What to do about someone who's almost untouchable on ELO board?

[FrankJones]

Well.

No one will ever get a cheap tournament win against me for having the most thinking time left - Because, I will always have the most thinking time left.

Hypothetically, if I see an opponent has been logging in and out and making moves in other games, but not in my game and then runs out of time, I won't grant much leeway, especially if there is no communication in the in-game chat.

It's not like the OP lost those games, they didn't have any problems with going over time themselves. That's just the streak they're dealing with. Since the premise was.

Open face Chinese poker has a lot more variance than Euchre.

I was able to achieve Elo#1in a game where nobody has ever reached 370 Elo like in Euchre.

So... play a few games and go on a hot streak. This player won 10 out of 11, right? SO.. do it yourself. If you can't, maybe he's actually just really good at the game?

Taking out several players on time isn't exactly a replicable thing. Depending on what the gametstate was when those players timed out, the argument becomes that the player they're trying to catch up to didn't really get a winning streak in the gamestate so much as a lucky streak of wins by default.

Seems that way.

But I'm not sure what the actual issue is here.

The player who gained these points didn't choose to forfeit the players. In a tournament, the forfeit is automatic when the game is not finished by the required time.

[tbhp]

It's an issue because the title of world leader should go to someone who earned it through their skill at the game, not because they happened to win a streak of games on time.

Sure, we accept that players may sometimes win on time, since there isn't really any better alternative, but that's far from ideal, and that's certainly not the way you'd want someone to become world champion.

[Ceaseless]

Well.

No one will ever get a cheap tournament win against me for having the most thinking time left - Because, I will always have the most thinking time left.

Hypothetically, if I see an opponent has been logging in and out and making moves in other games, but not in my game and then runs out of time, I won't grant much leeway, especially if there is no communication in the in-game chat.

It's not like the OP lost those games, they didn't have any problems with going over time themselves. That's just the streak they're dealing with. Since the premise was.

Open face Chinese poker has a lot more variance than Euchre.

I was able to achieve Elo#1in a game where nobody has ever reached 370 Elo like in Euchre.

So... play a few games and go on a hot streak. This player won 10 out of 11, right? SO.. do it yourself. If you can't, maybe he's actually just really good at the game?

Taking out several players on time isn't exactly a replicable thing. Depending on what the gametstate was when those players timed out, the argument becomes that the player they're trying to catch up to didn't really get a winning streak in the gamestate so much as a lucky streak of wins by default.

Seems that way.

But I'm not sure what the actual issue is here.

The player who gained these points didn't choose to forfeit the players. In a tournament, the forfeit is automatic when the game is not finished by the required time.

They seem to want some sort of answer to a player that k-factored their way to first after a series of tournament timeouts, as they don't see a practical way for anyone to catch up to that sort of thing.

[FrankJones]

Agreed, and, look, I agree that it's annoying that someone is atop the leaderboard in that manner, I'm just no sure what BGA can do about it.

The tournament time rules seem rather silly, so I just avoid them myself, but that doesn't solve the leaderboard issue.

[FrankJones]

It's an issue because the title of world leader should go to someone who earned it through their skill at the game, not because they happened to win a streak of games on time.

Sure, we accept that players may sometimes win on time, since there isn't really any better alternative, but that's far from ideal, and that's certainly not the way you'd want someone to become world champion.

I'm not sure whether this would help, but some sites don't add players to the leaderboard util they are past the provisional stage, which for this site is 21 games played, at which time the K-factor becomes the standard 20.

A fluke lucky 20 game streak is less likely than a fluke 11 game streak.

[ahyangyi]

Why do you guys expect people to make their move every time they log on? The whole point of turn based is that people can have a lot of time to think. If you want people to play immediately, that’s what real time is for.

If someone looks at a game and they can’t decide on a move they feel satisfied with, they are totally right to wait it out, maybe sleep over it and then come back when they are ready to make their move.

When I play someone, I want them to give me the best they have, so if that means taking a lot of time to play, I’m fine with that.

I understand that it can be frustrating, because we tend to be impatient and we want to know what is going to happen next. But to act like people are doing something wrong when they don't play at the times we want them to... that sounds entitled and is a misunderstanding of what turn based is about.

It's like if you played chess by correspondence with someone, and you complained that they aren't making their move the moment they receive your letter.

Sometimes I log in but do not make a move because I find myself needing to read the rulebook again, which can take more time than I have.

Which is pretty common to be honest, since I don't play the same game over and over.

[tbhp]

The opponent's entire clock ran down before he even made one move. And I didn't kick the player or forfeit the player- I just simply canceled the game with no penalty.

In that case that's very different. It's not really conceding or kicking or whatever if you take such an action before a game has even started. If your opponent didn't make any move, they didn't start building anything so you aren't destroying anything when you end the game. They have nothing to have regrets over.

I generally don't multi-task within a specific game. Meaning, I don't ;like having multiple games of the same type in progress simultaneously. I get the games mixed up and make mistakes. So, if an opponent is causing a game to go slowly by not moving within the agreed upon time, it is preventing me from playing that game and also making it difficult for me to play that game at all, because of the reasons in the previous sentence. I don't want to start multiple instances of the same game at the same time.

That doesn't seem very compatible with the spirit of turn based. I mean, you can technically play one game at a time, but it's gonna be impractical if you regularly want to start new games, since you can't control when your current game is going to end.

Generally, people play turn based precisely in part because that's a practical way of having many different instances of a game going at the same time. You can play lots of games and have a lot of time to think about all of them, so it's a blast in most people's perspective.

Come to think of it, that way of playing doesn't really fit the spirit of how we play board games. I mean, in real life you would probably never be playing two games simultaneously, let alone many of them. So in a sense, this website encourages a sort of consumerist culture that is a bit at odds with how games and art traditionally used to be engaged in, where it was considered more "cultured" to focus on one thing at a time.

I guess video games are what introduced this sort of consumption in our culture, since it's common for gamers to have many games going on at the same time (although it's very possible book readers would do the same thing, but it's not frown upon the same way, which is a bit of a double standard).

[FrankJones]

The opponent's entire clock ran down before he even made one move. And I didn't kick the player or forfeit the player- I just simply canceled the game with no penalty.

In that case that's very different. It's not really conceding or kicking or whatever if you take such an action before a game has even started. If your opponent didn't make any move, they didn't start building anything so you aren't destroying anything when you end the game. They have nothing to have regrets over.

I generally don't multi-task within a specific game. Meaning, I don't ;like having multiple games of the same type in progress simultaneously. I get the games mixed up and make mistakes. So, if an opponent is causing a game to go slowly by not moving within the agreed upon time, it is preventing me from playing that game and also making it difficult for me to play that game at all, because of the reasons in the previous sentence. I don't want to start multiple instances of the same game at the same time.

That doesn't seem very compatible with the spirit of turn based. I mean, you can technically play one game at a time, but it's gonna be impractical if you regularly want to start new games, since you can't control when your current game is going to end.

Generally, people play turn based precisely in part because that's a practical way of having many different instances of a game going at the same time. You can play lots of games and have a lot of time to think about all of them, so it's a blast in most people's perspective.

Come to think of it, that way of playing doesn't really fit the spirit of how we play board games. I mean, in real life you would probably never be playing two games simultaneously, let alone many of them. So in a sense, this website encourages a sort of consumerist culture that is a bit at odds with how games and art traditionally used to be engaged in, where it was considered more "cultured" to focus on one thing at a time.

I guess video games are what introduced this sort of consumption in our culture, since it's common for gamers to have many games going on at the same time (although it's very possible book readers would do the same thing, but it's not frown upon the same way, which is a bit of a double standard).

I'm okay with multiple games - just not of the same type. There are 15-ish games in my profile that I play. I would be okay with having one of each. But I don't want two of the same game; because I'll get the two gams mixed up and make errors.

[nik592]

That doesn't seem very compatible with the spirit of turn based. I mean, you can technically play one game at a time, but it's gonna be impractical if you regularly want to start new games, since you can't control when your current game is going to end.

As Frank originally indicated with "multiple games of the same type" and his clarification, it's not about one game at a time, but one game of Wingspan at a time, one game of Terraforming Mars at the same time, etc. I'm the same, I get confused between tables if I play multiple of the same game. So I too stick to one table per game at a time. And if a game is stalling out, that can get annoying because now I can't play that game.

Come to think of it, that way of playing doesn't really fit the spirit of how we play board games. I mean, in real life you would probably never be playing two games simultaneously, let alone many of them. So in a sense, this website encourages a sort of consumerist culture that is a bit at odds with how games and art traditionally used to be engaged in, where it was considered more "cultured" to focus on one thing at a time.

People don't play multiple physical board games due to practicality. People generally don't have space to have a single game setup to play across days or weeks the way they do online, let alone multiple games. Play by mail of multiple games simultaneously probably went on long before online gaming was a thing. Also to be mid-read in a (physical) book does not require any additional space for the book, and progress is easily tracked (eg. stick a bookmark in your book). The same isn't true for a physical board game, and less true the more complex the setup is.

[ResonanceSM]

I wish the forums had a better notification system.

I didn't realize people would fall off of they didn't play once every couple months. I guess I can only hope they don't play, or play and lose. That seems to be the best option. I'm not blaming the player, maybe they don't like the game. I mean, they haven't even really played it much.

I was just a little "worried" that they'd never play again, or it would happen again with some other players who enjoy being on top, then we just have a top 3-4 of people who played ~10 games, got lucky, and never played again. Obviously rankings don't really mean anything, but it would be nice to let other people get the top spot every once in a while. In higher variance games, you already know who the best players are because they're always near the top. Would just like to get that #1 achievement at some point for personal enjoyment.

Also, since tournaments don't have the setting where you can "add time" after moving, it gets really weird with time zones. But that's a whole different issue. But it's why I don't play the tournaments. If the guy who goes before me always happens to move after I go to bed, then I will invariably always run out of time, as there's no way to bank any time back, no matter how fast I play during the day.