rigour6

Doubler's hand is ♥QJx ♠KQT3 ♦AQ5 ♣KQ9 What I ended up doing was averaging the board, then blacklisting the redoubler when he subsequently disagreed with my assertion that 2♦had to be alerted and stormed off. Ahhh, nothing like capricious and swift justice....

Auction: pass - pass - 1 NT pass - pass - 2 diamonds - Dbl 2 NT - pass - 3 hearts - Dbl Rdl - all pass Declarer's Card shows he is playing cappelletti. His partner's card does not show capp. The tourney is an Indy. Questions: 1. should the 2 diamonds bid have been alerted? 2. 3 hearts redoubled makes +1. Should this board be adjusted? If so, how? Declarer holds: ♠Axxxx ♥KT9x ♣Jxxx ♦- In other words, heart and spades, just like he said. I am not sure why his partner asks for minor suits, his shape is no spades and 5 hearts.

Jilly, as someone who has enjoyed having you as a player, a TD, and a co-TD - and as someone who for a while now has been concerned about what's happenning to the free tourneys (see my postings ad nauseum), let me just suggest that there's still a place for you. I say this because I've felt the same thing you have. Take a break. Come back and do a tourney. Take another break. I will say this: hosting a free TD is a very thankless task. I typically have 50-200 people in my tourney. The ratio if sheer rudeness to simple "thank yous" is roughly 4 to 1. Some of this is explainable by my incompetent direction, granted. Still, you do end up asking yourself over and over: "Exactly why am I doing this again?" The only solution I have found is to take a break. Sometimes I get keen and run 4 tourneys back to back. Sometimes three weeks go by and I pretend I have a life and don't run a single one. You're a concientious, good-hearted person, so you tend to feel that you should run tourneys. You don't OWE anyone a tourney. Any free TD who relies on feedback will eventually quit. Host tourneys because you think it's the right thing to do. Host one, then take a break. As for the pay tourneys, I think someone somewhere once said the love of money was the root of all evil. Perhaps they should write that down somewhere. Money changes people's motivations and behaviour, unfortunately. Even a tiny bit of money does for tiny people, it seems. I still don't know what the answer is. I want BBO to succeed financially as well as in other ways. I believe very profoundly in the consept that the system should be free to those who don't wish to pay. And my self-proclaimed clever idea of the R6 "Dime a Dozen" Series (a pay tourney that charges 10 cents for 12 boards) apparently creates more work for already overloaded uday and others. So I've still got my thinking cap on. In the meantime, if you see me online, make sure you say "hi". Losing you as a TD is one of those "canary in the coal mine" moments for me, it raises concerns on a number of levels.

17 is a nice number for the screen resolution -c an see them all at once, and it does some nice things in terms of groups with an indy. In Pairs, I've gone as high as 50. The type of tourney is of course a key factor. As a general rule, most of my tourneys are unclocked. I address slow play through adjustments (the slower group will skip a board, I A== them when they move) and, of course, Mr. Blacklist.

N's bid looks fine to me, he's too strong to overcall. S's pass worked out well for them in this case. He had almost no place to go, personally I'd have grit my teeth and bid 2 clubs, but no smart player would make what I would do be a guide to them. The pass might have been disastrous at MPs, but at IMPs, maybe just maybe....

Well, there just goes to show there's 2 sides to every story. Here I thought I was doing folks a favour, and turns out they're offended. You have to remember, my goal is to smooth and speed play. If the claim I make is just going to confuse them more, I've done neither.

Another thing I have done occasionally (more often in ftf) is when I see a newer player sweating over a discard and I was about to claim anyway I say to them, "Don't worry about what to keep, at this point it doesn't matter." This is the kind of sentence I want to be awfully sure about before I say, however.

I have found that it's best not to claim unless and until it's obvious you're all winners (or all winners but one). The reason is time. It takes many opps longer to figure out long claims than it does to play them. By sticking with my guidelines (only claim when it's obviously all winners or all less one) I still find about 20% of my claims get rejected. That dissuades me from claiming in more complicated cases. That, and the fact that I myself am unaware that I might claim in such cases.

I used to run two or three tourney every day, and at that time it was not at all infrequent for a director of a pay tourney to ask me to change my start time or limit the size. I know this is considered wrong by uday and others, but frankly, I didn't mind. I understand pay tourneys, I think those TDs earn their money (big time!) and it also helps support BBO. So I am glad to do it. These days it happens much more rarely. One thing I do now is take a look and see what's coming up. If it's all Pairs, then here comes my "Fast Play 8, slower play 7" Indy. If it's Indy heavy then here comes "The Quickness" or "The Eliminator". And if it's full of both I say hey no need, what tourney am I gonna play in? ;) I can't see what the point is in having an ego about a service you're providing free to others. There's 4000 people online, what do I care if my tourney is 5 tables or 55? Is this supposed to be some reflection on me as a person?

Intentional disconnects: blacklist them. Playing the clock: My default is to go unclcoked for my tourneys, and to warn players that if they fall behind I will average a board on them. Then I do just that. So when a bad board comes, all the delaying does is prevent them from playing another board they might do better on. I let them finish the "bad" board, then when the next board comes up a do I quick A== and shazam! They are caught up, no prejudice to the field, and nothing gained from their delay.

lol I would love to see what this scored at IMPs. The double did not have a conventional meaning for the partnership. The usual meaning of a double of 1 NT opening was appropriate. I don't know where the redouble comes from, but as W indicates, that took him off the hook. So now we have north who has opened NT with a worthless spade doubleton, and a p who is showing some points and he thinks "Aha! I am going to make a top here on my 2 NT hand". When that gamble goes absolutely into the toilet, he looks for someone to blame. Morale of the story for me: Just because it was a "weird" distribution of cards, and Just because your gamble didn't work because of that Doesn't mean the TD has work to do.

The practicalities of this are: 1. If I have time and it's early enough, I send the new declarer a private message telling them what has been played. I usually limit this to hand where 4 tricks or less have been played, because i) I am liable to misstype and ii) it does give the player a written record of the cards played, which actually places them at a greater advantage than if the sub hadn't happenned. 2. If I can, I stick around to see what happens and if things go off the rails in a way I suspect will hurt the field (the software doesn't exactly make it easy for me to know for sure), I may average the board. I am generally loathe to do that though, because in a number of cases the error is in the BID, not in the play. There are more disconnects when a miscommunication lands the partnership in an unmakeable slam for example, than when 3 finesse tries in a row all fail. So averaging in that case isn't very fair. Also I am concious that it doesn't really matter anyway, since no one is winning anything and at matchpoints, it may not make a huge difference. I don't say this as a philosophy of directing online tourneys ("it's all for fun and the points don't matter" is more a philosophy for the host of "Who's Line is it Anyway?" than a bridge tournament), but it might be how I'd view this. 3. If I am off to another table, the new sub may be sol. After all, I've got some things to do, including possibly blacklisting the disconnected player, which isn't the easiest thing either. If their partner complains (especially in any indy), I may average the board though.

My understanding from uday is no. In fact, limiting deserters was one of the main reasons why I wished to consider the "dime a dozen" series. Although you could argue who'd stay for a dime, a person could also say who'd stay for a dollar? But people do. This is a principle of life, which is that people follow thier money, however little it is. I learned this first hand in community organizations. If you want to have a committed and active membership base, you MUST charge a membership fee - even if it's only $1 (ideally I have found the number is about $10). That weeds out the people who sign up just to get rid of you from those who are actually interested to and committed to your cause. People will sign cards, take your literature etc etc. but when you get their money then you know you have a commitment.

Well, after giving it some thought, I did ask uday for permission to charge a dime, but turns out that's more work for him, and all he makes is a dime. So rigour's "dime a dozen" tourney series won't be starting until at least 2006. ;) I like the idea of being able to contribute something to BBO though.

What good are masterpoints? 1. They keep people involved in the ACBL, and playing bridge. Maybe it is deceptive, yes, but having more people playing is a good thing. Having higher turnouts at tourneys is a good thing. Encouraging people to stay with it is a good thing. 2. They perform (imperfectly) as a way to help people a) find a match and B) compare themselves with others of roughly their experience and playing level. 3. They encourage people to continue playing when they would get discouraged and quit, either because they are not having any success when they start or because their abilities are diminishing. Of course players know and understand the limitations of points. In today's online play world, I could no doubt accumulate a thousand (colourless) masterpoints a year if I really wanted to. I could (and some do) hire pros to play with me at tourneys and get my reds and golds. If I feel that accomplishes something, bully for me. I know when my partner and I have played well. I know when the game has been enjoyable. There's a lot of luck in bridge in terms of who you play which hands against etc. Masterpoints are a crude tool, but why not? What harm do they do? When will I know I am a very good player? A: Probably never because I won't get there, but if I started winning some Regionals, that would be a not bad way to confirm it. Going to the Bermuda Bowl probably would cinch it. In other words, I don't think really great players pay much attention to masterpoints. I think some of us mediocre players pay too much attention to them, but most of them regard them as sort of benign markers of time and success, like an odometer.

I'm tempted to say that anything (within reason) you wish to do is fine - so long as you warn the players. I say I am tempted to say it, but I am sure that people will immediately begin thinking of a million exceptions. For now, just take some time to get to know the software, keep the number of tables down.

In all the tourneys I've done, I've had this happen maybe a half dozen times. I get caught by a netsplit of something, OK but then I can't log back in. Ooooooh you have no idea how much it frustrates me, I'm on a high speed connection I can just imagine my tourney going into chaos, here it is a total failure: instead of doing something nice for players I've actually wasted their time. One solution: multiple TDs. I've co-TD'ed many times (often for tourneys where the TD wanted to play). I think it should be encouraged. Rather than 2 TDs running 2 8 tables tourneys, the two of them should be running a 16 table tourney together. But given everything that's just nice when it happens, you certainly can't depend on it. There's a few TDs I know well enough to have co-TD'ed with and enjoyed it. Some of the others now..... If you think that sounds bad you can just imagine what they'd say about me.

Well, I agree that carrots are better than sticks. I also think that whether a tourney "goes well" or not is most often a function of how many times players abandon the tournament and when - i.e. something the TD has basically no control over. I know when I do my tourneys unclocked (in the hopes of speeding play) there's always a chance that the tounrey will hang up when one group of players, usually the second slowest, play each other and then have to wait for the slowest before they move on. So they finished the first 3 rounds 8 minutes early, now they fume and send me angry messages that they have to wait an extra 5 now. I can tell them gee if you'd been in the fastest group you'd be done now, but bottom line, that wait means my rating for the tourney is going to be quite poor. So you'd have to take it with a grain of salt, but it'd be something anyway. Also, if there were a series of low scores, BBO might be able to have a head's up and contact the TD, see if they need help.

I want to clarify that if candybar felt my reply was flaming him/her, I apologize for that misunderstanding. I think they make some good points, and I am not defensive or angry in my response. I don't have an ego about how I perform in my tourneys, I know some go well and some don't, I don't excuse the poor ones or feel proud at the good ones. I did post because I wanted people incl candybar to udenrstand the other side, not to refute what they are saying. To me, the best (and easiest) thing which could be added to the software is a single poll question posed to the player at the end of torunament, asking them how they would rate the job the TD did. Then you make those results available to the players, so they can have good information. Plus the fact the TDs know they are going to be rated should improve things some. Not a panacea, but hopefully not too difficult to program and provides some impetus.

As I have said before, I am certainly one of ther worst TDs going. That said, there are differences between f2f and on-line. They include: 1. There are no stakes. The goal is to have fun, not accumulate masterpoints. So rather than making the emphasis on getting things right and fair, sometimes keeping things moving is at a premium. That's because I can't do late plays, I can't turn to a committee ruling. I have to balance my duty to the players asking me to do x, and y with my duty to the players who are just looking at the screen and wondering why they haven't moved to the next boards yet. Which brings me to my next point. 2. Unlike in f2f, the players can't see me or tell what I am doing. So I can be trying to solve your problem, but people don't know that, and everytime they message me there's a pop-up I have to move aside and get back to dealing with you. Sometimes 3 people call me from the same table. Sometimes the same guy calls me thrice but adds extra exclamation marks each time. Which brings me to my next point. 3. Certain people feel the anonymity of online allows them to be rude. You know those guys who are waiting while I solve your problem? Some of them aren't waiting patiently. They are sending me pop-ups and slowing me down. They are wondering how it is that 30 seconds have gone by and I haven't yet done the adjustment they requested. I COULD send a message to tourney to tell them what I am doing. Unlike in ftf I can't do that simultaneously with actually solving the problem. So I have to weight how informed I keep them with how fast i solve their problem. 4. Not everyone speaks any of the 3 languages I do, and even if they do I might try 2 before we get to the third. Why do I say all this? IF I ended up at a table where someone had overcalled 2 clubs or whatever and they had been asked to explain it and hadn't done so AND time was a ticking AND it seemed like language was a problem There's a 50-50 chance I might type to the asking person, "It's a natural overcall." Should I do that according to the rules? Of course not. Would I do that in a ftf? Of course not? So why would I do it in my free, 6 board tourney called "Ham Sandwich"? Because it is a free 6 baord tourney called "Ham Sandwich", it is not the Bermuda Bowl qualifier. Btw, anyone who feels TDs do a poor job is welcome to TD about 50 times, You may still feel they do a poor job, but I guarantee you some new insights as to why.

I never realized Tenerife was such a hole, no wonder people hate going there. :) Thanks for the photo links - they are great!

1) Join BIL 2) Buy or borrow a copy of Harry Lampert's "The Fun Way to Serious Bridge". Harry's system is not dead-on SAYC, but it is close and easy to learn. Understanding page 33 is the key. 3) Look around for other players. I learned to play bridge with 5 other guys, only 2 of which had played before and that was over 20 years ago. We were all on the same level, so we all made the same mistakes over and over. It was great fun, the games were competitive, and we all went up at more or less the same speed. 4) If you can, learn to play duplicate style. This makes it easier to review the bidding after the hand has been played. 5) If you can, find a regular partner. Preferrably a really good looking and understanding one. If you have to pick, choose understanding. 6) Bid lots and lots and lots of hands. Practice "calling" the hand - i.e when your partner bids, say out loud what you think the bid tells you. 7) There will come a moment of frustration when your skill will improve enough that you will perceive how bad you are doing. Just ignore that phase, on the other side of it is improved play and a lifetime of learning.

Well, I just learned something I didn't know (about "cretins"), and was reminded of something I wish I didn't need to be (that in written bulletin board postings, it's awfully easy for things to degenerate, whereas in person, tone of voice and facial expression allows people to stay on topic and avoid unthinkingly offending each other).

No one is crazy enough to want to try to learn from me... :-) What I would hope to do for any student is try to teach them to think... and in the process, what to think about.... Ben 1) If my partner has got so much on the ball mentally that they can devote brain power to this question in an auction, why did they devote so little of it into choosing a partner such that they ended up with me? 2) Every 10 seconds my partner spends in contemplation of this scenario at the table takes approximately a month from my expected lifespan. 3) Have you ever had that discussion with your wife where you broke the established rule because there was a special circumstance? How did that work out for you? Do you really want to pay the price of a) having every sin in the future compared to this one? b ) having her do far worse things and then claim they were Ok by analogy? Even if you can keep the volume down, I think your life would be better served by having the shared story of "the time we would have won it all if only p had passed my 2 club opener" than "let me tell you about the time my p passed my 2 clubs and we went from 2nd place to 15th on the last board."

1) Thanks for a hilarious thread. 2) I think the joke goes something like this: Inspector: Were you there when the gentleman died? Butler: No sir, I was in the adjoining room, I could hear everything but couldn't see. Inspector: What did you hear? Butler: I heard "2 Clubs, pass, pass, pass, bang! bang! bang!" 3) Whatever you gain on passing 2 Clubs, you will almost certainly lose in your partner's concentration over the next few hands as he thinks, "what the hell?" and his terrifying uncertainty the next time he picks up a 2 club hand. 4) Partner may have game in his hand and only be waiting for you to let him know if there's a slam. 5) The bigger point: Pass in this situation reveals a nearly complete narcissism in that you are "captaining" the hand in a situation you have absolutely no right to. In any auction, information is exchanged until one person has enough to make a decision or to pose the key question to the other person. In some auctions that's obvious, many 1 NT openings for example, make responder the captain. In other auctions it's not, but a) never assume you are the person captaining, and b ) never grab the captaincy when it clearly belongs to your partner. This is what the understanding of balancing is all about. I give another example: You open 3 diamonds Pass Pass 3 Hearts What do you do now? Well, with many many hands, the answer is obvious: Pass. Why? Because presumably your 3 diamonds opening gave p a very good picture of your hand, and since he knows what you have and you don't know what he has, why not let the partner with the better knowledge make the decision? 6) So in summary, this is not the answer for experts, and if you have a partnership understanding that could survive or even welcome 2 clubs - pass, then great. But for most beginning and intermediate players, 2 clubs - pass is like pouring acid on the foundations, you are saying "partner, I can't trust you" and, more damaging still, "partner, you can't trust me." You are inviting your partner to abandon your bidding system on very little provocation, and that will invite a kind of free flow bidding which is no communicative, effective, relaxing, accurate, or enjoyable. It's Ok to want to take big risks, but the purpose of bidding is to make them calculated risks. A risk taken without information is not a calculated one.