How does thinking time work?
Posted: 05 November 2025, 04:48
I'm fairly new to BGA and I've started playing a few tables in turn based mode.
I was recently kicked out of a game for taking too long to play (I missed the notification email), and although BGA says my reputation was not penalized because it is the first time, I'd still like to understand exactly what happened, because
- I don't think I actually took that long to play that last turn
- Many times I saw the same user "stalling" the game for some hours and it was not me (we were probably on incompatible timezones)
I'm now realizing that the time you have to play does not "restart" with every turn, but you "accumulate" some thinking time.
Reviewing the table, I still do not quite understand what happened, because there is one other user with much more negative time than me, but still BGA declared me the quitter and all others winners.
Here is the link to the table review
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=753111322
looking at the Thinking time evolution and using "Display thinking time in logs (above)", if I'm not reading it incorrectly, I was right in my impression that I was not the first player stalling the game, dipping into the negative thinking time numbers (around Move 101). Although it is true that by that time I had had one specific turn (around Move 85) where I had taken way too long to play and I used up like 11 hours in that one move.
After that we continued playing, no one skipped over the player with negative time and they continued going lower for some turns.
By Move 148 that same player was already on almost minus 6 hours, and I was on the positives with a little over 1h left.
On Move 154 some other player plays way outside the playing hours of the table, and as far as I know the clock should not be running then, but I imagine it starts again when playing hours resume, and it's true I only had over an hour left and it took me some hours to see the notification in my email.
3 hours later the player skips over my turn because I am out of time
By the end of the game in the Thinking time evolution graph there is clearly another player with way lower available thinking time with less than -12 hours, and my line is just some minutes below 0 (although by my calculations it would make sense to put me around -4 hours).
It seems like that as long as you are below 0, it does not matter how much below 0, or how much below 0 other players are, if someone loses their patience in your turn, you get the penalty and all others are winners, even others below 0 too. I get that I should have followed the table more closely, but it seems strange to me that the player with -12 hours was considered winner.
Am I reading this right?
Thank you for any insight
I was recently kicked out of a game for taking too long to play (I missed the notification email), and although BGA says my reputation was not penalized because it is the first time, I'd still like to understand exactly what happened, because
- I don't think I actually took that long to play that last turn
- Many times I saw the same user "stalling" the game for some hours and it was not me (we were probably on incompatible timezones)
I'm now realizing that the time you have to play does not "restart" with every turn, but you "accumulate" some thinking time.
Reviewing the table, I still do not quite understand what happened, because there is one other user with much more negative time than me, but still BGA declared me the quitter and all others winners.
Here is the link to the table review
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=753111322
looking at the Thinking time evolution and using "Display thinking time in logs (above)", if I'm not reading it incorrectly, I was right in my impression that I was not the first player stalling the game, dipping into the negative thinking time numbers (around Move 101). Although it is true that by that time I had had one specific turn (around Move 85) where I had taken way too long to play and I used up like 11 hours in that one move.
After that we continued playing, no one skipped over the player with negative time and they continued going lower for some turns.
By Move 148 that same player was already on almost minus 6 hours, and I was on the positives with a little over 1h left.
On Move 154 some other player plays way outside the playing hours of the table, and as far as I know the clock should not be running then, but I imagine it starts again when playing hours resume, and it's true I only had over an hour left and it took me some hours to see the notification in my email.
3 hours later the player skips over my turn because I am out of time
By the end of the game in the Thinking time evolution graph there is clearly another player with way lower available thinking time with less than -12 hours, and my line is just some minutes below 0 (although by my calculations it would make sense to put me around -4 hours).
It seems like that as long as you are below 0, it does not matter how much below 0, or how much below 0 other players are, if someone loses their patience in your turn, you get the penalty and all others are winners, even others below 0 too. I get that I should have followed the table more closely, but it seems strange to me that the player with -12 hours was considered winner.
Am I reading this right?
Thank you for any insight
) tried a faster one. I'll need to find the middle ground