I am in Terraforming tournament now, 4p. I am down to just 2 hours of think time left because my turn always is at night since the tourney hours are 10pm to 10am ET. One player is from China. S/he always games the clock. 15 hours or more will go by waiting for her to play. Right now 3 of us are sitting in the room waiting and she is playing another non-tourney fun game and ignoring our collective requests to take her turn. She will ignore me in FL, one in Russia, and one in Colombia until we all go to bed. Then she will play and watch our clocks count down. We wake, play and then she disappears again for another 24 hours, even though the gaming hours were designed for Asian convenience. So she has 16 hours left on her clock while the 3 of us are under 10. Yet we are the ones who keep the game moving. So, who is the bad sport? And her karma is 72% while ours are all 100%. And since it's now 11pm, it's about to happen again. So if I get booted by her for being overtime-even though I now wake up every 2 hours to see if it's my turn--I will be really unhappy. Especially since I am in strong contention to win. A time clock in an international tournament is impractical if it isn't a 24 hour clock. Everyone should be under the same time constraints IMHO. Just saying.... and yes, I am a stickler for the rules, but there is a difference between running over during sleep times and truly stalling during daytime to gain an advantage.....
Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
It looks like you are taking part in the World Series of Board Gaming tournament intended for players in Asia. I'm guessing you were too late to join the first tournament with opposite hours that would have been more appropriate for you?ArthurMF wrote: ↑20 October 2025, 04:07 I am in Terraforming tournament now, 4p. I am down to just 2 hours of think time left because my turn always is at night since the tourney hours are 10pm to 10am ET. One player is from China. S/he always games the clock. 15 hours or more will go by waiting for her to play. Right now 3 of us are sitting in the room waiting and she is playing another non-tourney fun game and ignoring our collective requests to take her turn. She will ignore me in FL, one in Russia, and one in Colombia until we all go to bed. Then she will play and watch our clocks count down. We wake, play and then she disappears again for another 24 hours, even though the gaming hours were designed for Asian convenience. So she has 16 hours left on her clock while the 3 of us are under 10. Yet we are the ones who keep the game moving. So, who is the bad sport? And her karma is 72% while ours are all 100%. And since it's now 11pm, it's about to happen again. So if I get booted by her for being overtime-even though I now wake up every 2 hours to see if it's my turn--I will be really unhappy. Especially since I am in strong contention to win. A time clock in an international tournament is impractical if it isn't a 24 hour clock. Everyone should be under the same time constraints IMHO. Just saying.... and yes, I am a stickler for the rules, but there is a difference between running over during sleep times and truly stalling during daytime to gain an advantage.....
I think the phrase "You snooze, you lose" will be the key here. There is a note by the organizer asking players not to skip overtime players, though.
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
I was recently in a tournament where I encountered this situation. It was the final game of the tournament, me vs the tournament creator, so they should know the limits they themselves set right?
We were each given 15 days for our turns, I still had 13 remaining while they were at -2 days. We were completely different timezones (but I have a bad habit of keeping abnormal hours haha) but there was even a point when they had -1 days and we were both online and playing back and forth as if it were a live game. I would've finished it with them right then if they kept playing but they stopped. I did notice they had about 40 turn-based games going so I do wonder if they just weren't getting to them all in a timely manner and need to manage their number of turn-based games better. But I ended up booting them and winning the tournament because of it. I felt slightly guilty for it but also why should I feel guilty when I played within the restraints of the tournament while they didn't?
We were each given 15 days for our turns, I still had 13 remaining while they were at -2 days. We were completely different timezones (but I have a bad habit of keeping abnormal hours haha) but there was even a point when they had -1 days and we were both online and playing back and forth as if it were a live game. I would've finished it with them right then if they kept playing but they stopped. I did notice they had about 40 turn-based games going so I do wonder if they just weren't getting to them all in a timely manner and need to manage their number of turn-based games better. But I ended up booting them and winning the tournament because of it. I felt slightly guilty for it but also why should I feel guilty when I played within the restraints of the tournament while they didn't?
-
Andrew Davidson
- Posts: 74
- Joined: 21 August 2020, 16:40
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
That is true, but in this case, the setting was accidentally left off, so they posted a message in the tournament.Andrew Davidson wrote: ↑29 October 2025, 17:50I'm in some World Series of Board Gaming tournaments and my impression is that have the No skipping option set so that there's no booting.
-
Mathew5000
- Posts: 661
- Joined: 02 January 2021, 01:41
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
• https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=35239 (currently 242 upvotes)
But that wouldn't solve the problem! At least not in 4p games and higher. Because imagine a 5p game where one player (within time) is far ahead of the others and one player is out of time. Why should the remaining three players (who all have little-or-no chance of winning) be able to force a four-way tie?
A better solution is this:
• https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=107708 "In tournament games, expelling a player who is out of time should be a unanimous decision" (currently 85 upvotes)
I foresee that this system would cause a lot of confusion. Remember that any tournament game has a fixed maximum duration, so that the next round can begin within a specified time frame. It will be problematic to add more time for one player who has already exhausted their allowed time.2) When someone reach the timeout, at that point there should be a possibility to boot, but after everyone (or according to my 1st point the majority) decided to continue, the time penalty should be reduced somehow (at least partially) and until the player will not run out of time once again, we should not have chance to kick the player out.
The problem and potential solutions have been discussed at great length in numerous previous threads, such as:
• https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31083
• https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36981
• https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41131
• https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43095
• https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43486
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
I don't know about that. The time players have seems to be entirely separate from the game-ending timing (as it should be). In games where turns are simultaneous, all clocks tick at the same time. Then it's very possible for ALL players to be out of time, but the game to still be continuing on.Mathew5000 wrote: ↑29 October 2025, 19:27 I foresee that this system would cause a lot of confusion. Remember that any tournament game has a fixed maximum duration, so that the next round can begin within a specified time frame. It will be problematic to add more time for one player who has already exhausted their allowed time.
-
GoodLordMonty
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 15 March 2025, 05:52
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
Hello everyone,
Apologies if this is mentioned somewhere, but it's eluded to by the OP
I've been in a few tournaments now, two of which were ended early because someone was out of time
One I benefitted from as I was last, but the most frequent player
The other I didn't, I was playing really well, and likely would have won, but I wasn't the fastest, so didn't progress
Should then, as soon as someone is out of time, they be booted to ensure this doesn't happen?
I believe this is what the OP is talking about..I'm not sure if it "ruins" the game if you do this, as it would in a regular non-tournament game, but it feels like if I'm going to be essentially booted myself by not doing it, then it looks like the sooner you boot the slow person the better
Is this the conventional wisdom regarding this?
Apologies if this is mentioned somewhere, but it's eluded to by the OP
I've been in a few tournaments now, two of which were ended early because someone was out of time
One I benefitted from as I was last, but the most frequent player
The other I didn't, I was playing really well, and likely would have won, but I wasn't the fastest, so didn't progress
Should then, as soon as someone is out of time, they be booted to ensure this doesn't happen?
I believe this is what the OP is talking about..I'm not sure if it "ruins" the game if you do this, as it would in a regular non-tournament game, but it feels like if I'm going to be essentially booted myself by not doing it, then it looks like the sooner you boot the slow person the better
Is this the conventional wisdom regarding this?
Re: Is booting an out of time player poor sportsmanship?
There are two different game ending situations with tournaments:
1. The game reaches the maximum duration set for the table (as specified in the tournament configuration - eg. 15 days, 30 days). If this happens, all players are ranked based on time remaining. This is likely the one you mentioned "benefitting" from. You are correct that this will occur because one or more players went over the allocated time, as the full table time is just divided among the number of players - eg. 15 day maximum, 4 players, each player gets 3.75 days to make ALL of their moves for that game.
With this situation, note that, if a game is set to run 24 hours a day (it is either that, or a specific 12 hour period when clocks run, and the other 12 hours clocks do not run), one player at the table will take the "last" turn before their sleep period and the player who follows them will find their clock runs down faster than others, and probably ends up in negative time. This is not necessarily their fault for not playing enough, unless you happen to believe that tournaments are some kind of endurance sport where a player should be waking at 3am to check it's not their turn.
2. A single player has run out of time, and another player at the table decides to eject them from the game. That player is considered the loser and all other players tie for the win. If it is single elimination, the booted player is eliminated. If it is multiple player elimination then one of the tied players needs to be eliminated - anecdotally, this seems to be based on the age of the players' accounts on BGA and the player with the newest (most recently created) account is eliminated. Lots of people feel this approach is unfair, but there's virtually no agreement on what a better system would look like. There are lots of suggestions, but there are always going to be people who are negatively affected by any system and think that particular suggestions aren't a good choice.
You are correct that if you yourself run into negative time, you run the risk of being booted, even if another player also has negative time, even if that player has more negative time than you do. So yes, you could boot to avoid yourself being booted, but that may not mean you don't still get eliminated from the tournament (see above). Furthermore, even if you're NOT in negative time, and boot another player who is, that still doesn't mean you won't be eliminated from the tournament (see above). Some people appear to boot other players on the basis that they are losing the game, and to force a tie, rather than to be beaten by another player. Other people think that this kind of behaviour represents bad sportsmanship. Other players think any booting in tournaments (where running into negative time may just be poor luck and not through infrequent play), is poor sportsmanship, hence why tournaments without booting were created. These tournaments are only subject to scenario 1 above, scenario 2 is not possible.
1. The game reaches the maximum duration set for the table (as specified in the tournament configuration - eg. 15 days, 30 days). If this happens, all players are ranked based on time remaining. This is likely the one you mentioned "benefitting" from. You are correct that this will occur because one or more players went over the allocated time, as the full table time is just divided among the number of players - eg. 15 day maximum, 4 players, each player gets 3.75 days to make ALL of their moves for that game.
With this situation, note that, if a game is set to run 24 hours a day (it is either that, or a specific 12 hour period when clocks run, and the other 12 hours clocks do not run), one player at the table will take the "last" turn before their sleep period and the player who follows them will find their clock runs down faster than others, and probably ends up in negative time. This is not necessarily their fault for not playing enough, unless you happen to believe that tournaments are some kind of endurance sport where a player should be waking at 3am to check it's not their turn.
2. A single player has run out of time, and another player at the table decides to eject them from the game. That player is considered the loser and all other players tie for the win. If it is single elimination, the booted player is eliminated. If it is multiple player elimination then one of the tied players needs to be eliminated - anecdotally, this seems to be based on the age of the players' accounts on BGA and the player with the newest (most recently created) account is eliminated. Lots of people feel this approach is unfair, but there's virtually no agreement on what a better system would look like. There are lots of suggestions, but there are always going to be people who are negatively affected by any system and think that particular suggestions aren't a good choice.
You are correct that if you yourself run into negative time, you run the risk of being booted, even if another player also has negative time, even if that player has more negative time than you do. So yes, you could boot to avoid yourself being booted, but that may not mean you don't still get eliminated from the tournament (see above). Furthermore, even if you're NOT in negative time, and boot another player who is, that still doesn't mean you won't be eliminated from the tournament (see above). Some people appear to boot other players on the basis that they are losing the game, and to force a tie, rather than to be beaten by another player. Other people think that this kind of behaviour represents bad sportsmanship. Other players think any booting in tournaments (where running into negative time may just be poor luck and not through infrequent play), is poor sportsmanship, hence why tournaments without booting were created. These tournaments are only subject to scenario 1 above, scenario 2 is not possible.
So, it depends what you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to save yourself from booting, probably. If you're trying to save yourself from being eliminated, it's only a maybe (unless you check ages of the other players' accounts). As far as sportsmanship, that's a personal decision. Consider how you would feel if you were in the shoes of the person being booted - look at how frequently they've been playing, or where the scores are at, etc. and decide whether you would feel it fair to be booted if you were in their position. If someone booted you to save themselves because they were also over time, would you think that was fine? That's a personal decision, some would say yes, others no. Figure out what you think is fair and run by those rules.GoodLordMonty wrote: ↑08 November 2025, 20:43 Should then, as soon as someone is out of time, they be booted to ensure this doesn't happen?