Board Game Arena

Some players must know my sleeping habits and make their plays after I go to bed. I seem to be waiting a long time for them to make their plays but I am the one running out of time. What am I doing wrong? Should I get up in the middle of the night to check and see if it's my turn?

Just be sure to check in as often as you said you would during table set-up.

If you said 1 move per day, and check in at the same time every day, you won't run out of time. If it is your opponent's turn, your thinking time won't be decreasing. If it is your turn, you will take it and get an additional 24 hours to think, which will allow you to go to the next day without running out of time.

When joining tournaments please always check the set options (1 round/3 rounds) and available time per player and decide then, if you can serve your games. The time needed depends much on the game. E.g. for Lost Cities I personally prefer at least 7 days per match / 3.5 days per player for 1 round games and 15 days per match / 7 days per player for 3 round games. On tournament games no additional time is added per move! It is like playing chess in real time with a chess clock.

Should I use a holiday time joker on these two Lost Cities games that I have left to play?

Holiday time jokers are not valid to tournament games.

Jest Phulin wrote:Just be sure to check in as often as you said you would during table set-up.

If you said 1 move per day, and check in at the same time every day, you won't run out of time. If it is your opponent's turn, your thinking time won't be decreasing. If it is your turn, you will take it and get an additional 24 hours to think, which will allow you to go to the next day without running out of time.

I do check in at the same time every day and I still ran out of time in one of the games. I did not get an additional 24 hours. I don't understand how some of these people can manipulate the system.

Glen211 wrote:

Jest Phulin wrote:Just be sure to check in as often as you said you would during table set-up.

If you said 1 move per day, and check in at the same time every day, you won't run out of time. If it is your opponent's turn, your thinking time won't be decreasing. If it is your turn, you will take it and get an additional 24 hours to think, which will allow you to go to the next day without running out of time.

I do check in at the same time every day and I still ran out of time in one of the games. I did not get an additional 24 hours. I don't understand how some of these people can manipulate the system.

You ran out of time on a tournament game. You had 5 days total to make all your moves. You don't get any extra time for a tournament game. Considering a round of lost cities is at least 20 moves, to finish a game that goes best of 3 that is 60 turns. So 60 turns in 5 days of your time means you need to average less than 2 hours between moves.

sprockitz wrote:

Glen211 wrote:

Jest Phulin wrote:Just be sure to check in as often as you said you would during table set-up.

If you said 1 move per day, and check in at the same time every day, you won't run out of time. If it is your opponent's turn, your thinking time won't be decreasing. If it is your turn, you will take it and get an additional 24 hours to think, which will allow you to go to the next day without running out of time.

I do check in at the same time every day and I still ran out of time in one of the games. I did not get an additional 24 hours. I don't understand how some of these people can manipulate the system.

You ran out of time on a tournament game. You had 5 days total to make all your moves. You don't get any extra time for a tournament game. Considering a round of lost cities is at least 20 moves, to finish a game that goes best of 3 that is 60 turns. So 60 turns in 5 days of your time means you need to average less than 2 hours between moves.

So after I go to bed I need to wake up every 2 hours to make a move? I lose most of my time when I am sleeping at night. That must be when these people are making their moves. Maybe I just need to stay out of tournaments.

Glen211 wrote:
So after I go to bed I need to wake up every 2 hours to make a move? I lose most of my time when I am sleeping at night. That must be when these people are making their moves. Maybe I just need to stay out of tournaments.

Not quite. You just need your average time to be below 2 hours per move. So if you are checking every hour during the day, you can pretty safely go 8 hours without checking overnight. And if possible when you see they are online try and stay on for a few minutes to see if they'll move...then you can get several moves in close to real-time. Just getting a handful of moves in close to real time can greatly reduce the average time between moves...making it much easier to fit the game within the time limit.

Ah. I didn't realize that you were talking about tournament games, not other turn-based games.

Yes, for tournament games, pay close attention to how many moves a game normally takes and how often you want to check in. Calculate if that gives you enough time to play the game.