timouthy

Ok, ok, ok let me be clear by pointing up a scenario. Lets say one seat was dealt 20 straight Yarboroughs in a 20 hand tourney. Would you still be praying to the almighty god of random hand generation? It sounds like you, smerriman, personally would be no matter what every team getting these crappy hands felt about it. Now the idea of random hand generation is a very good way to do things generally and that should always be the starting point. Here's what you do now. Program the hand generation program to detect if every hand has a Yarborough in one seat location and if so, throw one out. Now generate another replacement hand and detect if this hand is now a Yarborough and if it isn't, include it. I call this small modification to your way of doing business, Sympathetic Random Hand Generation. It sounds like you would still call it hand-crafted and that's well...sad!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew one of you "smart" guys would post this, just because all three were not all in a row. As if 1 in 5.4 million is a tolerable level. None of us here will likely play even 1 million hands in their lifetimes. Your next paragraph completely misses the point as I expected. Let me try again. If there is a way to prevent this from happening to anyone, especially when there is a Howell movement (for hopefully obvious reasons by now), then lets get a move on. The whole idea of duplicate is a great one for obvious reasons, but making a small change like the one I have suggested would not be detracting from the duplicate "business model" in the slightest.

I played in a vacb (virtual club) tourney today (6/7/2023) as a substitute with a Howell movement. In 20 hands, I received, count them, 3 Yarboroughs(two of them back to back). The probability of one Yarborough is 1/1828 (https://jlmartin.ku.edu/bridge/yarborough.pdf). So the probability of three of them in one tourney is (1/1828) x (1/1828) x (1/1828) or 1/6108415552, or in plain English, one in 6 trillion! We came in 2nd place, so I was curious how many of these Yarboroughs were given to the 1st place team, and you guessed it, not one. Now I am a suspicious person by nature, so this occurrence made me an even more suspicious one. But more importantly it made me wonder: In this modern era where we have machines that can deal any specific arrangement of cards, why in Satan's name can we not make sure no person, no matter how much they deserve 3 Yarboroughs in one tourney, ever has it happen to them? I love BBO. They do lots of things right. The learning curve is like learning on steroids. But I have many suggestions for things that need improvement and this is definitely one of them. Timouthy

I would like to know a couple of things. 1. I assume tourney directors can remove unruly players from a tourney but can they remove them from BBO as well and, if so, for what reasons? On more than one occasion I have been disconnected from BBO for no reason, and assumed it was just a bad BBO connection. It seemed to always happen when I filled in as sub in a tourney for just a hand or two. Does any or all of the above apply to team match "directors" as well? 2. Who besides yourself can have access to the notes you keep on the profile windows of other BBO players? Specifically can the directors see these notes? Grazie, Timouthy

I played this hand recently in the Main Club. After a spade lead, I pulled trump and then tried to discard board's spade losers on club suit winners. When clubs didn't break, I resorted to a squeeze using boards trumps. In the two card ending, north hangs onto a spade and a diamond and south hangs onto a club and a diamond. I pitch my club and cash two diamond tricks to make it! I have URL link below. Would like to know how to copy actual bbo hand picture to this post if anyone out there knows. tx timouthy https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin=st||pn|miridley,timouthy,clopinette,donquix111|md|1ST9H4DKT954CJ9652,S32HKJ63DA6CAKQ74,SKQJ65HQDQ8732CT8,SA874HAT98752DJC3|sv|n|rh||ah|Board 31|mb|P|mb|1N|mb|P|mb|2D|mb|P|mb|3H|mb|P|mb|4N|mb|P|mb|5C|mb|P|mb|7H|mb|P|mb|P|mb|P|pc|SK|pc|SA|pc|ST|pc|S2|pc|HA|pc|H4|pc|H6|pc|HQ|pc|C3|pc|C2|pc|CA|pc|C8|pc|CK|pc|CT|pc|S4|pc|C5|pc|CQ|pc|D2|pc|S7|pc|C6|pc|C4|pc|S6|pc|H2|pc|C9|pc|H5|pc|D4|pc|HK|pc|S5|pc|HJ|pc|D3|pc|H7|pc|D5|pc|H3|pc|SQ|pc|HT|pc|D9|pc|H9|pc|S9|pc|S3|pc|D7|pc|H8|pc|DT|pc|C7|pc|D8|pc|DJ|pc|DK|pc|DA|pc|DQ|pc|D6|pc|SJ|pc|S8|pc|CJ|

You cannot have it both ways. Sky Club tourneys do not give a sub master points unless they start before the halfway point and Speedball tourneys do...... period. You seem to be trying to make it sound like a sub being made permanent is a rare exception in Speedball but it is not. I have scored master points many times as a sub and not just in Speedball tourneys.

With all due respect Dianaeva, you do not know what you are talking about. I offer as evidence a Speedball tourney I subbed in on 8/30/2018 #7823. I played only the last 3 hands of the 12 hand tourney and scored Master Points (and btw the last three hands' scores were what allowed us to earn the Master Points). Go and look if you still doubt it.

So nice to finally hear the "policy". I fully expected a reply like this, with absolutely no explanation of the rationale for such a policy and that is exactly what you delivered Barmar. Here is what is wrong with this policy. Why in the world would anyone agree to sub in such a tourney knowing that this is the master point award "rule" here, especially when that is not the policy among the more legitimate tourneys like ACBLs Speedball? Two immediate problems come to mind. First you are sending the message to any competent subs that we don't really appreciate you subbing here despite what you say. The only reason any subs come at all is because you do not post your particular rules for assigning MPs ahead of time. As soon as they learn your "rules" all the good subs will go spend their time doing anything more interesting like organizing their canned goods. Second it invites sabotage. A reasonable person knowing your rules will (and I highly encourage all subs out there to do this), intentionally bid wildly and aggressively because there is nothing to be gained by doing well anyway. Also if you as a sub can figure out who the crappy ops are, intentionally overbid and redouble all high level contracts to pad their scores so they have a chance to win. I personally plan to do this every single time I sub in another of your tourneys until you come to your senses and use the rules the ACBL sponsored tourneys all use, which is give all MPs to whoever finishes the tourney. sincerely, timouthy

Hi, I subbed in a tourney today 9/1/2018 named Sky Club Jackpot $2000 #8650. I started the 5th hand of 8 total and finished the tourney. I scored a net 28.61 IMPs in my four hands, and when added to the first four hands net points, the total was 32.36 points, enough for 2nd place. After the tourney was over it said that I "withdrew" which I certainly did not. The master points were given to the player who played the first four hands and who only scored a net of ~ 3.5 IMPs!. Why is this fair? Do most/any tourney subs know that this happens with this particular tourney? It is not by any means the first time this has happened to me, just the most egregious time. I pointed out this unfairness to the tourney director named Nameste and he just blew me off. timouthy

There you go again. As if previous discussion and "concensus" by self-selected contributors to this site is your proof. I maintain that the vast majority of players on bbo make a good faith estimate of their skill level. Yes I know that means some don't. So you and other bbo administrators have decided your skill rating policy based on the actions of a minority of players? Utterly ridiculous! If you are so convinced that skill level is irrelevant, why do you even have it at all? I'll tell you why, because you and every other bbo participant, knows in your bones that your site would be chaos. You seem so tone deaf and entrenched against this idea, that you have lost perspective about what is good and desirable about playing bridge on bbo. Normally I don't waste anywhere near this much time in a discussion with someone. I was naively under the impression that a "forum" would have a minimum level of sophistication of discourse to it, but I am done trying. adv exp

The same way you assembled all of the current info. to make up your "compatibility" rating. The only thing I want you to determine is a player's post-hand predilection to discuss hand results. Your terse tone/answer suggests your lack of imagination how to do this, so heres a blueprint: Ask the question and have players pick from these possible responses: yes! very much, No not really, sometimes, or other with explanation. Thats not so hard now is it? Oh good! I love your answer to this one. You cite a reason without a hint of attribution, and you make it sound like your first statement is proof of your second statement. If you/bbo have actually tried this "experiment"i.e. more skill levels and seen "won't make it better" result please show us what you used to judge the "not better" result. I will put money on this one that you will have a much lower level of rancor in games. I suggest you adopt a different philosophy to suggestions on this forum; namely "its easier to get forgiveness than permission". Try something and don't worry about a potential catastrophic failure. You just may learn a thing or two.

Two things: My own personal idea of a compatible partner is not just whether we can agree on a method of bidding (I already assume this to be true) but more importantly whether they will look at the results of a hand and decide whether they are satisfied with the result and adjust the bidding and/or play accordingly for next time. I also like people who are inclined to do this ASAP after the hand, but really anytime after the hand is also fine. If you could assemble this info. for me in the next version of your compatibility algorithm, say in a week from now, you can assign 5 stars to anyone who says they are like this, no matter what else they say about themselves. We all make "mistakes" playing this game and not all are entirely foreseeable. The goal is to always be looking to improve and the faster you improve, the better you perform. Next: I hope you never get rid of the friends/enemies list. I don't care one whit that the term enemies has a negative connotation to it. There are all sorts of reasons to put someone on the enemies list. I could list them here but don't get me started. On my list I always include the reason they were put there, so I know why. I could be wrong but I don't think most people's careless/thoughtless/rude behavior changes much over time. If I could copy my list and disseminate it, with the reasons to avoid someone on BBO, I would think it would save others lots of time and avoided insults. One more next: You need more skill levels. I am between advanced and expert and there should be a skill level for this and probably one between intermediate and advanced as well. Since you didn't have one, I had to get creative and name myself this way. I now can get onto most expert tables and compete there where before I wouldn't have been allowed. sincerely, Adv exp

Thanks for your e-mail referral. I did write to bbo and am waiting a reply. And yes it was an ACBL tourney. adv exp

Hi, I was playing in a speedball tourney recently and my partner was taking more time than usual to make her next bid. An opponent called the director and, I believe, also wrote to the table and asked her to speed up. The tournament director came seemingly immediately and booted her within I'd say 5 seconds of his/her arrival. The director claims that he/she gave three warnings to my partner and was ignored, so hence the quick bootage. I saw none of them, but I wasn't paying much attention to anything written. However I can say that it was virtually impossible for there to be 3 warnings in 5 seconds of the director's arrival. What I find so weird is that we have played several speedball tourneys by now and have witnessed many a slowdown artist, and have never witnessed anything like the quick yank that happened to us. Also in this particular tourney, we finished the previous three boards so quickly, that we had 6 minutes left to sit and wait. It seems like the "rules" of these contests concerning speed of play are unevenly applied. Another rule that should be made clear to all players, one that we also experienced with this incident, is that once booted you cannot come back for the rest of the tourney. So I have a few questions/suggestions: I had a discussion with the tourney director after and was told there is a time limit for individual bids; I think he said 90 seconds. Where are these rules on BBO if anywhere? Isn't it a good idea to post this info. somewhere easily accessible on BBO for each type of tourney? If there is a "bid clock", why not post it on the board so a player knows how much time they have left to bid? How do you police tournament directors or, let me back up a sec. Do you police them? I would like a second opinion of the circumstances of the incident in question if possible. Finally I would like to add for the record that I love the pace of speedball. I just think the "rules" should be more transparent. Adv exp

Amen Uday, I couldn't have said it better. I haven't seen a scenario yet where less information is better than more. Mouthy Tim

That "leave" still gets posted. Just because a person leaves a table does not mean you want to automatically screen them away from your table. It is just more information. Over time everyone will have "leaves". But the chronic-bid-and-scram types will have significantly more "leaves" per bbo visit than the background-noise-amounts of most of the rest of us and will stick out like a sore thumb. Even then you do not have to pay attention to it if you don't want to, but I promise you the quality of your games will not be as high as the those of the rest of us.

1. Bridge base should announce to all other players at table ~ 5 minutes before they go that they are leaving for a tourney since I have never witnessed one of these players announcing that they will be going soon. Alternatively they should just be automatically removed from a table right at the end of a hand around five minutes before the start of their tourney. 2. BBO lists how many visits to the site a player has on their profile window. They should also list how many times that player has left a table in the middle of a hand and, they also have my permission to automatically put them on my enemies list to save me the trouble when they have done this at the table I'm playing at. 3. Ok I lied, I have more than a coupla rants. I should probably know this by now, but why do people sit opposite you (you are there first) and expect that you are going to play their bid system? There are now many more 2/1 players than there used to be on BBO but SAYC is still the coin of the realm. Probably all 2/1 bidders know SAYC bidding so newcomers to table figure you will just play their system. What is still weird to me is how often it happens that they expect you will bid their SAYC system without even discussing it. Since it is left up to me, I start with "2/1 p"? Their elegantly phrased response is predictably "no" and then I say "last hand for me" which is usually the first hand played by me at that table. I can imagine fixes for this too but if BBO won't do anything about the above two items, they couldn't give a damn about this one.

Maybe it's just me, but............. Here we have this golden opportunity to play and learn bridge at a more rapid rate because of a number of factors: 1. you do not have to arrange for 4 people of similar talent to get together; if you spend a few seconds, you will almost always find them when you sit to play. 2. you do not have to waste time shuffling; its done instantly. 3. if you spend the small amount of time getting your bidding profile together, you do not have to have endless discussion sessions prior to playing, with a new partner; you can discuss while bidding/playing. 4. You can claim and avoid the time cashing out obvious tricks one-at-a-time. I could go on but I hope I am getting the point across. Essentially bbo is like learning bridge on steroids. The learning curve is intensely steep. I am a teacher and if I could design lessons for my students that have the same rate of learning and retention as what I have experienced here on bbo, I would be a rock star. I am assuming that the designers of this site are fully aware of these features and are therefore committed to enhancing them. Any new feature that could hasten the play would dovetail quite nicely with their rapid learning/play design especially with players on the lower end. BBO are you paying attention? timouthy

Yes this is one way to handle it and I have seen this many times. The other common practice is to just boot the impatient person. But just maybe much of the misunderstanding could be removed by the presence of the "thinking" button prominently displayed. Now instead of waiting and wondering, you might correctly surmise that because the person taking a long time and not using said button must have some other problem, you could just leave and find a better table. timouthy

Sir Bradley, I fully intended to use the word "bark" because in the numerous instances when this has happened to me, several, like the most recent had no polite adornments about them. It was a simple "claim again". In fact not once did I ever see it phrased even as humanely as "could you claim again". I don't even need a "please" in there. So here I am trying to move the game along so we can get onto the next hand thinking I am doing everyone a favor and first I get a "claim denied" and then I get "barked" at. Reminds me of a phrase that starts "No good deed......." timouthy

I thought what I was suggesting was quite obvious. One button to replace the claim button for the defenders only. I have played bbo long enough to know that the vast majority of players at any skill level rarely use the claim button while declaring. And the usage of the claim button by defenders to claim/concede is virtually non-existent. Since no-one is using it to concede, it stands to reason that no-one would know that it can be used for this purpose. And this is borne out by what defenders have told me when asked, i.e. they didn't know they could use the claim button for this. So dumb down things a little and put a button there only for defenders in plain sight that says in big RED letters "concede". timouthy

...and to be used by everyone!

To be visible to everyone of course!

Here's another one that has happened one too many times. You are playing a hand that is not straightforward, i.e. you have to make a decision on the rest of the play based on what just happened on last trick. Many thoughtful players will take the time to proactively write "thinking" to table so as to clarify that yes they are still at table, their internet connection is not faulty, they did not fall off their chair, whatever, but instead need time to make a good decision. How about putting a "thinking" button on table so you can help expedite this delivery of information. Somewhere on the table in big bold red letters would be the word "thinking" so the opponents and even partner would know the status of the person they are waiting for. timouthy

The following has happened to me so many times that it I think a little change is in order: I am declaring, and the rest of the hand is obvious, so I claim the requisite amount of tricks, (usually all of them, but sometimes less than all because of unavoidable loser/s). A defender denies claim. So I start playing it out and then they see that I was right, and often bark to me: "claim again". So recently I wrote out that defenders can also "claim" (actually concede all or most of the remaining tricks) and to my surprise one said "Oh really, how do I do it"? Now I have to spend more time writing out the procedure, and the hand that should have been over minutes ago is now longer than it would have been had I not claimed at all! What can BBO do? As the man from Spishak says, "Well now you can" Put one more option on table only for defenders and don't call it a claim button. Call it the "concede" button. Once they press on it, they have the option of selecting the amount of tricks they want to concede, all or less than all. yours truly, timouthy