Board Game Arena

danielvictor wrote: ↑01 October 2025, 05:33 Agreed.My point was that if a player played slowly at first in a turnbased non-tournament game,but then started to play normally/promptly,why should other players then be allowed to skip their turns/why would they want to ? Ok,very occasionally,it might be because they had holiday plans and had run out of jokers.But it's far more likely to be for tactical reasons because they are doing badly in the game.

I have already said all this before.

acceptable: skipping turns and forcing forfeit when a player is out of time.

Not cool: allowing the game to play on, and then later, upon realizing that player will win, skipping his urn and forfeiting him.

When a player runs out of time, opponents should need to decide then and there whether to

1) play on, with time restore to the positive, or
2) Forfeit the opponent.

A player should not be allowed to decide to let them game continue but then forfeit the player later when the player is winning and has made a subsequent moves in a timely manner.

The vulnerability will be cancelled as soon as the player gets back to positive time.

Jellby wrote: ↑02 October 2025, 14:57 The vulnerability will be cancelled as soon as the player gets back to positive time.

True, but that might not be possible if the player is several hours over time and the game only has 4 or 5 turns left.

If you make a small mistake (a few seconds over time, minutes in turn-based), you may be able to recover if your opponent doesn't see it or doesn't want to take advantage of it.
If you make a big mistake (a few minutes over time, hours in turn-based), you may not be able to recover. And even if you think you are in the way of recovery, you'll still be in a losing position if your opponent realizes it or decides to finally take the winning move.

As far as I know, there's no rule in chess that says that if you let pass an opportunity for checkmate you cannot take it in a later turn. It's no different with time violations on BGA: you can expel other players as long as their time is negative, and not doing it at the first chance doesn't mean you cannot do it later if it suits you. Conversely, if you go over time and you're not expelled, you should not assume you won't be expelled later.

Games on BGA mostly aren't chess,and the general idea is to finish them naturally,rather than gain hollow 'victories' by skipping other players' turns. So if a player goes over time limit,but then shows that they are willing and able to play at a normal pace,surely it is better not to allow their turns to be skipped,even though they may not yet have been able to recover the lost time.

Jellby wrote: ↑02 October 2025, 17:27 If you make a small mistake (a few seconds over time, minutes in turn-based), you may be able to recover if your opponent doesn't see it or doesn't want to take advantage of it.
If you make a big mistake (a few minutes over time, hours in turn-based), you may not be able to recover. And even if you think you are in the way of recovery, you'll still be in a losing position if your opponent realizes it or decides to finally take the winning move.

As far as I know, there's no rule in chess that says that if you let pass an opportunity for checkmate you cannot take it in a later turn. It's no different with time violations on BGA: you can expel other players as long as their time is negative, and not doing it at the first chance doesn't mean you cannot do it later if it suits you. Conversely, if you go over time and you're not expelled, you should not assume you won't be expelled later.

I agree with you that the BGA framework allows this.

My point is that I believe the decision whether to expel a player should be made immediately when a player is out of time, and that if the choice is made not to expel the player, that player's clock should be restored to 0:00 such that the next move will put the player back in the positive and enable the player to continue without being expelled on future turns despite playing immediately each turn.

If players know this, and an opponent runs out of time, the player can then make the decision knowing that there might not be another opportunity to expel the player later.

Allowing the timed-out player to continue playing, merely for the purpose of increasing the progression of the game to get more Elo before expelling the player - that's not an optimal way to handle such situations, in my opinion.

Something else to consider. I had a few occasions in the last 4-5 months when my life became a bit hectic. I used a vacation joker each time. I didn't even have a lot of games going - maybe 5-7 games.

My 4th and last joker was used recently when I had ONE ranked game going. I just did not want to risk a forfeit. So, now I am out of jokers, and I have no more safety valve for emergencies.

So, if I do have something major occur and I run out of time, well, that's on me. And if that happens and I forfeit, I'll understand. Which just means nice guys finish last, because I have never forfeited anyone and I have had plenty of opportunities, and quite possibly the other player could have used a vacation joker but chose to save it instead.

So, even though I frown on expelling players, I can't really blame people, especially if they have been expelled themselves by other players.

danielvictor wrote: ↑02 October 2025, 02:35 Indeed...so then all the more reason to give them an incentive to play on.If that vulnerability were cancelled after a couple of moves at normal speed,that would allow them a decent chance of winning the game,as opposed to the risk of being skipped at any time.

Isn't that how it already works? That's what happens when you regain time after making a move, which is how games on BGA usually operate.

danielvictor wrote: ↑02 October 2025, 17:41 Games on BGA mostly aren't chess,and the general idea is to finish them naturally,rather than gain hollow 'victories' by skipping other players' turns. So if a player goes over time limit,but then shows that they are willing and able to play at a normal pace,surely it is better not to allow their turns to be skipped,even though they may not yet have been able to recover the lost time.

I'm not aware of any such "general idea". Why not say "players should gracefully resign when they go over time instead of gain hollow "victories" by playing on after losing on time. Surely it is better to skip their turns upon seeing that they have not chosen to concede for themselves?" BGA is a bit harsh with reputation and docks players for "quitting" even when they didn't even force their opponent to time them out (alongside another bizarre docking a player's winnings for how early their opponent quit), but I suppose you can think of the reputation hit as a penalty for violating the agreement to play in a certain timeframe.

I suppose you could aim for the best of both worlds by automatically game lossing a player over time without ending the game, but allow any player to choose to quit without penalty from that point onwards. The results are decided with the game loss, but anyone who wants to keep playing can choose to do so.

Playing on after a player has quit,or ad their turn skipped,is a somewhat sub-standard experience on BGA.The system seems hell-bent on reminding you that the game result doesn't count,and that all of the remaining players are 'winners'. Sometimes it doesn't even let you see the scores.That is what I meant by 'hollow victory'.
So no,I don't want the slow player to quit,I want to encourage them to play normally,.And if they do start to play normally,I don't want other players to be allowed to skip their turns.