playing time & payment

[jim55]

I am finding it more and more that there might be more than 20 people on line but you have to wait at least 10 min to get a game of 6, are other people seeing this or is it only me ?? , some of the top names seem to wait until there is only 1 or 2 positions left before entering why ?
I think it is only common courtisey that when you know that you are going to leave your PC for more than 30 - 45 min that you should sign off, and also that there are a lot of players, ( some top level ), that have been playing for almost a year without paying for membership, I am sure that if some of these players can play for more than 6 hrs / day then they must have enough to pay a one off fee to make sure the site can keep on operating, I am expecting quite a lot of flack about this , so please feel free

[beagle]

No flack from me, jim55. I'm in full agreement.

[adrienne]

Possibly one reason it's so difficult to get a game started is because players are holding back from playing against the big names. Quite often players who are on-line are actually playing practice games. Many of the amateurs I've communicated with say they only play the very hard games for 8 because they inevitably lose at the easier games. Nobody likes to enter a game knowing they have no chance at winning, as usually happens with the imbalance of amateurs & pros in the same game. I tried foeing the pros, thinking it would stop them from competing against me (an amateur) but I got a lot a flak (not unkind) for doing that. So now I wait to see who is playing before I join, often missing the game entirely. I often watch a dozen games load up before I find one in which I won't come in last place. It's a tedious way to play Sudoku.