new mbt

[barmar]

If i get a good score e.g.

- slam/grand in the first board or better at the first board vul.

- make 2 games in a row

my best strategie is to stop playing. This way i will be better as those where the GIB's have a slam or a full game more than the human (about 6-7 of 10).

There should be regulation against stopping to play.

Maybe have a minimum required number of boards played in order to scratch.

 

I also think the idea of using the best N boards should be given some thought.

[Poky]

two tables with same hands

 

People will cheat

People could cheat if 3+ tables play the same board, but not if only two tables are involved.

 

Instead of playing with GIB as partner against two GIBs, I find much more attractive (and fair) to play with GIB against 2 GIBs, comparing my own score against another player in same position with same cards.

 

Why is this so difficult to implement?

[Echognome]

I also enjoyed the tournaments (I liked the speedball aspect of it). However, I also felt the luck factor was too high. In the first tournament I played, it went GIB bidding game game slam game slam. Four of these made and one of the slams on a finesse. There was no chance to recover after that.

 

So getting rid of the luck factor would help. I am just throwing around some ideas here, and I do like that cheating is not possible. However, what if you just made cheating really hard? Here's what I had in mind:

 

Suppose that you made the mbts as fixed board rounds with time pressure? So everyone played the same hands, but you were given say 3 mins a board, one board rounds, say 10 boards. So yeah, two people on MSN might be able to say "the finesse is off" or blah blah, but it would be difficult on most hands for them to collaborate. And since no one can start the next board until everyone is finished, they cannot race through to find out the hands. Now I'm not sure whether 3 mins/board or 2 mins/board or whatever is best for this. Of course at 2 mins/board you will have tremendous time pressure already. So this method will not eliminate cheating alltogether, but it will certainly make it very difficult to cheat and, at the same time, eliminate the luck factor.

 

Just a thought.

[inquiry]

two tables with same hands

 

People will cheat

People could cheat if 3+ tables play the same board, but not if only two tables are involved.

 

Instead of playing with GIB as partner against two GIBs, I find much more attractive (and fair) to play with GIB against 2 GIBs, comparing my own score against another player in same position with same cards.

 

Why is this so difficult to implement?

Team Game Money Bridge... No human at your table.... but other human holds exactly same cards as you. The problem would be speed of play. What if you are two tables ahead and other fellow gets disconnected.

 

However, in theory, I like this concept. No unlucky 7NT bid against you vul and you get zapped for a ton of money.... you have a chance to bid the same 7NT...

 

:-)

[uday]

So everyone played the same hands

 

Even an occasional edge ( easy to achieve here) will give the perp-pair a huge advantage over the civilians.

 

 

Things I'm sort of thinking about are: longer tourneys (flattens out HCP better), imping results against old hands from the MBC, using russian scoring.

 

We'll see. We'll start as is, try longer Ts next (they are trivial to deploy, unlike the other two options), maybe try russian scoring next.

[barmar]

How are people playing so quickly? The thing that I find that slows it down is the inability to claim. I spend a good 30 seconds playing out hands that should be claimed. With hands that can be claimed early, GIB can spend a while thinking about its discards that I know don't matter.

 

When playing against GIB in the MBC I thought there was a claim button, why isn't it available in MBT?

[asdfg2k]

I think I'm running an average of 14 or 15 hands in the 25 minute period, unless I have connection problems. I think I could move that to 16 or 17 if GIB didn't hesitate when deciding what to play from 432 of a suit sometimes.

 

I don't stress over setting an extra trick or giving an overtrick. Decide in advance what you are going to do and then do it. Don't even think about the hand you just finished playing until the 25 minutes are up - what is done is done.

 

I have won 2 out of the 6 or 7 (8?) that I have entered, in case that matters.

[fred]

How are people playing so quickly? The thing that I find that slows it down is the inability to claim. I spend a good 30 seconds playing out hands that should be claimed. With hands that can be claimed early, GIB can spend a while thinking about its discards that I know don't matter.

 

When playing against GIB in the MBC I thought there was a claim button, why isn't it available in MBT?

When you play against GIB in the Main Bridge Club, there is a copy of GIB running on your hard disk that does that thinking. It is relatively simple for the BBO client to interact with the local copy of GIB in terms of claims.

 

It is more complicated when the GIB is running on the server (as it does when you play in MBTs). I suspect we will do the necessary work before too long, but most likely it won't happen for the first release of the MBT-enabled client.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[dogsbreath]

hi

I've tried several of the introductory tourneys and the sofware seems to work fine.

However , i just dont see the point .. total points with everyone playing different hands seems a complete lottery and will not induce me to pay to play .. sry i may be missing something but it seems completely pointless to me.

 

Rgds Dog

[fred]

I think you are wrong about it being a complete lottery.

 

Luck is important for sure, but it tends to even itself out in the long run.

 

Skill will always prevail and there is a lot of skill to this game.

 

Another way to look at this is that a strong player's expected return on his $1 (or whatever) entry fee is much higher than that of a weak player.

 

MBTs may seem pointless to you, but I think many people will find these tournaments to be fun and exciting. The tournaments will not seem pointless to them regardless of what they think of the relative importance of luck and skill.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[jchiu]

How are people playing so quickly? The thing that I find that slows it down is the inability to claim. I spend a good 30 seconds playing out hands that should be claimed. With hands that can be claimed early, GIB can spend a while thinking about its discards that I know don't matter.

 

When playing against GIB in the MBC I thought there was a claim button, why isn't it available in MBT?

How To Play (Insane) Speedbridge:

 

1. Given a new hand, just approximate its HCP value and bid. Missing the target by one or two HCP is not a big deal usually, but be careful to not miss by more. Then, when the auction goes around the table, actually count the HCP.

 

2. After your second turn, plan out the rest of the auction if necessary, while waiting for the bid to come around a third time. For most experts and most hands, the first two actions are sufficiently automatic that they should be instantaneous. Use the in-between time to decide your next move (like in chess), so that all bids are limited only by your reflex time.

 

3. When GiB-GiB (E/W) are in an uncontested auction, and you do not plan to enter or make a lead-directing double, keep the mouse over "pass". Keep passing like a good puppet, then review the auction at the end. Half of the time, you will need to look at it before your lead. The other half, use GiB's lead tanking time at the lead to actually look.

 

4. Roughly plan your play at trick one. Usually this takes the longest (1.5 to 1.75 seconds) for me, but saves time later. Continue planning the play when GiB is thinking and you are not on lead.

 

5. Play suits in "beginner order". Make sure you leave them free enough that you can play one card every 0.25 to 0.40 seconds later after you would claim otherwise. Ruff winners if necessary to make sure all tricks in one hand are played and then the other. This way, you can randomly click cards from the other hand without blowing tricks.

 

6. Declare, declare, declare. Besides the obvious importance of high cards, this is the main reason you want big hands. GiB is a decent and slow declarer, but can be a sloppy and fast defender often.

 

7. Never post-mortem. It just frustrates you and slows you down.

 

 

But I digress into real bridge advice .... Using these techniques, I am averaging about 88 seconds per hand, with some records of about 81 seconds per hand (computed over 25-minute sessions). It takes practice to play well at this speed, but the law of averages definitely favors good players who are faster.

[uday]

We've moved the schedule around and added "pay" mbts

 

We will be running free mbts every hour, 15 minutes past the hour

We will be running pay mbts twice an hour : at :00 and :30

 

Initially, the pay mbts will cost $1 and return 80%. The logic for prize division is approximately this:

 

Prize pool = 80% of all card fees.

 

Winner gets 50% of prize pool.

 

Next place gets half that ( but minimum must be the card fee -- $1)

Next place gets half that ( but minimum must be the card fee -- $1)

etc

 

if "half that" is not enough to make up a card fee, it is added to the winner's prize.

 

 

 

I welcome suggestions for division of prizes ( we can also let winner take 100% of pool, with no one else getting anything ). We are also interested in opinions about the 80% prize pool. Is this too high? Too low ? Just right ? Finally, is there any interest in pricier tourneys (say, a $5 card fee ) ? Should the prize pool percentage go up/down/be-unchanged if the fee goes up ?

[barmar]

More expensive pay tourneys should last longer -- you're risking more money so you'd like the luck factor to be less significant.

 

Which reminds me. Does it make sense that among regular tourneys I often see both 6-board and 12-board tourneys charging the same $1 entry?

[Deanrover]

You should definitely offer higher buy ins. If you enter a $1 then you are looking at winning $3 net at the most....not that thrilling for most of us. I'm sure you will eventually get business for $100 tournaments (and likely higher too).

 

I think the % cut you take should go down as the buy in goes up.

 

FWIW the schedule of most poker rooms is something like

 

1 + .2

5 + 1 or .5

10 + 1

20 + 2

30 + 3

50 + 5

100 + 9

200 + 15

500 + 30

 

where the first figure represents the amount that goes to the prize pool, and the latter the amount that goes to the house

[jchiu]

Prize pool = 80% of all card fees.

 

Winner gets 50% of prize pool.

 

Next place gets half that ( but minimum must be the card fee -- $1)

Next place gets half that ( but minimum must be the card fee -- $1)

etc

 

if "half that" is not enough to make up a card fee, it is added to the winner's prize.

 

 

 

I welcome suggestions for division of prizes ( we can also let winner take 100% of pool, with no one else getting anything ). We are also interested in opinions about the 80% prize pool. Is this too high? Too low ? Just right ? Finally, is there any interest in pricier tourneys (say, a $5 card fee ) ? Should the prize pool percentage go up/down/be-unchanged if the fee goes up ?

Raking 20% is very high compared to a minilimit poker table which rakes about 6-10% (I think, the more serious poker players could check this). However, the cheap entry definitely justifies making sure BB keeps a few cents. Right now, the tournaments are two to four tables, and it is fine to rake 20%. However, with larger events, I would suggest raking 20% of the first (five, ten) tables, and less for every table thereafter.

 

Pricier tourneys would make it more worthwhile to play. I would think many more players would want to put down $20 into a two-hour event (say four sessions of 25 minutes and 5 minutes). The rake here can be considerably less, say 5%, and BB would end up making more per tournament.

[golfacer]

Prize pool = 80% of all card fees.

 

Winner gets 50% of prize pool.

 

Next place gets half that ( but minimum must be the card fee -- $1)

Next place gets half that ( but minimum must be the card fee -- $1)

etc

 

if "half that" is not enough to make up a card fee, it is added to the winner's prize.

 

 

The payouts for a recent 5-player tournament were $2.00, $1.00, and $1.00, which appears to not follow the last sentence of the above quote (half of $1 is $0.50, which is below the minimum, so the remainder of the pot goes to the winner?). I think most money bridge players would prefer to have a bigger 1st-place prize and/or more places that pay more than the entry fee, as opposed to more chances to simply not lose anything. As an example:

 

2-4 players, 1 place

5-7 players, 2 places (65% and 35%)

8-10 players, 3 places (50%, 30%, 20%)

[fred]

Keep in mind that probably less than 1% of BBO members have version 4.7.5 (which is necessary to play in MBTs) and probably not much more than that even know what MBTs are all about.

 

I suspect that once we do a release of a MBT-enabled version of BBO for the general membership (tentatively scheduled for Monday) that you won't be seeing 3 and 4 tables MBTs anymore. We have done some thinking about various formulas or dividing up the prize money. Some of these produce silly results when the MBT contains a very small number of tables.

 

We are far from certain that we are using the best formula (or even close to the best formula) to calculate prize distribution. Most likely we will do some experimenting with different formulas (and different time limits and...) to see what our members like best.

 

The parameters like time, entry fee, rake, and prize distribution can be changed on the server end so we will not have to release any new versions of the client in order to experiment with these things.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[uday]

The payouts for a recent 5-player tournament were $2.00, $1.00, and $1.00, which appears to not follow the last sentence of the above quote

 

That's $ in entries, $4 in prizes; winner gets half ($2). Next gets half of residue ($1). The remainder is on the cusp , so the code chooses to give it to #3 rather than #1.

 

 

We will occasionally also see prizes that are smaller than entry fees. Example; last place gets $1 and is split 2 ways.

[ccccwwww]

maybe you can give NS (human and GIB p) same cards, EW hands are random. Every table play same number of boards. Results could be IMPed. Every round of action shall continue only after human players finish their bids at all tables. I can not figured out a way to cheat at this format. It will be much more exciting than current version. Luck still plays a role but much less. say u bid a 70% grand and fail, well that is life, if u dont like it, u should play chess!

 

tried 2 MBTs found that like bridge monkey keep click and begging for good cards

 

More pricy MBT should be introduced, like 20$ entry and pay back is 100$ for 20-30 brds of play. Just like money bridge in local clubs

[uday]

two S's will cheat by exchanging hand information if you use the same hands at two tables. There are other ways to increase the skill factor and we'll investigate once the basic version has been released. Agree re. more expensive mbts.

[ccccwwww]

Two Ss have identical cards, what infomation can they get?

[MickyB]

One could tell the other what cards their partner has.

[ccccwwww]

Every round of action shall continue only after human players finish their bids at all tables. Auctions are different at tables but the round is synchronized. Some might have short acution, they have to wait a little bit before they can start to play cards (or see dummy), that doesnt hurt that much comparing current version.

[Deanrover]

Longer tournaments would do well I suspect. Say you have a 25 minute sessions as normal, but then 25% of the field gets chopped, then a 5 minute break, then a 25 minute session where 25% of the field gets chopped etc. - it could prove really popular. You could have a 'big one' every week with a $200 + 15 entry fee, so the top prize would end up being very wortwhile (perhaps 6K if you got 100 entrants) - you would know better than me Fred, but I would think this would attract some well known players, which in turn would attract punters. People would buy directly into the tournament, but you could also offer satellites throughout the weak (e.g. a $22 buy in, 10 player tourney where the winner gets to the Big One).

[ccccwwww]

Still there will some information could be exchanged in the card play even if u

synchronize evey round of play. Like different open leads.

 

Definetely u can set S (human players) have same cards