triplepeel

I have played some free robot tourneys and have pretty well given up because of the hogs taking all the places. I do play in robot tournies and pay for the privilege. I imagine if there was a limitation placed on the number allowed, I and a number of others would come out of the woodwork and try again. The other way to deal with the problem would be a message "other players would like to play in these events, please don't abuse this free service by playing more than 2 free events per day"

thanks. I assume by cheating you mean entering a robot duplicate twice under different names. (or having an accomplice send the hands after playing them? seems a pretty desperate way to earn a few BB$ and it would halve your winnings of course. I guess this would show up as suspicious on analysis of consistent winners making winning low percentage plays too often & also on those players being always behind the clock. so the solution would be to find the players who won often AND who were always slow and analyse their bidding & play and see if it was anti-percentage.

Thanks for putting on the 55% robot tourneys. I particularly like the 12 boards rather than 8 which can involve more luck. For some reason the player numbers seem to have dropped off. perhaps some people thought it would be easier to get 55? there are usually more players in the 25c duplicates: is there any chance of trying 25c 55% rebates? what about duplicates where players can win BB$ like the current races? (races do seem to be biased toward those with faster connections) thanks.

the statement in bold, as I indicated on my first post, does have a supporting argument (which is on the first post) this format works on "worldwinner" and a previous internet bridge site that used robots. you are given 25 minutes, whatever, and see how many total points you can accrue. It would work for random hands, same hands or duplicate. If someone is worried about late players having an advantage, don't post the scores until competition closed. I'm not saying keep the entries open for hours - that would encourage the cheats. sorry about the previous bold type - I was just trying to clarify !

well, now that you explain it so clearly ...

I wonder if the management would consider the following for some of the robot races & rewards: there is no need for everyone to play simultaneously. entries open until tournament fully booked up but players start as soon as they enter. top score not visible until you actually start playing. I think this would be great fun: you log in and see a 7000 has already been posted, so you decide whether to play safe and settle for a minor placing or shoot for slams and challenge the leader. perhaps players could choose to then enter the same comp again. this is the way some other websites such as worldwinner operate and it allows you to get a game when the traffic is slow

in club games 7 minutes per board is usually plenty, but that is for 3 board rounds. It is a well established fact that the more boards you play in a set, the less time per board is needed because every set contains either a pass-in or a couple of pianolas. so for 8 boards 5-6 minutes is heaps... 4 minutes for speedball

honest question, non self-promotion: I spend far too much time on BBO, usually in robot tournaments. I often come first and it is always in pay events that qualify for BBO points... so how come I'm never in cooee of months top pointscorers? how many hours per week do these top qualifiers play? ( I limit myself to 168 hours per week) are there events that earn lots more points? It's not a big deal obviously but I am intrigued to know. :(

How can you watch the slower players? And how can anyone possibly take half an hour to play 8 boards?

when a robot race reaches a critical mass, say 20-25 entrants, there is often an avalanche of entries. I wonder if it would be possible for regular robot players to sign up to get an alert when a tournament is getting to a good number of entrants. I'm sure we would start to get some 49's

the BBO program shows how many players are entered for each robot tournament, but this seems to be missing from the web client (or am I missing something). It seems you have to click "join" for each tournament separately to see the entrant numbers. BTW personally I would prefer to see just the number of players already entered, not the names & masterpoints - it seems to discourage players when they see a few strong players.