tournaments playtime shortage due to time-zones

[liziwizi]

i log-in on BGA 3 to 4 times a day, i played a lot of turned-based games and never had any playtime issues with those.

recently i started playing more tournaments and have playtime issues regularily, always when joined with people from different timezones

this is a scenario that happens often:
- before going to bed, i check for waiting games, and there are no waiting games
- in the morning i login again and open the first waiting game and my remaining playtime is already "in the red"

i think it's because of the timezones difference when the player before me typically plays their turn right after i goto bed
they play, i wake up and play; but those 8 hours sleep are substracted fully from my playtime.
so every round, i'm losing 8 hours of playtime. in a tournament where only 24 hours are granted, i run out of playtime in the third round.

i don't know how to fix this or how to work around this.

i'm guessing tournaments don't take timezone into account when matching up players, which makes sense.
normal turned-based games probably do, which would explain why i dont have the issue in those games

does anybody have any thoughts or advice that could help me?
other people experiencing this problem?

[mrdoctor]

Non-tournament games add time back on to your clock every time you make a move. Tournament games just tick-down. Your options are basically to check BGA more-often in the daytime, and/or only sign-up to tournaments that have generous long game-lengths to ensure there's plenty of time allocated to each player.

[Mathew5000]

does anybody have any thoughts or advice that could help me?
other people experiencing this problem?

It's a very common complaint on these forums. Here are three ideas to mitigate the problem:

1. Look for tournaments with playing hours that suit you. Most tournaments do not have playing hours, but the tournament creator can specify a 12-hour period. Outside that period players can still play, but their clock will not run. If you don't find any tournaments in your chosen game, with playing hours that correspond well to when you are awake, if you're premium you can create your own tournaments; it's good practice to call extra attention to the playing hours if you set them. For example, I put "Atlantic hours" in the name of the tournament (https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=218215) to indicate that it's probably best suited to people who live in Europe, Africa, or the Americas.

2. Look carefully at the "time allotted to each player" for a tournament before you register, and consider whether it's sufficient (as Mrdoctor said above).

3. When you've joined a tournament where the time allotted would usually be sufficient, you might still get very unlucky and be in a situation where the player who precedes you tends to play just after your bedtime (as discussed in your original post). In that case, when you run overtime, you may want to put a note in the chat, along the lines of, "I'm sorry for exceeding my time limit; I am logging in to the game a few times each day but the time zones are working against me." Of course your opponents will still have the right to boot you when you're over time, but usually they'll appreciate the situation.

[liziwizi]

@matthew5000: thanks for pointing me towards the tournaments playing-hours. that is indeed the information i needed. this way i can restrict myself to tournaments where the timer only runs during my awake-hours.