Board Game Arena

BarnardsStar wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 04:36

Shivaware wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 03:53 Everything BarnardsStar has said is accurate and well-written!

Try not to sound so surprised.

nuffbought wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 01:37 This is the second game where I have no idea why I'm in negative time.

The first time this happened I was in a Machiavelli game and the person before me kept taking forever to take their turns. Then one day they kicked me from the game just a few hours after their turn. I don't know how my time got negative in that one since she was the one taking so long, so I thought maybe there's a way to manipulate another person's time. Is there?

I wanted to go back and look at this game… (If you’re not actually complaining about another player, it’s fine to link to the table.) https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=783474157

That’s the play-by-play of your game, with timestamps. I find it helpful in casss like this to go allllll the way to the bottom and turn on the “Display thinking time in logs” checkbox. The thinking time will be green when it’s positive and red when negative.

First thing to note is this is a 4x/day game. That means you start with 24 hours and each time it becomes your turn, 6 hours (24/4) are added to the clock, but it can never go above 24 hours. Also when it becomes becomes your turn, the clock starts counting down and does not stop until the game is not waiting on any actions from you. This includes while you are sleeping. (I’m wording this very precisely; in some games you may get to take multiple turns in a row; you don’t generally get hours added for each of these. It happens once, when it becomes your turn.)

So, looking at the logs and the helpful chart at the way bottom, we can see your time had several steep drops. I’m in Eastern US time so I’ll be citing the timestamps as I see them. You may need to adjust for time zone differences.

You made a move on January 5 at 5:30pm at which point you had 15h17m left. Your two opponents took their turns, the last of whom concluded at 12:05am on the 6th. It then became your turn but you did not finish your turn until 7:04pm at which point your clock had been running nearly 19 hours. So you lost 13 hours (you gained 6 when it became your turn and then it ran down for 19), down to just 2h22m.

On the seventh, it again became your turn at 1:15am so you gained 6 hours (up to 8h22m, which isn’t shown), but then did not take your turn until 2:18pm… the clock ran down about 13 hours for so you lost time and went negative, to -4h40m.

That was the first time you went negative. You managed to regain time when it became your turn at 12:30am on the 8th and you made your move just 45 minutes later. This got you to +31 minutes on your clock but you went negative again later when it became your turn at 9:24am and had not taken your turn by 4:27pm, when you got the boot.

Does this make things any clearer? I’d suggest you probably want to go with a slower speed table, maybe 2x/day? You would have been just fine if every turn added 12 Hours to your clock instead of 6.

Shivaware wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 03:53 Since this is your first tournament, there may be another unpleasant surprise awaiting you. It is indeed possible for people with negative time to be kicked out of the game by any other player (even one with more negative time). Whenever anyone is kicked out of a tournament game, everyone else is tied for first place. In your tournament, only two players advance, so someone else besides the expelled player has to be eliminated. In those cases, it is the players with the newest accounts that are eliminated. Since you have the newest account, you will also be eliminated if anyone is kicked out for being overtime. As said before, if no one kicks anyone else out, but the game runs out of time before the end, the order will be determined by each player's remaining time on their clock. It is possible to create a tournament where out-of-time players cannot be skipped, but it is not the default, so most tournaments do allow skipping.

Another option in tournaments to watch out for is playing hours. This is a 12 hour range for playing where the clocks do not count down outside of this range. The specified times will be in your browser's timezone, and people in different parts of the world will see a different range. The person who creates the tournament might see 9am to 9pm, but you could see 1am to 1pm. Joining a tournament where the clocks only count down while you are sleeping is a good way to run out of time.

Round robin tournaments mean you play a game against every other player, and they almost always are scheduled to run at the same time. This can also be a shock for an unsuspecting player!

Anyone with a premium account can create a tournament, and the system does not prevent tournaments with crazy options, so you should check them very carefully. Good luck and have fun!

nuffbought wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 08:49 Determining the winner based on how much time is left is crazy! Why not let the one who is winning win?

BarnardsStar wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 02:49

tbhp wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 02:27 The maximum duration of a game usually corresponds to the sum of allotted times. So, the moment that sum reaches zero, that would mean the game is over.

The times displayed in your game are nonsensical. You should contact someone about it.

No, don’t contact anyone. Everything here is fine. @tbhp is overlooking the fact that this tournament has “simultaneous mode” enabled. Everybody’s turns go at once, so everybody’s clocks run at once. If nobody had taken their first turn for whatever reason, the sum of your clocks would have been negative after less than two days.

But the maximum duration of the game is still seven days… I think it continues even if everybody is negative.

nuffbought wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 09:01 Before seeing your post, I tried to check my current Yahtzee game to see what was going on with times but I could only go back a small amount, not to the beginning of the game. Is there anyway to do it from the beginning of a game that's in progress? I suspect that people are running out of time because of time zones, especially since this is simultaneous turns. Is this why people put certain 'play times' in the options? I assumed that would be a bad thing, but now I'm starting to think it's a good thing, since then you can sleep without running down the clock. When you see the 'play times' is it always showing you the times in your time zone?

nuffbought wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 08:49 Determining the winner based on how much time is left is crazy! Why not let the one who is winning win? For example, I'm winning as I have more points right now.

nuffbought wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 09:01 I've since found out that there's a lot of issues on this site with not showing the correct status of the game, so maybe that happened and I thought they hadn't taken their turn but they actually had? I now know to refresh to be certain you're not waiting in error.

nuffbought wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 08:49

Determining the winner based on how much time is left is crazy! Why not let the one who is winning win? For example, I'm winning as I have more points right now. Game should end tomorrow, 12pm PT. If the two that have most negative time take their turns they may pass me up, then one of them would win.

Also, it seems that time zones can really mess someone up with their Thinking Time. I think mine was used up a lot when I was asleep. And it seems this could be manipulated by players if they purposely take their turns when they think the other players have just gone to bed.