Please review tournament - unfair rules

[Evilgenius1979]

Hi,

Please could someone review if the tournament rules are working as intended, as they shouldn't be penalising active players who are trying to compete.

Tournament in question is: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=526952#stage2
Table in question is: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=825264806&gs=1

A player timed out before before any tiles were played. When they player eventually came online, the game made us continue till the end placing all of our tiles.

I was top of the group in the swiss rounds, and won the above table on points, but because I got more sleep than others I ended being placed second and the player with the most time was given first place.
Table abandoned
The game was abandoned automatically because the players did not manage to finish it before the next round of the Tournament. The player with the most remaining thinking time wins the game.

I re-iterate, the game continued to play out to the end, why didn't it take points into account. It is not really fair to penalise players who are actively playing and doing well with this silly system. Also the player in question just got a timeout message against their name, rather than a more serious sanction. This type of behaviour affects players in the tournament and shouldn't be allowed. Checking the players profile it says that their reputation is 100% perfect, however reading the Tournament FAQ you state the following: If you register to a tournament and then don't come, you receive a "leave" penalty on your profile. Consequently, this is very important to check that you are available for ALL planned matches.

I kindly ask someone to review this. situation and provide me an opportunity to continue playing in the tournament as I was hard done by in this situation. Hopefully a review of how tournaments treat time wasters will happen in the future.

Kind regards,

[RazorOz]

Nobody here will be able to do anything. I've never heard of the game, but it looks like the clock on it was way too ambitious as there seems to be lots of timeouts. Don't join tournaments with bad clocks, they're a waste of time, and always go like this.

[mrdoctor]

I re-iterate, the game continued to play out to the end, why didn't it take points into account.

I've never played this game, but looking at the log it looks like you didn't get to the end. It seems like 8 of 9 rounds were played, and the game then timed-out at the beginning of round 9: https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=825264806

[Evilgenius1979]

If you add thinking time to the logs (using the graph at the bottom) you get the following which happened in turn 1

jenzanos: -2 days
3/27/2026 1:15:53 PM

The player didn't play their first move until they were already in -2 days of thinking time (we started the game with positive 2 days, so they took 4 days to make their first move)

These rest of the plays were irrelevant as the final calculation for the winner was based on who had the most thinking time remaining. This is the message posted at the table:
Table abandoned
The game was abandoned automatically because the players did not manage to finish it before the next round of the Tournament. The player with the most remaining thinking time wins the game.

I am trying to highlight that this is an unfair way of measuring standings in a tournament game as well as no penalty being applied to the player who made us forfeit the game.

If you look at the last log, this is the total thinking time remaining per player:
TKundNobody: 13h48
jenzanos: -2 days
Nici_the_cat: 33h26
Evilgenius1979: 23h30

As you can see, having 23 hours remaining still, the only reason I was eliminated is because Nici_the_cat had more time and maybe a timezone advantage, even though they scored fewer points overall.

I am hoping a moderator reads this and a proper penalty is applied to jenzanos' Reputation as it still currently states Perfect 100%

[mrdoctor]

I am hoping a moderator reads this and a proper penalty is applied to jenzanos' Reputation as it still currently states Perfect 100%

You signed up to a tournament with the settings listed as follows - this combination of settings is essentially what has led to the situation you're in:
* "Out of time players are never kicked"
* 4 player games
" Game duration - maximum 1 week
* Players to keep per game: 1

Time-outs were always pretty inevitable due to the short-duration for 4 player games. No penalty can or will be applied due to the player not being kicked out of the game (as you were in a no-kicking tournament).

[BananaHarambe]

You joined a tournament with poor time settings that had a high percentage of games decided by running out of time or having "no life" in order to have the most thinking time. You played 3 rounds to qualify for finals, which were multiplayer elimination with only 1 player advancing, which is super prone to having upsets like this. I wouldn't recommend taking the tournament outcome seriously.

Next time be more careful what tournaments you sign up for and if you want to make a better version of this tournament structure, make a tournament yourself. Players used to get upset about skipping in 4 player games ruining the outcome of the game so they added the option to prevent skips. Games will still often go to time but without skips there is zero reputation penalty for going over time in these tournaments now. Cannot rely on reputation as an indication of completing tournament games on time anymore.

I watched a replay in finals and counted 21 "turns" for the player I tracked. It was likely 80-100 turns total among the 4 players. A general BGA rule is that 4 player games usually need 30 days, 15 days minimum. 7 days is only 168 hours so in order for a game to finish on time a move would need to be made every 1-2 hours. This could never work in practice with the turn order generally going clockwise and needing 4 players regularly online to coordinate. Each player had only 42 hours of thinking time to make ~20 moves which means you need to make a move within 2 hours of your turn to keep up. As you can imagine this is very difficult when accounting for sleeping and working.

15 day duration would have worked much better. There would be 360 hours to share which 90 hours per player and 4-5 hours thinking time per move. This is closer to the required time consensus of the BGA tournament forum community.

[Evilgenius1979]

Again I will highlight what is stated in the Tournament FAQ:

If you register to a tournament and then don't come, you receive a "leave" penalty on your profile. Consequently, this is very important to check that you are available for ALL planned matches.

Put some rules in place to make it enjoyable for everyone instead of the selfish that don't meet their commitments. And have proper consequences to manage the selfish.

I had read several threads on this forum and I see there is a common thread related to grievances in tournaments with little or no action. I guess this experience has made me consider not to attend future tournaments and not to invest in premium membership. I was happy to contribute to this platform before, but if there is very little control I will not do this going forward.

[Meeplelowda]

I guess this experience has made me consider not to attend future tournaments

Consider the alternative of choosing carefully the settings of the tournament you enter now that you know about these issues. There is no licensing procedure for hosting a tournament. It is as if a country allow someone to legally drive a car without any evaluation of their competence to do so.
Until BGA implements some kind of gatekeeping for badly structured tournaments (probably never) your only defense is avoiding the bad ones that are created.

[yodamus]

I guess this experience has made me consider not to attend future tournaments

There is no licensing procedure for hosting a tournament. It is as if a country allow someone to legally drive a car without any evaluation of their competence to do so.

Top notch quote. Multi player tourneys are usually horribly setup. Beware. Many have no concept of time.

[FSKFSK]

A tournament game has a fixed maximum time, 7 days in this case. After 7 days have passed, the tournament ends the game, no matter how much progress is made and how close you were to finishing. The actual score in the unfinished game is now irrelevant, no matter how far ahead you were and how much of a lock you were to win.

In a tournament game that times out, players are sorted strictly by time left on their clock. As you pointed out, this is stupid and unfair to you because of your timezone.

If a player is kicked for running out of time, then it is a tie among the players who weren't kicked. If it's a multiplayer elimination tournament, "account age" is the tiebreaker if more than one person needs to be eliminated. In that tournament, kicking someone for running out of time wasn't allowed.

The only thing you can do about it is read the tournament settings carefully before signing up.