MBT secondary contest

[barmar]

While I really enjoy Money Bridge Tournaments, one of the problems with them is that they're too short to be really meaningful. While jchiu was somehow able to play almost a board a minute, I haven't been able to get anywhere near that rate; even if I play as quickly as possible, GIB frequently goes into the tank (hmm, what are the ethics of taking inferences from robot hesitations?).

 

On the other hand, it can also be difficult to commit much more time at a single sitting for something like this. So what I was thinking is that you might combine sessions into a series, along the lines of side games at tourneys. Every week you take the top 10 sessions of everyone who played at least that many sessions, total the points, and award additional prizes to the top players in the series. Or maybe compute an average score of all the sessions during the week, and use that for the ranking.

[TrialBid]

There seems to me to be a degree of distractedness at BBO in terms of understanding how MBTs can be best exploited. The very concept of using the GIB robots for cheatproof money bridge was a huge breakthrough. Fred's commitment to keep a free, quality online bridge site was always threatened by the possibility that not enough money-making angles could be found to keep the enterprise viable.

 

My impression is that money bridge has removed any doubt that BBO will now thrive in the long term. What I don't see yet is the recognition that the GIB formats can help support BBO beyond the take on money events. Especially I cite Uday's post where he says he wants to keep Free MBTs free. But, because they use many computer resources, he must throttle people's use of them significantly.

 

Some possibilities:

 

- If you are a GIB "subscriber" (paying $1/week or $3/month), you are permitted more access to free MBTs.

- MBT "Club" events with a very low entry fee, $0.25 perhaps (and payable with BBO$ instead of, or in addition to MB$), but with leader boards by total points, by number of wins, etc., for each day, week, month, all-time. I believe that's also what barmar was getting at.

- MBT-style K/Os like Total Points Club tournaments, perhaps with a single entry fee that pays your way until you are eliminated.