Board Game Arena

If you try to concede a game early on the system gives you a message along the lines of :

"You can not concede a game until 50% of the game has been played"


Pray tell me please, how does the system possibly know when 50% of any game has been reached????


Also sick and tired of losing players conceding just before I bear off my final piece. Just discourteous and blatant way to preserve stats

CaractacusPots wrote: ↑15 September 2020, 19:12 If you try to concede a game early on the system gives you a message along the lines of :

"You can not concede a game until 50% of the game has been played"


Pray tell me please, how does the system possibly know when 50% of any game has been reached????

It is an arbitrary counter for every game designed on BGA. There have been several threads throughout the years about how certain games have broken progress meters.
For backgammon, though, I believe it is either a computation of how many pips are needed to bear off the last piece (compared to the starting number of pips required), or simply looking at number of checkers borne off. Either way has issues, though. Total number of pips required is not a constant amount (it will increase whenever a checker is moved to the bar), and much of the game is played before the first checker is actually removed (leading to much of the game staying at 0% progress).

CaractacusPots wrote: ↑15 September 2020, 19:12 Also sick and tired of losing players conceding just before I bear off my final piece. Just discourteous and blatant way to preserve stats

What stats are they preserving? As noted in the thread on stats, the items that are not included in a conceded game are details of the game itself: average blots hit, number of doubles rolled, total number of dice throws, thinking time used, etc. It still is the same win/loss and ELO adjustment for the participants as if the game had been played to completion.

Yes, it is discourteous to concede on the final move. That has been discussed on site-wide discussions of conceding etiquette. But unless someone is trying to make a case that they win by playing faster than anyone else, no important stats are being preserved.

After playing some more, It looks like the progress meter is based on number of pips remaining.

In a losing position I would concede only after bearing off one piece - to my mind i have then avoided the Gammon (even if only for technical merit since it means nothing within the BGA platform). If i were playing a friend, i would happily accept them conceding once they had a piece off, (regardless of how many pieces i had left). The exception is when both are bearing off then the loser quits just before the winner gets their final piece off, and i assume that's what you're referring to. Yeah, it's rude.

Funnily enough, I was coming to ask if the opposite was considered rude, I.e. making your opponent bear off in a completely lost position on a fiddly interface. If peeps want to concede to me I'm absolutely fine with it...

I concede as soon it is impossible to win.

If the only chance to win is a double and i roll a 5-2, then I instantly resign. I would consider it strange to waste my and my oppenents time to play on - even if it is only 1 move.

I also often concede as soon as it's impossible to win. How would that be rude? Is this only about game stats? Do people really enjoy playing out the game? Genuine questions

I have never found it to be discourteous. The satisfaction is in the victory, not whether or not you remove the last pip. If it is impossible to win, save us the time and effort and concede.

That’s why I prefer to play backgammon with the doubling cube.

I know this is late, but I absolutely find conceding rude (especially at the end of the game). I've had people concede when we're playing our final turns, even when the score is tied - what's the harm in waiting 10 more seconds so that the game can actually be finished? I play these games because I really enjoy playing them, regardless of whether I win or lose, and I truly don't understand people who don't want to finish a game they start.

In Backgammon - like in chess - a game is often finished by conceding. This is, because good players know when a game is lost and then it is expected from them to resign.

A decent player in chess would be considered VERY inpolite if he is far behind in a game and does not resign and force his opponent to mate him.

The same is true in Backgammon. If you cannot win anymore you should resign and should not force your opponent to remove the remaining checkers unnecessarily. Please note that by conceding = resigning one does indeed finish the game according to the game rules. Conceding is very different from leaving a game prematurely!

If your opponent has resigned too early (i.e. he still has winning chances of say 3%) then he obviously is inexperienced. This happens more often than one may think. Just be happy about the win in such a case...