Board Game Arena

Hi there...

The administrator of one my tournaments set up the playing hours and turn allotment time to be such that any of us who aren't in a longitude relatively near Germany simply don't have enough time to take our turns without going negative. In my most recent game, 3 our of 4 of us went overtime, and the game ended in the favor of the person with the most time left. 3 out of 4 people. In the game before that, one of my opponents in east Asia had playing hours that were basically when they were sleeping.

I have played multiple tournaments on BGA, and I've never encountered this issue... not once. Now that I have run up against it, I will absolutedly pay closer attention next time I join a tournament to avoid being in this predicament. But in the meantime, does anyone have advice as to what to do? Is it possible for the administrator to change the playing hours after the fact to be more equitable for everyone? Otherwise it would seem only fair to allow people to withdraw from the tournament who are being penalized for where they live.

Thanks for any words of wisdom.

- juju

Once a tournament has started, the tournament administrator can not change the settings. So I would advise to simply not join tournaments who have playing hours which are not suitable for you.

Clearly players needs to be able to create tournaments suitable for their geographic area. If someone in germany creates a torunament, and a lot of players from the other side of the world joins, that does not make that player or that tournament wrong in its time format.
If you want more tournaments for your side of the world, or tournaments without playing hours, I suggest that you take matters into your own hands and create such.

Thanks for replying, Freemind. I have learned that lesson, trust me. I joined the tournament when a friend did... now I know what to pay closer attention to.

Things seem to be failing for almost everyone, though, even those in Germany and environs. A majority of the games are ending with timeouts, with several players in the red. I think there just aren't enough turn hours for all the players? People have brought it up in the chat, but the admin doesn't answer. It's kind of an anti-tournament at this point.

There is no recourse to withdraw without a penalty—even if the tournament is a wash—correct?

____

One post from a person in Germany:

“This tournament is a complete catastrophe. So far I could only really take part in one game, as the others were canceled due to ridiculous time exceeded by the other participants. 21 hours is not enough for turn-based games. Not even if all participants lived in Germany.”

The tournament time system can be unfair even if they allocate playtime 24 hours a day.

Suppose your bedtime is 11pm local time and your opponent's bedtime is 1am in your local time. Assuming you both make a move before bedtime and when you wake up, you will lose 6 hours while sleeping while your opponent only loses 2 hours.

The best solution I heard was to switch tournaments to a Fisher clock type system rather than a fixed time limit. I.e., you get +8 hours every time you make a move, so nobody is screwed by the timezone where they sleep. That would require accepting that tournament games can have unlimited duration rather than fixed duration, but I think that's an acceptable tradeoff.

I'm in a Nidavellir tournament that has 42 hours per player for the whole game. (I thought it was 42 hours per turn.)

This would probably be ok if everyone's time zones would either be spread out or all be close to each other, but I'm 2 hours ahead of one and 7-12 hours ahead of the other 2 players. That means I'm very likely to get a turn right after I go to sleep, and will definitely time out unless the game finishes in 4 days or so. Which it doesn't, because 2 of the players will be active only when I sleep. I think this could easily be called unfair, since nowhere did it say it's only for US based players or anything.

Maybe if people stop joining so many tournaments with unrealistic time settings, tournament creaters might stop setting up those and start offering more tournament with reasonable time settings.

So everyone please pay attention what it is BEFORE you join

Or BGA could disable irrealistic settings...