (who - also just nudged into the red) - causing me to share the win (and earn fewer points in a tournament).

The worst was when that happened - but I had used more thinking time than the others (apart from the booted player) - so got kicked out of the tournament for coming 3rd place out of 4 on my round (when only 2 advanced).

[Meeplelowda]

The worst was when that happened - but I had used more thinking time than the others (apart from the booted player) - so got kicked out of the tournament for coming 3rd place out of 4 on my round (when only 2 advanced).

Thinking time is used to decide who advances when a tournament round runs out of time before a game finishes, not when someone is expelled. When someone gets expelled, it's even worse (IMO): the oldest accounts get to advance.

[RazorOz]

It also depends on other factors.

I see a number of tournaments, including my own which will explicitly say do not boot players without contacting me, so obviously in those it's going to be frowned upon.

In anything multi-player doing this at the very end is going to be frowned upon, if you do the situation of player A has obviously won, player B goes over time on the last turn and player C times them out, which for most games voids the game.

[FSKFSK]

As a tournament organizer, there's no effective way to punish people who abuse the boot system. If you do an invite-only tournament, you won't get as many people. If you have an open tournament, you aren't allowed to block/ban people.

[RazorOz]

As a tournament organizer, there's no effective way to punish people who abuse the boot system. If you do an invite-only tournament, you won't get as many people. If you have an open tournament, you aren't allowed to block/ban people.

In my experience players will listen to do not boot players warnings. Albeit I go against the grain of everything you say, because my tournaments are invite only, being open to only players in a certain group (example https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=378841), and are pretty much consistently the biggest Heat tournaments run (and I could get more, but it's a timing thing, I don't want the tournaments to last forever).

[FSKFSK]

Maintaining and curating a player group for tournaments is more effort than I'm interested in spending.

[RazorOz]

Maintaining and curating a player group for tournaments is more effort than I'm interested in spending.

Sure, but it is possible is the point, and is a way you can control who enters your tournaments if you wish.

Most the time investment is from the initial anyway, and likely helps if you already know a lot of the players to get it going initially. Once running, the maintenance is minimal, because most games don't have a massive throughput of players unless they're brand new. It can also be done by multiple people interested in running such a project, because any group admin can be inviting players to the group.

[Rhemedyl]

I think this booting mechanism should be a bit changed:

1) I think at least 50% of the players should agree if we want to boot someone. It is not fair that someone finds that (s)he cannot have chance to win otherwise, and boot someone because timeout.
2) When someone reach the timeout, at that point there should be a possibility to boot, but after everyone (or according to my 1st point the majority) decided to continue, the time penalty should be reduced somehow (at least partially) and until the player will not run out of time once again, we should not have chance to kick the player out.

With the current mechanism I experienced a lot of cases, when someone run out of time at the beginning, but after that everyone did their turn smoothly, and we were close to the endgame, someone suddenly decided to boot that player.
I want to play in a fair game, but this way I have to play all further round knowing that anyone can stop it anytime, and they will get the same amount of winning points as me, then why should I try to win it?