money bridge tournments - some thoughts

[hoodwinked]

I've had some thoughts about the utter randomness of the total points format in money bridge tournaments.

 

In addition to the sometimes very strange bidding of the gibs (i.e. a gib bidding slam for no reason in this auction - 1c 2c 3c when he holds say 8 points, or the automatic slam bid of a gib when he holds a longish minor hand not necessarily strong when you open 2c and jump to 3nt. Even such things as gibs pulling doubles in strange sitations, making it very scary to hit the double card. Another strange thing with gibs, somethings they know what is a cue bid other times, they do not even tho they may have started the sequence themselves. So much for robotics. It has a long ways to go.

 

At any rate, since everyone has to deal with these strange things, it puts a person at an even further disadvantage when dealing in a TP format. I understand that the TP format with random hands was probaby put in place to prevent cheating but wouldn't the same thing be accomplished if a set number of boards were to be assigned and the tournament not completed until all players completed all boards. Perhaps, the boards could be randomized for each player so that each player is not necessarily playing the same board at the same time in true duplicate style.

[barmar]

I wish there were some more control over whether the last hand gets cancelled when the timer runs out. It's really frustrating to lose a good board at the end because the GIBs are playing incredibly slowly. Sometimes GIB takes forever just to decide which equivalent little card to play. It's really annoying when you bid a making game or slam on the last hand, and lose it because GIB can't follow suit at a decent pace.

[hoodwinked]

Another thing of note with the gibs.........why on earth do they INSIST on transferring with 4 card suits with weakish hands when playing 1nt going down might be better or even when they have 2 4 card suits? Can this not be changed?

[barmar]

Yeah, those transfers are pretty weird. I guess they're making up for not having garbage Stayman in the system.

 

Another strange NT bidding it did was use Stayman, and then chose to bid NT even though I bid its 4-card major. I ended up making it, but I think it was just because the opening lead didn't hit our bad suit.

[hoodwinked]

someone was in the tournament lobby pretty upset today over the fact that the gibs had all the good hands. Basically mentioned he wanted to sue GIB :)

 

I have to agree with him that the format of these tourneys is REALLY unfair at this point. They are getting larger every day to the point if you don't get lucky and come up with a few early slams you have no chance of placing much less winning. The gib games do not reward sound play or biddinig but is pretty much based purely on luck and to a lesser extent knowledge of how the gibs act. There is definately an element of strategy but you can't have any strategy if you don't get equal cards.

[Al_U_Card]

Is there not a way to "restrict" the hand generation to limit the cards to game values for say E-W then N-S? This way, every pair would get the same number of "games" and the total points would be calculated on skill and not on luck?

[hoodwinked]

yes even that would be better than the way things are now -

I'd be one to actively vote for that