kansas88

I don't play much live bridge anymore but when I do, and look out over the room, I don't see many of those well-dressed, lily-white suburban matrons, like the ones on the new BBO splash screen. In fact, I don't see any. It's well known that the average age of today's bridge player is about 156, the normal blood pressure is 185/93, and the BBO customer base is probably well over 50% non-American. So, who took over the decision making? Non-bridge players who think they're fooling customers into believing that if you join you'll meet hot babes? Next, how's raising the Robot Duplicate MPs from twenty-nine cents to almost half a dollar working out for you? It's pure greed. It's not nearly as evil, though, as that little, almost invisible, notice on the newsfeed the other day about changing the default dollar amount from $20 to $30 to buy BBO credit. Check the first paragraph of this post, notice the average of bridge players and see if you don't look like you're preying on the elderly who are used to and have budgeted $20 purchases and suddenly find themselves overspending and don't have a clue about how to "try" to get their money back. Finally, I saving my complaints about how robot tournaments, including the ACBL, are not bridge, for another time.

I read this and your other replies and, yeah, I'd noticed the quaint suit colors before but I don't think I'll withdraw my question, who thought it was a good idea(?). I know what you're trying to do. You're thinking, "we play bridge, we like it a lot, we don't understand why everybody doesn't, let's do something to fix that." By the way, did you know that you've got the whole of the ACBL working against you? It will pay lip service to indulging yours and others little electronic fantasies and delusions of importance but award you nothing for any of your individual accomplishments, giving overwhelming weight to in-person assemblies of warm bodies. I rather imagine you're probably that way yourselves, no? Asking on BBO how to get more BBOers involved but knowing what you want is to make people take up the game and play it in a room with living, breathing people? Don't take it too severely when I characterize that as disingenuous. You can't use the internet to promote bridge if what you're promoting is leaving the internet to get anywhere in bridge. That's one of the things that's most jarring about watching your videos: seeing the people who are playing bridge. It's not just uninteresting; it's off-putting. Watching people think is like watching grass grow. Sure, you try to pare it down but it's even more tedious and unreal when you watch bridge pros think because they've trained themselves to be impassive, poker faced as it's said, demonstrative of a presumed control of emotions in favor of pure intellectualism and reasoning. The internet will not kill bridge. Live bridge, rather, the insistence on playing live in order to obtain any money or recognition will kill bridge as the population ages and dies. Sure, there'll always be folks who are thrilled by the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd. Who'll pine for the good old days when they knew a guy who knew a guy who could remember every card in every hand he played 30 years ago. That's enough. Any more ranting and raving just makes me look and feel like I'm being disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable. I commend your efforts. I wish you the best. I'm on YouTube often and I'll check back to see how you're doing.

I can't figure out what you're trying to do here or for whom you're doing it. Layout is confused, the audio levels are uneven, it's hard to figure out who's talking or to what they're referring, the cards are hard to see and the hands displayed with the players' faces are odd. (Who thought green clubs and orange diamonds was a good idea?) There's a lot of "thinking" shown. Sure, sometimes there's voiceover but there's still a lot of footage of strangers cogitating and it makes time just, plain, stop. There's more. I watched on a 26" monitor but if I'd been on a phone or tablet I couldn't have made it past the first hand. I wouldn't have been able to see cards or positions or known who was whose partner. The sound would have been even more incomprehensible. Look, I really do acknowledge the work you put into this. I think it's too ambitious and probably woefully underfunded. Have you thought about doing what established bridge columnists have done since the dawn of time? Bring your players in, sure, and don't tell them you've given them "lesson" hands but let them play them as if they're random and script your game and post-game commentary to bring out the lesson presented. Do that with a revamp of the format and some judicious editing-out of having to watch people with a mixture of confusion and poker faces and see if it works?

How about a window (configurable in preferences to display or not) that pops up when you hover the mouse over a contract grid, showing what the numeric score would be for any contract? Yeah, I'm too lazy to multiply in my head.

Speedball. What? Did I miss the poll about whether a price increase was acceptable to the customers? Sure, it's only another lousy twenty-five cents--but it's my quarter and I'm keeping it. (Actually, I'll just spend it playing in those bot tournaments since those seem to be what the ACBL's likely to hold again and there's no use practicing with a live partner for such things.) Speaking of bots, a buck a day for an "advanced" bot that (1) won't lead the suit I bid; (2) won't lead back the suit I led, and; (3) apparently thinks it's complimenting my declaring ability by putting me in 24-point no trump and 25-point major suit games? Like, no...