So I'm in a Round-Robin tourney with CastratedHorse. Some of the senior members of this site seem to know him, and he's played tons of games, so the guy isn't a newbie or anything, and maybe he's got a reason for being MIA.

That being said - I noticed that he's holding up a number of the games in our tourney and was booted from another one. So I look into his history, just to see whether he's on vacation or something. Well, he hasn't logged in since the middle of March, and he's been booted from 77 games, and all of them are in the January->April timeframe.  So it looks like he joined into a bunch of tourneys, many of which are round-robin, but then hasn't come back since. So now, each time a another game starts, everyone has to wait for him to timeout before then can proceed.

Issues I see are these:

1) He's in a bunch of small game tourneys, where the booting of 1 of those players significantly effects not only the speed by which the tourney can move forward, but the gameplay of the actual tourney.  In a 2 person game tourney, the boot becomes essentially a bye week the opponent, and in our 3 person GearStorm tourney, it becomes 1-on-1 which all but hands the game to the player who pulls seat #1.

2) It's reasonablly possible that he's registered in a number of tourneys that haven't even started yet, so his effects could continue to grow.  He might have registered for all of these tourneys in January, and they just take 3 months to fill up, so only now are we seeing the effects.  He could be registered in 30, which might take weeks/months to come out.

3) (NOTE: Given his longstanding game history, I doubt this is true, but...) I could also see this being just an act of defiance of a disgrunteled player:  He's pissed at the site, so he joins 30 tourneys just so he can cause havoc without actually doing anything.

I don't really have a suggested course of action, but given that he's been booted out of every game he's started since March suggests that it might be reasonable to have his account be removed from the tourney's he's in so the rest of us can move forward with our games.

Anyone else have thoughts?
And to the admins:   If I'm out of place, feel free to snipe me/chuck out the whole thread.

I just checked the other tourneys I'm registered for, and he's in 4 of 4 that haven't started yet.

Edit:  And 12 of the 14 tournaments that were started prior to his last login...

I hear you Boris.  I was in a couple games with that player, and a couple tourneys, and having played him a number of times did not expect him to pick up and go like he did.  

When players do this with normal games (e.g. Genesis) the boot process works them out fairly well, but in tournaments (especially round robin) it drags the whole thing out.

I remember when we were first discussing tourneys a suggestion was that a player booted from one tourney game is booted from the tournament.  I thought at the time this was a good idea, but it was not implemented.

Since then, having played many tourneys, I have noticed once (and not that I was really on the look out for it, but he was my partner) where a player failed to join a game, but then was back for the next one.

So, my suggestion would be that if a player is booted from either a game or from joining a game in a tourney, the next time it comes around check to see if they have logged in lately and, if not, boot 'em right away. 

Amidon37 wrote:

I remember when we were first discussing tourneys a suggestion was that a player booted from one tourney game is booted from the tournament.  I thought at the time this was a good idea, but it was not implemented.

I thought if a player was booted from 2 games in a tourney then they were booted from that tournament.  Was that not implemented?

Don't think so.

Below are Castrated Horse's games from "First Octagon Tourney"

He played 1 game and lost, then had two going and stopped coming mid-game on both.  Booted from those two, and then has failed to show for the next 3, and we are now waiting on him for another.

http://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/311?viewselector=Tournament-Player&filter2=21a3df86c70c5062825201bfa3c92f76#tabs-games

I think Yertle's option is good.
That would cover letting the tourney progress, without wounding a player for missing one timeout.

But in this particular case, someone might want to look into removing CastratedHorse from everything he's a part of.
If you look at his games list, he's currently a part of 12 running tournaments, and as I said earlier, he's registered for 12 more tournaments that are still awaiting more players.
I hate to remove someone from that much, but given that that's 24 tourneys he's slowing down, (most of which he has never played even a single turn in) I think it's reasonable to remove him so they can progress normally.

Here's the tourney he's in with us now:

http://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/307

I've booted him from all Live tournaments and removed him from all Open tournaments. Seems like this might be a good argument for restricting the number of tournaments a Standard Member can join.

Thanks Tom, as always, you're quick to jump in and help.
Much appreciated for all that you do.

tom wrote:

I've booted him from all Live tournaments and removed him from all Open tournaments. Seems like this might be a good argument for restricting the number of tournaments a Standard Member can join.

It's not as likely, but this could also happen with member as well. I think there needs to be some kind of inactivity related rule that applies to all.  For instance, 15 days of inactivity (while not on vacation -that's two weeks and a day) should be enough to kick someone out of all tournaments (and especially those that haven't started - it's not like you're banning them from the site; they can always rejoin those tournaments).