A not infrequent refrain from some players realtime (lightning, 10 minute) games is that their opponents are playing in bad faith, are poor losers, babies, etc., when their opponents either don't make their moves until near the end of their 10-minute turn or actually (Heaven Forbid!) miss their turn (or turns).

Two solutions, and two comments ...

Solutions:

1. Don't join lightning games.
2. Create your own realtime games using Fischer Clock with Custom settings -- decide on the length of time you're willing to wait for an opponent to make his turn, then use that value for all three fields: the Initial Time, Delay Time, and Clock Limit. For example, set all values to 5 minutes. Each of you gets 5 minutes (no more, no less) for every turn, and no boots.

Comment:

• Players can miss their turn for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to: multitasking and not noticing that their turn has come up again, having to take a call, having to attend to an issue beyond the range of their computer (answer the door, respond to something happening, etc.), system hanging/crashing, forgetting to click End Turn the second time when not doing a fortify, etc. And yes, to make a point about the attitude/behavior of their opponent (i.e. the opponent talking trash, whining, etc.)

• If you're one of the people who often react to an opponent missing/delaying a turn or (GASP!) getting booted from the game by calling them 'children', 'babies', 'poor losers', 'f***tards', etc.), perhaps you should look in a mirror.

If you want to play me and skip your turns, I'll be quite alright with it. ;)

Sorry to hear about the name calling--I can almost put a name to those insults.

Spider wrote:If you want to play me and skip your turns, I'll be quite alright with it. ;)

Sorry to hear about the name calling--I can almost put a name to those insults.

:-)

I've been on the receiving end a couple of times, but this was more in response to comments I've seen recently directed at others.

I actually appreciate the number of opponents who have *not* gotten annoyed at me when I've "missed my goes" due to various reasons (including all the ones I listed in the first post :-) )

I've been playing some live on-line poker lately. There is a timer on making your decisions. If you take a little long there is a way other players can (mildly) express their displeasure. When that happens to me, usually I then think "Dude, if you only knew what else I am trying to do at this time." 'Cause often it is mundane things like riding in a car and losing reception for a minute.

Back when I played some bridge on-line, there was (and still is I'm pretty sure) the expectation that players don't play too slow, or even too fast i(n certain situations). Non-"measured" play can be a two-edged sword (inferences can be made) and in some cases it is illegal. I seem to remember once when the director was called to my table when I took too long making what they perceived to be a critical bid. Funny thing is, I didn't think it was all that long, and the bid wasn't critical, at least not from my perspective. Anyway..

As for an idea regarding how to improve the Fisher clock:

Allow a setting for the allowance of a specific number of 'time outs.' When used, they add a specified time to a player's clock for that turn only.

Time-outs could come in handy in faster games. E.g. Allow five 1 minute timeouts in a 30 second per move game.

Players should be allowed to use all of their time-outs at once. For instance, a player may elect to spend three time-outs for a bathroom break, saving two for turns where they may need to make critical decisions.

Another variant could be "Automatic Time-outs." Where players are allowed to go over the cap a specified number of times., receiving x number of additional seconds, ..or they get a total of x minutes of 'overage' before their turn starts to skip.

Someone missing turns is too bad, but I've also seen some players intentionally take the full timer every turn when losing, presumably for their opponent to run out of time.

One case I saw the player took in last 30 seconds each turn, but skipped once perhaps accidentally, then they started taking their turn at the beginning of their 10 minutes but did the fortify in the last 30 seconds of the round. I think 10 minutes is too long for a "lightning game", if I'm playing realtime I'm more likely to pick fischer clock.

Ah lol, this game. Sometimes when I see "zdisabled" players I look at a few of their games wondering why they were banned or if they were "cheating" in a game I might have been in but I saw them complain about turn length at the end of this game.

https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938

Maybe it's a meta strategy but it would have driven me nuts too.

OFF TOPIC:

A37 - Out of curiosity, what sites have good play/are reputable these days?

For 4 years after college (early/mid 2000's) I managed a bar, and would get off work at 3AM, go home and then play maybe 4-5 holdem tournaments at a time on Party Poker against a bunch of people who just got home from the bar, but had been sitting on the stool side of said bar. Their drunkenness made my mediocre poker skills quite lucrative. I could win a couple of 30/3's per night, which would work into a decent profit on the evening, and I could pay rent and for groceries by the end of the month.

I miss it and would love to get back into it, but don't know what sites are reputable anymore, so nervous to put money into it without a recommendation.

Andernut wrote:Ah lol, this game. Sometimes when I see "zdisabled" players I look at a few of their games wondering why they were banned or if they were "cheating" in a game I might have been in but I saw them complain about turn length at the end of this game.

https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938" target="_blank"> https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938

Maybe it's a meta strategy but it would have driven me nuts too.

We could probably assemble a panel here who would say that in this particular case the slow play behavior may have been a justifiable tactic deployed against a deserving individual, just sayin'. I would also think that golf claps would also be issued from the panel.

Andernut wrote:Ah lol, this game. Sometimes when I see "zdisabled" players I look at a few of their games wondering why they were banned or if they were "cheating" in a game I might have been in but I saw them complain about turn length at the end of this game.

https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938" target="_blank"> https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938

Maybe it's a meta strategy but it would have driven me nuts too.

:-)

In that case I would posit that the delaying player *was* indeed dragging the game out specifically to aggravate AC73 (the disabled player). Most likely that would be for the final reason I listed in my original post: "to make a point about the attitude/behavior of their opponent (i.e. the opponent talking trash, whining, etc.)", which is what ultimately led to AC73 being disabled.

It's not a tactic I've seen the delaying player employ very often --- he's normally a *very* fast player, and usually surrenders when things don't look good for his side. Playing a 2-hour lightning game is almost certainly about making a point.

hootz72 wrote: ...

We could probably assemble a panel here who would say that in this particular case the slow play behavior may have been a justifiable tactic deployed against a deserving individual, just sayin'. I would also think that golf claps would also be issued from the panel.

1. Jinx! (It took me a while to type my response, so didn't see yours before I posted :-D)
2. [golfclap]!

To add another suggestion per what M57 was saying - you could have an extremely fast setting that would mimick chess. Each player could have a 15 minute clock and at the start of your turn your clock would start to run down until you hit end turn and then it would stop. This would force each opponent to think fast on their feet to only take 20-30 second turns. You can win by your opponent running out of clock before you, or by completely eliminating them.

Agreed (abishai).

To do a chess-clock game, set up a Fischer game with custom setting: Initial clock = 15 minutes, Delay clock = 0 seconds, and Clock Limit = 15 minutes.

I think with the Fischer clock a lot of players are uncomfortable because they are unsure what they are getting into. I mean they could just read up on the settings and figure it out, but if it had its own symbol like double lightning bolts, I think a lot more people would go for it.

agwyvern wrote:Agreed (abishai).

To do a chess-clock game, set up a Fischer game with custom setting: Initial clock = 15 minutes, Delay clock = 0 seconds, and Clock Limit = 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, a "total time to play" with a few seconds added per turn (a Fisher clock standard) doesn't stop someone from stalling to the end. This is the reason I don't play FC games.

In a fast game, some turns simply take longer than 15 or 20 seconds to execute. E.g. I might want to avoid the T button because I need to test larger stacks, etc. That's why I suggested giving players a limited number of time-outs..technically it's more like an extension.

BorisTheFrugal wrote:OFF TOPIC:

A37 - Out of curiosity, what sites have good play/are reputable these days?

I miss it and would love to get back into it, but don't know what sites are reputable anymore, so nervous to put money into it without a recommendation.

I should have noted this is a free poker thing. (unless you want to buy something from the site) I think half the time I am playing against bots. It's fun though. The app is "Hold'em or Fold'em". I have made almost 300 million dollars!

agwyvern wrote:Andernut wrote:Ah lol, this game. Sometimes when I see "zdisabled" players I look at a few of their games wondering why they were banned or if they were "cheating" in a game I might have been in but I saw them complain about turn length at the end of this game.

https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938" target="_blank"> https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938" target="_blank"> https://www.wargear.net/games/player/81352938

Maybe it's a meta strategy but it would have driven me nuts too.

:-)

In that case I would posit that the delaying player *was* indeed dragging the game out specifically to aggravate AC73 (the disabled player). Most likely that would be for the final reason I listed in my original post: "to make a point about the attitude/behavior of their opponent (i.e. the opponent talking trash, whining, etc.)", which is what ultimately led to AC73 being disabled.

It's not a tactic I've seen the delaying player employ very often --- he's normally a *very* fast player, and usually surrenders when things don't look good for his side. Playing a 2-hour lightning game is almost certainly about making a point.

Ah, I just remembered seeing the game and being flabbergasted. If they talked trash a lot I'm surprised they didn't in that particular game lol.