Board Game Arena

Normally, tournament tables start automatically within 45 minutes of the start time, regardless if everyone accepts to join or not. I've noticed today though it's waiting for everyone to accept, glitch in the system, or an actual change (which I would not like as some players just don't check to join very often, vs checking for games on their turn)?

Eg. https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=501391 This tournament that started today hasn't had all tables start yet, as it's still waiting for players to join some tables.

I noticed the same thing and I also don't like it. It must be a recent change although I could not find anything in the release notes.

In my tournament, eventually all games were ongoing on the next day after tournament start. I cannot tell whether this happened because everyone accepted the game start or games started automatically at some point. I suppose (but don't know) that games still start automatically after some time, may that be 8 hours or 12 hours, something in that ballpark.

I liked it the old way, where tournament games just start after around 15 minutes. Waiting for people to click join is now unfair to people who join right away, but aren't online when everyone else joins. They might as well start the games on time and make sure there's enough time to allow for people to be offline at times.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑04 January 2026, 06:58 I liked it the old way, where tournament games just start after around 15 minutes. Waiting for people to click join is now unfair to people who join right away, but aren't online when everyone else joins. They might as well start the games on time and make sure there's enough time to allow for people to be offline at times.

I'm not convinced it's been changed by design, a glitch in the system somewhere I think. But yes the old way is much better, given you're always just wasting a lot of time waiting for everyone to accept, and my tournaments are 30 day rounds, but this would be even more pronounced in quicker games set to lower round times.

You might be right that it is an unintended glitch, given it was not mentioned in release notes.

So I made a bug report that you can upvote.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=199392

As far as I can tell, there's been no change regarding this issue since it was reported, over a week ago. I wonder, is it really the case now that a tournament game will never start, until all players click "join"? Or is it just a lengthier delay; whereas in the past it was always about half an hour, or maybe 45 minutes, now it is several hours?

If it's the former (i.e. that a tournament game won't start at all, ever, until every player in the game clicks "join"), then wouldn't there be a lot more people complaining about it?

Mathew5000 wrote: ↑13 January 2026, 02:24 is it really the case now that a tournament game will never start, until all players click "join"?

Apparently, no.

There were a couple of turn-based tournament tables last night for which BGA was giving me a prompt to click "Join", and I deliberately did not, to see what would happen. This morning I find that the tables have started. It's weird though: until recently tournament tables would begin within an hour if somebody didn't click join; now it takes 10 or 12 hours.

It would be nice to hear from BGA staff whether this change was deliberate or accidental.

I notice that in a Swiss tournament, when the new table has been created but not all players have joined, there is the following text on the table page: "Game will start automatically in few minutes (or immediately if everyone joins the table)."

It's not idiomatic English; it should say "in a few minutes" rather than "in few minutes". Did that text change recently or was the indefinite article always omitted?

In any event, it's factually incorrect. As noted upthread, it takes many hours for the game to begin automatically, not a few minutes.

It is weird how this seemingly changed overnight, it used to take around 30 minutes for tables to start regardless, now it takes 12-16 hours, this adds a pretty significant amount of time to tournaments. It's particularly annoying as some players login just to see their turn notifications and take their turns, so don't even see the invitation to the tournament table, and you end up wasting all that time where the game could have been playing.

RazorOz wrote: ↑16 January 2026, 23:38 It is weird how this seemingly changed overnight, it used to take around 30 minutes for tables to start regardless, now it takes 12-16 hours, this adds a pretty significant amount of time to tournaments. It's particularly annoying as some players login just to see their turn notifications and take their turns, so don't even see the invitation to the tournament table, and you end up wasting all that time where the game could have been playing.

I thought players got notifications of touraments that they have joined starting up.