Abuse of fast turn based option

[FrankJones]

Thanks for the responses....

The player in question lives in the USA, which narrows the time zone choices. The active range they select would be 6PM to 6AM on the east coast, 3PM to 3AM on the west. The smoking gun is to go through their game history which shows that they almost never loose. Sometimes they win fairly, sometimes they win by kicking out an opponent who is out of time. But they almost always win.

I accept that there are people who prefer the fast turn based options. Adding a warning for players accepting a fast turn based game which covers a large portion very late night hours in their time zone sounds like a good idea. I added my vote to that one.

I also opened my own suggested change at https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=169035 recommending that intentionally trying to force another player to run out of clock time should be added to list of forbidden behaviors. Proving intent is and should be a high bar, but think this it is pretty obvious in this case.

My friend,

Maybe the person works night shift ??

Not everyone has the same awake/sleep times just because they live in the USA.

[FrankJones]

I have a very erratic sleep schedule and I can play pretty much any time window.

am I "abusing the system" if I set a game to 6 PM to 6 AM?

When I start a game, I set the time window to whatever time it currently is, because I expect that's most likely to result in someone joining the game.

If I start a game at 6 PM, I'm not setting the time window to "6 AM to 6 PM".

[Ceaseless]

I have a very erratic sleep schedule and I can play pretty much any time window.

am I "abusing the system" if I set a game to 6 PM to 6 AM?

When I start a game, I set the time window to whatever time it currently is, because I expect that's most likely to result in someone joining the game.

If I start a game at 6 PM, I'm not setting the time window to "6 AM to 6 PM".

It really doesn't help that we have members using the win rate, that kick many users out, or that they have weird playing hours as some sort of "evidence" of nefarious activity. There are reasonable explanations for such behavior. If they think that behavior seems a bit strange and want to look into it, go for it, but there's some confusion about the difference between the actions that caught their attention and actions that actually indicate a problem on their end.

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.

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.

This is the core of it and should have been the focus from the start. Seeing them trying to get out of unfavorable scenarios like this. By all means if someone wants to mention what led them to look into it they can, but making sure there's a line clearly drawn between "this is what made me look into it" and "this is what showed me there was a problem and how I ruled out the innocent reasons I could think of" is important.