Prolonging losing game to make opponent run out of time

[nik592]

I said I couldn't imagine how else you would interpret the rule, not being able to think of another scenario. I'll give you that intentional stalling just to annoy your opponent is probably also a valid interpretation, though I still say it's much harder to infer intent there (though I don't really expect moderators to infer intent even if a player ends up getting booted due to their opponents good "time management skills"). But I still disagree that stalling to win on time isn't also part of that rule (happy to agree to disagree on that point).

I think my issue with winning on time is particularly with turn-based games. Winning on time feels like a game becomes a test of speed as well as skill. Obviously turn-based play gives you plenty of thinking time between turns, more than people ever really need and I don't think speed is really part of the equation anymore. The timer is more there to stop people from stalling the game indefinitely. If your opponent takes a long time, yes, you can boot them and get the win, but that seems like more a penalty for not adhering to the contract of play. So if you're trying to force your opponent to use more of their time to get a win, that seems like a pretty hollow victory (in my opinion).

Tournaments are slightly different due to the fixed time limit, but when people time out on tournaments with time parameters too low for the given game, most people argue that the creator got it wrong, rather than the players who win on time just did a better job managing their clock for the win.

[FDHenneberg]

Exactly, time limits in turn-based are more about managing your life than managing the game, as the time obviously isn’t needed to think about the game but to play while getting on with your day-to-day stuff (edit: the same goes for tournaments, even though they have a fixed limit in days). That’s different in real-time games where you’re generally supposed to devote all of your attention to the game, notwithstanding that you can use parts of the time for other stuff that comes up. In games like Ark Nova, even experienced players complain about the time limit for the most complex turns, especially at the end of the game. So it’s a skill thing of sorts. But I see that it’s not that straightforward as I thought and wrote, both ways of seeing it are valid.

[Ceaseless]

https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... &start=250

I recently had a close game of Lost Cities. It was turn-based but we were both online and played the whole thing live. Then with 1 turn to go - literally 1 click - it was clear I had won, and my opponent quit and proceeded to let the timer run out for the remaining 10 days. He kept playing other games meanwhile, so he had to actively ignore our game for the full 10 days just to not have to accept a regular loss.

Here's a stalling example someone just recently posted.

[nik592]

Well... they ran their time out. So that's a different rule being broken - I guess you could argue they broke both rules, but I suspect if you tried reporting them, the response would be, well, they ran their time out and you (the OP) were able to boot them, so they were already punished. I know that then brings up the argument of whether the punishment is severe enough (especially in tournament settings, where the karma penalties are less).

It's still jerk behaviour in any case. But (imo) so is stalling to force a win on time when you're otherwise losing.

[Fuchur]

What do people think of someone that has no chance of winning the game if it finished normally, but they prolong the game so that their opponent runs out of time?

That's the difference of a given game without any clock restrictions and the game with a clock ticking. In the second case there is another way to win (on BGA; it seems to me that there are special rules for timed chess in real competitions : For instance you've got only your king left, the other one has his queen but he runs out of time => on BGA you win, in a real competition you make only a draw).

If you don't like it, make sure that you have always more time lift than all of your opponents and/or play only games with (close to) infinite time limits and, if someone has done it to you/someone else, read thumb him.

Luckily, this is not something I have had to deal with, but it seems to be happening in a Go tournament right now. The game has reached the stage where each player just has to agree that it is over, but the losing player is now making futile moves into the opponent's territory. The winning player has 2 days remaining on their clock, while the losing player has 8.

I'm wondering if this issue is limited to Go, or if there are other games where a player can prolong a game to such a great extent.

This is certainly a working strategy for chess.

[tbhp]

In my opinion, the idea of winning on time on bga being « valid » seems to ignore the spirit of why the clock exists in the first place.

In turn based games at least, the idea of time is not, I believe, to test the players’ abilities to think quickly, it’s more of a pragmatic system that exists so that games end at some point, otherwise they could potentially last forever without any winner being declared.

So when someone wins on time, it’s like they are exploiting a loophole of the system, an inherent flaw that makes those sorts of wins possible because there is no other way to declare a winner. It’s not like the devs intended to test players on that metric, there is just no other choice.

Also, if we are being honest, the amount of time used in a turn based game is not a measurement of how much time a person spent thinking about the game, because realistically they used up most of that time sleeping, doing other things and procrastinating. So even if the idea was to test players, it wouldn’t actually work at doing that.

The idea that time is a valid metric to determine a winner makes more sense in real time games. Those are similar to chess competitions, where both players are expected to keep focusing on the game, and so it’s considered fair game to punish the player who runs out of time.