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playBunny: Yes, I prefer this idea of a tournament with a predictable duration than to be measured in my moves. I think I don’t like the idea that people could see how fast I am, because sometimes I’m not. I agree with you, it’s not logical that a tournament with 3 days/move can be played in 5 days. 3 days are 3 days ! It’s why I rarely join for more than 3 days because I know it can be 5 days. But I must be honest too : as rook, we see the things differently than other memberships : I don’t like slow players but I don’t really pay attention because these players don’t block me.
This is - unfortunately - a recurring topic on all such sites. that also proves that it is an issue. We have discussed it many times in previous years...
To jog your memory, here are some ideas that were presented:
do not allow to join tourneys or games (for anyone) while you have a game where it is your move. That seems a minor impact, but realistically, it makes it _much_ harder to 'hoard' games - try to have no games to move when you have 500 games running. Someone is always online and answers back, so it is really hard to get to empty the list.
display an average reaction time for each user. This could be a mid-term average (so a single week of vacation doesn't affect it to much), I would say 10-weeks or so. This would be simply the average time a game sat in that players hands before he moved.
of course you could pile onto that, and allow tourney creators to limit entry for people with 'less than x average reaction time'
create a public blacklist of the small number of players that are considered the culprit. That would probably lead to fighting and name calling, and even more aggressive discussion, but it doesn't need a code change in BK, and it would be quite effective. Just block those people from your tourneys, and you are golden.
tourney creators could try to understand the time controls better, and just chose something more appropriate. There are enough choices available to speed up tourneys while still allowing a leisurely pace for participants. We could educate them by giving helpful examples of what time controls to chose for which effect.
I still think this is a good list, but i also think this discussion will end the same way as the others (nothing changes, next discussion in about six months, same arguments). We are too much like politicians - we shout out our opinion, don't listen to others opinions, repeat our opinions, don't want to agree on anything except on that our opinion is the right one, and compromising is for losers and doesn't get you reelected.
Aganju: I don’t like the idea of the blacklist, I hate the idea showing someone guilty, as in court. I prefer an effective action as do not allow to join tourneys or games (for anyone) while you have a game where it is your move. I think it’s short with one game because there’s always an opponent on line. Five games would be perfect. Indeed, with 500 games running, the player will block himself.