Board Game Arena

What's the general etiquette on skipping players in tournaments. I have a 2-player tournament game with 2-day limit, and the opponent is now overdue for the first turn by 12 hours. At what point is it appropriate to cut them from the game? I'd be interested in others' thoughts. Thanks

The game will end on it's own once the time for the tournament is up, and you will be declared the winner (because you are the one who didn't run out of time)...so there is no benefit to kicking the player out...you can just wait for the system to do it automatically (and this actually helps your Elo b/c you get a true win instead of a 0% game completed win by kicking someone out).

Thanks sprockitz - I was hoping that would be the case, as I'd rather not react too quickly and throw someone out when there may be a perfectly good reason for their absence. I'll hang on then!

Glad I did a quick search.

I'm in a tourney now where my opponent has burned through their alotted 48 hours and now bleeding time in the red (and we're only 1/3 of the way through the game).

Sounds like sitting tight is the best option and having fun elsewhere on the site...while keeping an eye on them for when they do take turns.

Cheers all.

what if my tournament partner looks to be in with a chance of winning a nearly ended game, but has over run the allotted time by 3 or 4 hours?

would they still win or is there time/points deductions?

Personally, I have frequent emergencies that I have to deal with in my private life and my work life, so I generally don't ever kick anyone out for waiting too long, tournament or otherwise, and I just hope people will extend me the same courtesy. I've been playing on here for years now and once or twice I've missed something, or forgotten to play a joker, and a few people have quit on me hammering my karma for a while, but it doesn't take long to get that back as 90% of the games I play on here are against real-life friends.

tl;dr - just don't boot people at all would be my opinion for general game etiquette. Perhaps if they've been responsive for, say, a week without playing a joker but by that time I would expect BGA to cancel the game anyway, especially in a tournament. I say be patient. The universe will unfold as it should.

As a rule I give people some lee-way in a tournament regardless, and more for games outside of tournaments. However in general it is entirely acceptable to skip in a two-player game and take the win in a tournament - it is no more of less a win than winning in any other way and it is part of the rules everyone signed up for. The same certainly does not apply in multi-player games where you are impacting people other than the player you 'clock'.

I skip players when their clock is in the red by an hour.

I don’t skip because it’s very easy to get in the red in games with more players if there are big differences in time zones. This happens all the time to me being in CA when playing with people in Europe or Asia. I check BGA frequently work and sleep permitting and try to take my turns promptly…. But I’m not going to wake up at 3am just to take a turn thanks to the previous player finally taking their turn at a time appropriate to their timezone.

Please don't skip people in tournaments unless they're clearly not playing at all after multiple days.

There are a number of us who think that tournaments should have the option to NEVER skip players. The game will end by itself. Note that tournament creators don't have the ability to change the allotted playing time otherwise we would set everyone's playing time to the game length so no one can skip, but the game won't drag on forever. Unfortunately this is not an option. For many games, 5 days is sufficient, but if I set the game length to 5 days and 4 players, then after about 30 hours, someone can skip another player - it is *not* my intention for players to use skipping as a means to winning a tournament.

I cannot tell you how many 7 wonders games have ended abruptly because one person was over time and someone decided to skip them even though there was only one or two cards left to play. Clearly everyone had been playing just fine, but someone thought it was a great way to "win" the game while another person was asleep. I've found some players who will skip every game they can - it's not clear that they ever want a game to finish. That's not a tournament of skill, but a tournament of dedication - are you willing to wake up in the middle of the night to play?

Some of us are creating tournaments where we specify "No skipping" in the title because we're fed up. From what I can tell it's up to the players to honor this, but when they don't, people start creating private tournaments and only inviting people they trust. It's ashame because that makes it hard for new BGA players to get to play in tournaments and doesn't really build up the open BGA community feel.

So please only use that feature sparingly.