[PeppeA]

I played 7 of 8 boards and was 1st ranking in #6334 Robot Duplicate - (IMP); then i had to go to door and stayed far for some minutes; when i was back the clock showed still 7 minutes to the end of tourney, but there was a pop up telling that for bbo i was far away and it was going to close: i hadn't time to study the board to bid, when it has been suddenly closed. I asked the very kind yellow Chas_P, who told me that "those games are timed for inactivity. obviously you were away for too long."
So i expressed my doubts about the reason to time those games for inactivity: they are already timed to a maximum to play; i mean: i cannot occupy the table indefinitely, so where is the danger for the system?
Chas_P kindly replied that there is no "danger to the system". the purpose for the timer is to keep the game moving for ALL the players.
Pls allow me to observe that i can understand this necessity for long tourneys, i miss the reason of it for short ones - i had often to wait more than 10 mins to have my final result , while other player were finishing a robot-duplicate and accepted it as part of those tourneys way of being.
(please believe me: i feel worst for my good ranking wasting than for my quarter)
TY for caring.
PeppeA

[barmar]

If people are actively playing, we let them continue until the stated time limit for the tourney. But players found it annoying having to wait when the only players left were not even playing, so this timer was added a while ago.

[Humper]

This feels really broken to me -- if a tournament lasts an hour, I should have an hour to play the boards. I should CERTAINLY have a few minutes to think about a hand without popups nagging me about it.

I play a lot of robot duplicates because they're a great way to work on cardplay in a vacuum; no one is waiting, and there's almost nothing at stake. If I can't power through the first 8 boards and really think hard about the 9th one, the tourney is really fundamentally changed.