Private club keeps disappearing.

[DrTodd13]

Several times now I've tried to create a private club. I can go

back and look to see if it is there a few minutes later and sometimes

it is and sometimes it isn't. It is always gone if I come back to it

a day later. Any idea what is going on?

 

Todd

[inquiry]

Anyone can create a private club, and it stays active as long as you stay logged into the software. To make a private club persist, you have to write to Fred and explain the purpose/use of clubs. A club created just to run tournments will not make it, I don't think.

 

Good luck getting yours started.

 

Ben

[DrTodd13]

As usual, the world conspires against me. On a side note,

www.slashdot.org had a link to an interesting article about

the creation of Murphy's law. The law strikes again.

 

Todd

[uday]

Ben is correct.

 

Anyone can create a temporary private club, for whatever purpose; be it to restrict admittance to a tourney or anything else.

 

To create a permanent private club, you need to drop a line to

fred@bridgebase.com

mentioning your username and the club's title

 

 

uday

[inquiry]

To create a permanent private club, you need to drop a line to

fred@bridgebase.com

mentioning your username and the club's title

 

Let me add this note from personal experience, to save anyone wanting to do this and Fred some time. A club being established simply to limit who can join a tournment will not get approved. There has to be an expectation and a plan to sponsor/run games in the club on some kind of schedule as well. So include that kind of information in the message you send.

 

Ben

[DrTodd13]

I'm confused Ben. Why would someone want to have a private club just

to restrict tourney membership when the "only let friends participate"

and "don't let enemies participate" buttons are there? I just want some

way for people to acknowledge that they have read the conditions of

contest for my systems experimentation tourneys before they are allowed

to join. Given there is no way for host to de-register them before the

tourney starts, the only way left is to limit registration.

 

If I planned to use the private club to keep track of those who I know

understand the conditions of contest and plan to run one or two tourneys

per weekend with these special conditions of contest would that be enough

to be a permanent private club?

[inquiry]

I am not sure. I don't set the rules. I wanted to start a private club to allow only beginners, novices and intermediate players join. The point was then I could restrict tournments to players of that ability, by only allowing club members to join. Sounded like a good idea, solved a problem I had of running such events earlier where gold stars, experts, and advanced players out populated the players I had DESPITE title of tournment and "conditions of contest" stating it was for beginner/novices and intermediate only.

 

So you see, I feel your pain. I got back a rejection letter from Fred with basically the information I have now shared in this thread. So I went out and found liked minds who had interest in actually starting a private club where players of this ability level could congregate instead of in the open room. The theory of which is given elsewhere. They are working on newsletters, special training sessions, educational material, forming new skill levels and maybe team leagues... you name, all run out of the club.

 

I suspect if you could get a few like minded souls to join you in establishing a club where unusual systems are discussed, played, developed. Sort of a meeting place for the forcing pass, ETM multi, moscito, ultimate club, ROMEX, blue club and whatever else, you would have no trouble getting such a club approved. After all, having played quite a few of the listed systems myself, it is frustrating in the open club when you announce your methods and your opponents leave, or ask you to leave, or whine for 20 minutes how forcing pass is not allowed, or transfers should be illegal, or whatever. So there could be a place for such a club.

 

As an aside, it would be nice if private clubs that "accept" memberships could have a place somewhere to post what the club is for, and who is eligible to join. Just seeing the private club name is not always that helpful.

 

Ben

[csdenmark]

 

As an aside, it would be nice if private clubs that "accept" memberships could have a place somewhere to post what the club is for, and who is eligible to join. Just seeing the private club name is not always that helpful.

 

 

Right Ben - I have asked Fred but no option for that right now. I have uploaded info but only after membership - you will be able to see that info. Maybe it is needed to create a public club to publish information about the private club?

 

There are much I would like to do in our club "The Precision Team Bridge Club" but information is not available. We would like to run invitional tournaments there - but I cannot see how. I really fear we will need to use it for restrictions to tournaments - but that was not the intension and not what I have agreed with Fred. Anybody able to help with informations about how to handle a private club?

[inquiry]

We would like to run invitional tournaments there - but I cannot see how. I really fear we will need to use it for restrictions to tournaments - but that was not the intension and not what I have agreed with Fred. Anybody able to help with informations about how to handle a private club?

 

To run a tournment limited to just members of your private club, simply start a tournment limited to club members. (One of the options). The tournment will be in the main tourney list, but only members of the club that you are the "manager" will be able to play. That is all there is to it..

[csdenmark]

yes Ben - maybe I am not clear.

 

I fear the only thing we can use our private club for is to restrict access to normal tournaments in the tournament area. And that is neither what private clubs are created for nor what I intended to use ours for. Please let me interpretate some info from Fred - they are for a group who has something in common can study without interference from outsiders and when they are ready they invite guessts for testing.

 

Both are needed. The clubs are not for some persons to exclude themselves from others and just live their own life. The group must show interest to interact with people doing different things - systems, sort of conventions, language etc.

 

But how to handle - how to create tournaments in private clubs?

[inquiry]

Claus,

 

Tournment "in" the private club room is really not the issue. All tourmnents (public or private) take place in the tournment room (the yellow button). Fact of life. The effective way to achieve what you want is to create a tournment limited to players in your private club.

 

If they happened to be merrily playing or discussing hands in your private club at the time, they are wisked away to the tournment just as if they were in the public room. Now the real question, is how to get them into your private club when you are not sponsoring a tournment.

 

Ben

[DrTodd13]

Has anybody actually gone into the private clubs viewing room and seen

any tables in play in any of the private club rooms? I know that I haven't.

So, if the primary purpose of private clubs is to have people play there

then they are a dismal failure. Either the private clubs are not large

enough so that you're not likely find enough people from that club online to

play in the private room or there are enough people but they aren't

checking the private room before looking for a public table or a tourney.

 

If Fred hears anything I'd like him to hear that there is currently no

mechanism to express or enforce conditions of contest. Could we have a

button on the tourney registration window that allows anyone to see

the CC posted by a registered pair? Could we have another button only

for hosts/directors that would allow them to deregister a pair if they are

1) too advanced, 2) not advanced enough, 3) don't post a CC, 4) post a

CC that violates the conditions of contest, etc.?

[csdenmark]

This time NO Ben - my comments are based on written conversation with Fred!

 

I have many applicants to the club and I think they expect to be a member of Precision Team or Precision Tournament Group by clicking apply for membership of the club. But they are not - more is needed. I have the same problem I think you have discussed with Maureen. To accept applicants or decline. Communication with them is impossible - they are offline when I enter and I only have their BBO-nick.

 

• Guesst-memberships not possible. I cannot see who will be our guessts and who want to join. To be clear if I want to use the club to restrict for tournaments - I need to assign all persons signing up for a limit period as guessts. And after the tournament I can delete all sign ups for that period. I can do so - but I am reluctant because my priorities certainly are to help those who want to join our Precision initiative.
  
• I also would like to be able to secure that all guessts will meet Precision pairs else it makes not much sense. I can do so by setting up as team-matches but that is also a complicated procedure
  
• The option for club-communication is not clear either.
  

Private clubs are not aimed for restrictions to tournaments but they can be used for that. The Private Club area is much older than the tournament area.

[hrothgar]

Folks

 

Quick comment here. The Abalucy club seems to be succeeding in supporting many of the "features" that people are requesting. The big difference is that they are supporting these features through the creation of the third party web site rather than requesting/requiring that this is embedded in the BBO client.

 

Case in point, the Abalucy club has a mechanism by which only club members are able to play in tournaments. They are also setting up a variety of services such as a ladder system on their own web site.

 

I understand the frustration in not being able to use the BBO software to set up an ephemeral club or the desire to block players who don't use a convention card or whatever. However, I'll also admit that there are a variety of other features that I would probably prioritize higher.

[DrTodd13]

Abalucy is great but they also seem to be using their private club

just as a mechanism to restrict access to tournaments. You could

do all the other abalucy stuff without having to have a private club.

If BBO doesn't want the burden of maintaining info for thousands

of persistent private clubs that might be created if anybody could

do it, then why not allow club membership to be defined on

local machines and have the tourney mechanism make callbacks

on the local machine to see if a person is allowed in the tourney.

[fred]

Has anybody actually gone into the private clubs viewing room and seen

any tables in play in any of the private club rooms? I know that I haven't.

So, if the primary purpose of private clubs is to have people play there

then they are a dismal failure. Either the private clubs are not large

enough so that you're not likely find enough people from that club online to

play in the private room or there are enough people but they aren't

checking the private room before looking for a public table or a tourney.

 

If Fred hears anything I'd like him to hear that there is currently no

mechanism to express or enforce conditions of contest. Could we have a

button on the tourney registration window that allows anyone to see

the CC posted by a registered pair? Could we have another button only

for hosts/directors that would allow them to deregister a pair if they are

1) too advanced, 2) not advanced enough, 3) don't post a CC, 4) post a

CC that violates the conditions of contest, etc.?

 

I heard you, but there are a few things you may not understand:

 

1) When you ask "Can we have x?" it takes Uday and/or myself

time and energy to implement x. Things don't just happen

because people want them to.

 

2) While implementing x we have less time and energy to devote to y,

z, and the many other letters that we may have judged to be a higher

priority than x.

 

3) Decisions that involve selecting the relative priorities of x, y,

and z, are not made lightly. Such decisions are based on several

factors, for example:

 

- the number of requests we get from our members

- our judgment of the relative value to the majority of our members

- degree of programming difficulty

- dollar cost in terms of bandwidth (BBO may be free for you but

that doesn't mean it is free for us)

 

So if you hear anything it should be this: We are doing the best

we can to make our members as happy as possible while keeping

BBO free at the same time. Please continue to suggest features

that you think would be nice, but please do not be upset if you do

not see them appear immediately.

 

Now about private clubs:

 

Private clubs were not intended to be a mechanism for selecting

who is allowed to play in a tournament. That is why I will not set

up private clubs purely for that purpose. While it is true that most

of the private clubs are seldom used, there are some notable

exceptions and I am hopeful that the private club facility will

be better utilized at some point in the future. In my opinion this

rates to happen when:

 

1) Managers of private clubs are able to offer people good

reasons for people to be members of their clubs.

 

2) The private club attains "critical mass" (which means that

any club member has a reasonable chance of finding a game

to play in at any time if he enters the club).

 

Several existing private clubs are doing a good job of 1).

The CWF clubs are close to attaining 2) and I suspect that

other clubs (such as Abalucy and the Beginner/Intermediate

Lounge) are not that far behind.

 

If you want to run a tournament with entries restricted to a

given subset of the BBO membership, here is what I suggest

as an alternative to using the private club mechanism:

 

- create a new user ID

- make all the people who are welcome to play in your

tournament friends of this new user ID

- restrict your tournament to "friends only"

 

Of course, you may not have to create a new user ID, but

I suspect that most people use the friends facility for

defining who their friends are and that this is not necessarily

the same group of people that one would want to allow

into a particular tournament.

 

My suggestion is far from perfect and I am sure we will

eventually make improvements in this area, but don't

expect it to happen soon. Right now we are concerned

with far more important things (like keeping the server

running if the steady growth rate we have experienced

for the past 2 years continues much longer).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[csdenmark]

 

Folks

 

Quick comment here. The Abalucy club seems to be succeeding in supporting many of the "features" that people are requesting. The big difference is that they are supporting these features through the creation of the third party web site rather than requesting/requiring that this is embedded in the BBO client.

 

Case in point, the Abalucy club has a mechanism by which only club members are able to play in tournaments. They are also setting up a variety of services such as a ladder system on their own web site.

 

I understand the frustration in not being able to use the BBO software to set up an ephemeral club or the desire to block players who don't use a convention card or whatever. However, I'll also admit that there are a variety of other features that I would probably prioritize higher.

 

Sounds very interesting Richard! We are running our own team ladder too simply because I dont know Abalucy and I have seen no postings inviting others. I have set up a tournament area and nobody seems interested or all the teams from the polish tourney has shut down. I dont know.

 

We want more matches on a regular basis and to have that we now need to register for the Ladder on ZONE - Rays Bridge Ladder. That was not the intension from the beginning - but as it seems like those few teams who might be existing are afraid of competition or are unable to administrate themselves - it is needed to find teams ready outside BBO - pity.

 

I am unable to see how web-sites can substitute what we want to use our private club for. Todd have made a point simply to let the BBO client communicate with info - memberlist or so - on public web-sites. I think that sounds more easy that it really is - but maybe that suggestion might lead to a good solution.

 

I think it would be wise that some of us who want to create something tried to do something together instead of not communicating and then do our own things. That will only lead to that others will need to find their partners for cooperation outside BBO too.