Board Game Arena

Just had a game ended because it didn't finish prior to the next round of a tournament. I was way ahead in the game, but because someone else had more "thinking time" remaining, they got the win.

Are theses rules set by the tournament, each game, or BGA?

Some games where there is no winner until it's over that makes sense. But for a game like "Welcome To..." where scores are maintained throughout the game, that ending condition doesn't result in a fair outcome. Sure a player cannot make quick moves and be losing on the hopes that time will expire... but it seems silly to have this "one size fits a few" policy ruin games for everyone.

Just wondering how this is decided.

A tournament game not ending before the next round can only happen if one player goes over time. Obviously this player should lose.

In your situation you were in a 3 player game and a 3rd player was the one over time. If a game does not finish there cannot possibly exist a fair ruling on the game outcome. But there must be some "automatic" ruling since there is no jury available that would analyze those games thoroughly and determine who would have most probably won.

In non-tournament games all other players are regarded as winners and are scored as if they had drawn each other. This is often heavily critizised since draws between those players are often not fair.

In tournament games (which have a fixed time for the whole game) time decides because in this way the player over time will sutely be last.

Is the ruling fair? No, in many cases not. But what else would you suggest? Please note that an automatic ruling is asked for - and the rule shall ideally be applicable for all games on BGA.

Obviously one could define several tiebreaker conditions and let the tournament creator choose the best for a certain game. Everybody can make a suggestion (via bug forum) but I would not have too high hopes of such a suggestion to be implemented...

klkitchens wrote: ↑05 February 2025, 20:50 Just had a game ended because it didn't finish prior to the next round of a tournament. I was way ahead in the game, but because someone else had more "thinking time" remaining, they got the win.

Are theses rules set by the tournament, each game, or BGA?

By BGA. Discussed here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26659

Here are two proposals directly relevant to the issue you raise:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=34353
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=40878