Board Game Arena

Why are the opponent's name and category anonymous at the start of the match? You don't know the opponent's strength.

arkitsa wrote: ↑09 February 2026, 17:32 Why are the opponent's name and category anonymous at the start of the match? You don't know the opponent's strength.

It's an Arena feature to prevent players from cancelling because they don't like their opponent's stats.

ok but this way you can't know if the player is reliable or often out of time which leads to longer waiting for a move

In the Play Now screen you can use the gears next to each game to filter out low-rep players, even in Arena. Arena is set up so there’s not a lot of filtering you can do, but you can still do that much.