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TimeZone Matchups
Posted: 16 December 2025, 14:20
by kbmsg
Probably raised many times.
It would be nice if when scheduling the matches that opponents by within 2 time zones of each other.
Otherwise, one could easily run out of time being the 7 hours behind person to the other people's being 1 hour off from each other.
I know this is random, but the sleep time drags and causes people to get booted for basically waiting for their turn ,but being on the wrong time zone kills their game.
Re: TimeZone Matchups
Posted: 16 December 2025, 15:14
by nik592
So first off, timezones are not the whole story. While my timezone may match someone else's, my play time may not. Maybe I'm a night owl. Maybe I'm an early riser. Maybe I play on my lunch break from work. Maybe I only play in the evenings. Maybe I play over breakfast. Maybe I'm some combination of several of these. Active periods is the issue here, when people are online and how often in a 24h period.
I used to think mismatched active periods were the problem - they're actually not. If you have 3 players with the same rough active period, it can actually be worse because someone eventually has to stop being active. Let's assume the players play during daytime hours pretty regularly, until they go to sleep at night. If Player 3 tends to retire earliest in the evening, then Players 1 and 2 take turns after Player 3 has gone to sleep. Now the clock ticks through Player 3's night, every night and Player 3 runs out of time first.
Ideally, you want players who play at times equidistant in a 24h period - so for a 3p game basically every 8 hours someone takes a move, and clocks will tick evenly. But that's pretty unlikely, and can still cause problems depending on the tournament maximum table time because the timing is too slow and the game times out (whether or not the players do - though usually at least one player should be out of time by the time the table hits max. time, but not always). The other best case scenario is that there's enough overlap that most of the gaming happens during daytime hours (which can happen more easily with players with the same active period, if they're on multiple times during a day). This is also helped if you have players who don't kick their opponents at the first opportunity if they're playing regularly and it looks like the game will complete before the table hits maximum time (or if the tournament disallows kicking other players). But still, it's complicated.
Also, Playing Hours are supposed to match people on their active periods. It gives you a 12 hour window to take your moves and a 12 hour window to be offline (sleeping or whatever). Finding people who match up to your active period isn't always workable though (I personally have never found a tournament with playing hours that would suit me, and that may be down to my timezone compared to others).
Re: TimeZone Matchups
Posted: 16 December 2025, 21:36
by Mathew5000