Board Game Arena

I played in a current Tapestry tournament in which a player timed out near the beginning of the game. The other three players(including me) were declared "winners" but I was eliminated from the tournament. I'm trying to figure out why. At the time of game end I had the second highest score but I can't see whatelse might have determined that I am eliminated when an opponent times out.

If a multiplayer elimination tournament is configured for "4 play, 2 advance", someone has to be eliminated when the game is abandoned due to someone running out of time. I believe that it picks the "loser" as the person with the least time remaining on their clock.

It's an unfair way to handle the situation when someone runs out of time. One solution is to replay the game with only 3 people (which holds up the rest of the tournament). Another solution is to advance all 3, but that can create pairing issues later.

The players with the most thinking time left advance. So if players are behind or even can't win anymore but have more time left, they have a big incentive to push the button if someone times out. They then will also boot out players who haven't timed out, but have less time left.

There's nothing else to it, scores don't matter. There are two things you can do, a) be online 24 hours a day, b) don't play tournaments any more.

It comes out the worst in multiplayer Swiss tournaments. I played one Swiss tournament where half the games were timeouts. I was in the lead near the end of the game, someone ran out of time, someone kicked them, I wound up in a 4-way tie for 1st instead of winning.

The solution is to only play single-elimination or multiplayer-elimination tournaments. You can sometimes get eliminated in the 1st or 2nd round due to a slow player, but at least it happens early before you get invested in the tournament. By the time you make it to the 3rd round, all the slow players should be gone and now you can play for real.

Also in a multiplayer game, you can get timezone screwed. If the other players move just after you go to bed, you lose 8 hours off your clock. Even if you're online all day, if it's a 5 player game, the others might lose a couple hours each.

In azul tournaments with "2 players advance", when a player is kicked out of the game because of clock, the 2 qualified players are the 2 who had to play first and second after him, the eliminated player is always the one who played just before the kicked out. No matter time remaining or anything else.

It is not fair, when you know you won't be in the 2 better scores (but at the good places at the table) you just have to kick out to be qualified. No matter score, or clock (even if you are negative too !)
A real random, or the 2 players with more time would be a better thing imho.