“Formula” for game length in a tournament

[FDHenneberg]

I remember someone saying something akin to “count the turns of a game (adding up each turn by a player, so taking player count into account) and multiply them by … hours”, and you’ll have an approximation to the minimum viable game length in a tournament. But I can’t find the post. Can anybody say something to that effect? I tried to set one up and BGA proposed 23 days which seems long to me in a 2p game with 40 to 50 turns a game (so each player taking half of that). The tournament should also be viable for newer players and for people in all time zones (no playing hours), but not for absolute beginners (Apprentices and above).

[BananaHarambe]

My rule is to allow 4-6 hours per "turn" for any tournament games to allow the vast majority of players to complete their games across different timezones and schedules. People signing up have no idea what is reasonable time so you can't expect players to naturally filter.

If a 2p game takes 20-30 turns to complete you would want to choose 7 days time which is 84 hours per player. The games will generally end around 4-5 days, but that is the whole point about MAXIMUM game length, to account for longer games or slower players, awkward schedules. If you choose 5 days it will be too fast because many players will fall into negative time despite pretty reasonable pace of turns. Ideally the time per player is long enough that players will not get negative time and be subject to drama about getting skipped or having 1 player manipulate/stall the clock to avoid a loss. When all players can complete their games within their allotted time there is no drama.

There will usually be one "fast" player and one "slow" play in terms of thinking time, rarely 50-50. It will very often be more like 70-30 even when both players have reasonable pace of moves. In that example one player uses nearly 84 hours and the other player uses about 36 hours. Add 84 and 36 hours together and that's 120 hours, 5 days like I mentioned above

[mrdoctor]

For 2-3 player games, assume that 2 moves a day per player will be the maximum reasonable rate. For 4+ player games, assume 1 move a day is the likely reasonable rate given timezone/sleep differences.

If you want to minimise timeouts, then just try and set games to accommodate around 1 move a day per player.

In your original post you say 50 moves total / 25 per player is approximately the maximum turns. In that case, 15 day long games would enable the games to be completed without many time-outs occurring. You could get away with 10 day long games if you have the 'no kicking' option turned on - 2 player games are a bit easier than 3+ games as even if both players are in different timezones, there's probably at least one hour they'll log in at the same time and play almost in real-time for a bit. .

[dschingis27]

I would also say that 4-6 hours per move is a good ballpark. Make it 8 hours per move if you want to be extra-safe and have a slow vibe in your tournament, make it 4 hours if you want a faster paced vibe.

But you also have to take into account how complex a move is in your game. If single moves can be done very quickly (say, Ticket to Ride), then you can be more on the faster paced side. If there is not so much thinking per move, it's easier for people to make moves more often, I don't kow, they can do them next to making their meals, sitting in the tram, or whatever. If a move regularly requires more thinking and a lot of movements overall, then people are more hesitant to do it "on the side" and more often do the moves in their dedicated BGA sessions. At least that's my experience, simpler games naturally move faster than more complex games.

And then there are games with simultaneous time, e.g., 7Wonders. Players make simultaneous moves, so clocks run simultaneously, that is not capured well by the BGA timing template. When you create a 7Wonders tournament with 7 players per game and set the max time per game to 7 days, each player has a personal thinking time of 1 day (7 days divided by 7 players). That means their clocks can run out already on the 2nd or 3rd day of the game. You have to be careful with games that have simultaneous moves.

[FDHenneberg]

Thanks everyone, this was extremely helpful!

[RazorOz]

Your best bet imo is to just research the game you're looking to make tournaments for. There are formulas you can use given by others, but some games turns are more clicks than others, or the "turn" is less defined, so it won't be perfect. Look at other tournaments for the game in question and see what's working and what's not.

Another thing to recognise is that your options are relatively limited. As the options go 15, 30, 60. I suspect a lot of games fall between one of these categories in reality. You should generally side with caution, ie. games generally take 15-20 days, make it 30 day rounds. Though don't go too far the other way, as one thing I've noticed is since they gave the option for 90 days now people have started creating tournaments where that's way too long. That option does have purpose for longer games, but putting it on games that should complete in less than 30 is just silly, as you will just end up wasting lots of time for players who don't turn up, especially if it's combined with the can't kick players option being turned on. You don't want your clock too short where the majority of games never complete, but you also don't want it too long where the rounds just drag forever.