Please, a little less spam

rigour6 · November 23, 2005

I recognize that folks hosting tourneys are trying to make a little money, but today I sat and watched in the lobby. There were two pay tourneys coming up. The host of one sent 20 two line messages advertising this tourney in the 3 minutes before it began. How many he had sent before that, I don't know. The other was counting down the minutes to his tourney and was sending 3 messages out a minute with the countdown, which was at 6 minutes, then 5.

Normally I keep the lobby chat turned off (thank you for that feature, uday) but honestly folks, I know you want as many people as possible to p(l)ay in your tourneys, but don't you think at a certain point it gets a little counterproductive to be filling the lobby with the same cut and paste message?

bestguru · November 23, 2005

I will not repeat myself I will not repeat myself I will not repeat myself

*sigh* 985 to go

pin_73 · November 23, 2005

I do not mind lobby messages because I've disabled them. But I played in such tournaments and I was waiting 20 or 30 minutes for a game to start after the scheduled time. I think the number of times a TD can change the starting time of a tournament should be limited to 2 or maximum 3 times.

Rain · November 23, 2005

I turn off lobby chat. That's a nice option, just use it.

For TDs who keep changing advertised start times--I seldom play in tournaments, but decided on a whim to play in a pay tourney with a cool new person I met on BBO. Tourney time changed 3 times. I got irritated, took my money elsewhere to a more responsible tourney.

I think this is the most efficient method. Start abandoning these tournaments. B-)

Walddk · November 23, 2005

Is there really still any sensible person who has lobby chat on? Excuse me, but it's nothing but public word pollution. I turned if off 2 years, 3 months, 13 days, 49 minutes and 11 seconds ago - and I will never turn it on again!

Roland

Al_U_Card · November 23, 2005

And here I thot "lobby chat" was french for "tabby cat". Wasn't sure how you turn off a cat tho.....

luke warm · November 23, 2005

Wasn't sure how you turn off a cat tho.....

depends on the cat

Booze · December 5, 2005

Sadly the pay tourney TD:s have to fight for every player in their tourneys, that causes this enourmous "chatting" in Lobby, I was asked by one of the organisations to help them during one of their TD:s illness. Thank God she is better now because this was a scary expirence. For this reasons!!

1. Pay TD:s makes a few $ per tourney, in some of mine I lost money, honest TD:s dont have a chance in this "war". Its not the Pay tourney organisations that makes money.

2. SPAM a LOT and WILD in lobby and you get more players, lye and cheat with starting times and you do better. I didnt believe that before I tried it my self. I registred once for a tourney with 2 mins to start, it started 41 mins later, this was the worst I saw, but I often saw delaying 30 mins and so. Pay TD:s that dont do this doesnt surviwe if they are not willing to pay for direct this tourneys.

3. Pay TD:s have time slots where they can start their tourneys, some organisations didnt care, they started mins ahead of another org starting time without any respect to agreements or rules. Some pay TD:s starts free tourney mins ahead of other pay tourney organisations tourney , they know they get less players and they will have more players in theirs starting directly after their free.

4. The effect of such hard competion is even sadlier. Some pay tourneys makes conditions very hard to get a prize paid, next level is that only players that visited moon last week gets prizes payed. And even worse is if they are tempted to let only "friends" win. Maybe easiest way for them to make any money?

5. And what about "cheating" players in pay tourneys do they excist ?? In my humble opinion Yes a lot sadly and its impossible for most TD:s to check.

[hv=d=s&v=b&s=sq72hjdk6432cq952]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv]

This is a hand I witness from a IND together with 2 yellows, bid and played by one of the big winners in Pay tourneys. He started to pass and west opened 2♥ his partner doubles, east passes , he bids 2nt (maybe a not agreed convention, I dont think he knew his beginner P from other side of world), west passes and north bids 3 hearts ( I dont think anything was agreed this time either) , pass from east, now he finds the only possible game with 3 nt. I realy admire that table presence and read of layout, to guess that his single Jack is a stop enough. Or did he know norths hand? No wonder that he won a lot !

And this is also a way of saying bye to my friends at BBO, Booze has retired from BBO and pls dont send emails to Booze@bridgebase.com , email account closed.

Booze

luke warm · December 6, 2005

I registred once for a tourney with 2 mins to start, it started 41 mins later, this was the worst I saw, but I often saw delaying 30 mins and so. Pay TD:s that dont do this doesnt surviwe if they are not willing to pay for direct this tourneys.

there's an easy fix for this... just have a rule that all tourneys start exactly when they say they will... that way the players will get there on time...

if you start on time, they will come (after a week of training)

mrdct · December 6, 2005

<table border='1'> <tr> <td> <table> <tr> <td> Dealer: </td> <td> South </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Vul: </td> <td> Both </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Scoring: </td> <td> IMP </td> </tr> </table> </td> <td> <table> <tr> <th> <span class='spades'> ♠ </span> </th> <td> Q72 </td> </tr> <tr> <th> <span class='hearts'> ♥ </span> </th> <td> J </td> </tr> <tr> <th> <span class='diamonds'> ♦ </span> </th> <td> K6432 </td> </tr> <tr> <th> <span class='clubs'> ♣ </span> </th> <td> Q952 </td> </tr> </table> </td> <td> </td> </tr> </table>

This is a hand I witness from a IND together with 2 yellows, bid and played by one of the big winners in Pay tourneys. He started to pass and west opened 2♥ his partner doubles, east passes , he bids 2nt (maybe a not agreed convention, I dont think he knew his beginner P from other side of world), west passes and north bids 3 hearts ( I dont think anything was agreed this time either) , pass from east, now he finds the only possible game with 3 nt. I realy admire that table presence and read of layout, to guess that his single Jack is a stop enough. Or did he know norths hand? No wonder that he won a lot !

South's actions don't seem unreasonable to me.

2NT looks like lebensohl, even in the absense of discussion, or possibly one or both of North and South had "leb" written in their profile. Of course South is also a passed hand which makes 2NT look even more like lebensohl.

3H by North is obviously a unilateral GF (possibly even showing a ♥ stopper in some people's methods) so South took a reasonable view that his ♥J may be good enough to stop the suit if partner has at least a partial ♥ stopper and he may also be influenced by the fact EW didn't raise ♥. NS clearly have game values on the auction and if they are playing matchpoints I think 3NT is the obvious choice and probably the indicated bid at IMPs also.

You'll have to come up with a few better examples than that before I had any suspicions as to South's integrity.

Booze · December 6, 2005

yes u are correct Dave I have hundreds of hands, the problem is that normal players guess correct sometimes , others almost every time.

None off them had any conventions in inf, I am 100 % convinced north havent heard of lebensohl, and doubt south plays it.

Bo

uday · December 6, 2005

The pay Ts (exception: acbl, BIL) are convinced that

1-sending lots of messages to the lobby increases signups.

I am unconvinced. I could instruct the pay Ts to refrain from sending lobby spam.

I don't think it matters much one way or another since it is so easy to eliminate (right click/enemy).

2-sliding the start time of a T to wait for another T to complete is a good thing.

I don't currently prohibit this practice. Is there a reason I should? One would think that Ts that slid all over the place would lose signups and this would eventually alter their behaviour

We know that some people cheat in the main bridge club and in free Ts.

Some people cheat in pay Ts as well. It is no easier to prove that someone is cheating in a pay T. Not all the cheats are dopes who casually hook against a Jxxx with an eight card fit. And sometimes they do and Fred G. says it is the correct play on the hand.

I won't give the TDs (pay or otherwise) access to the privacy-busting tools that they'd need to deal with some of their issues, so the process of cheat-detection is labour intensive and painful for abuse@

There are no restrictions on pay Ts in terms of when (or how frequently) they can run pay Ts. Any T is free to use block lists to block whoever it feels needs to be blocked.

luke warm · December 6, 2005

1-sending lots of messages to the lobby increases signups.
I am unconvinced. I could instruct the pay Ts to refrain from sending lobby spam.
I don't think it matters much one way or another since it is so easy to eliminate (right click/enemy).

i don't think it matters either, not "listening" is easy

2-sliding the start time of a T to wait for another T to complete is a good thing.
I don't currently prohibit this practice. Is there a reason I should? One would think that Ts that slid all over the place would lose signups and this would eventually alter their behaviour

i can only give my preference here... i've canceled from more tourneys than i've played, and the reason is they keep adding minutes to the start time... i think as a simple matter of courtesy (and structure) tourneys should stick to the time they give... where else does a scheduled event keep postponing the start time?

they might bitch at first, they might even lose participation... but i don't think it will take long to gain it, and maybe more, back... but that's just my opinion

rigour6 · December 7, 2005

I fail to see how pay Ts can "lose" money. The only reason is of course the cash prizes.

I don't say this to put others down, but for me the whole idea of cash prizes for winners is anathema. Creating a cash incentive practically guarantees that some people will cheat.

I play bridge for an hour and I pay $1. There's something wrong with this picture imho if a further cash incentive is needed to encourage me to play.

Again, different strokes for different folks, but to me this whole "prizes" thing is doomed to failure. The signs are already there, the prizes are bigger and people are competing for the pay players and now they say they are losing money.

When I running a free tourney am able to end up ahead of someone running a pay tourney, surely something has gone wrong.

Next step will of course be for the pay tourneys to try and lessen competition from the frees. Again, that won't work, but it's inevitable.

Question: what percentage of BBO players ever/never play in a pay tourney? Do we have any way of knowing, for example through seeing how many have purchased $BBO?

uday · December 7, 2005

This is an unpleasant diversion from the original post. I understand that people sometimes need to grumble, but lets not assume that one irate post by one irate user is Gospel.

reminder: I will remove posts that (imo) are destructive in nature or intent.

> what percentage of BBO players ever/never play in a pay tourney?

I have access to this data but I don't believe that I will etiher post it here. Email uday@ if you can demonstrate a need to know.

51% of the players who logged in yesterday have played in at least one tourney (pay or free) since Sep 1.

Please, a little less spam

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