Larger cash tournaments are urgently needed.

[MomoTheDog]

A quick check of cash tournaments in BBO reveals that they are mostly $0.25 and $1.00. In the $1.00 tournaments, the top prize is usually "TABLES X $$", while a tiny consolation prize is usually given to the 2nd and 3rd place.

 

Let's consider an individual tournament. Let's the entry fee is $1.00, and has 32 contestants. $8 goes to the 1st place, $2 to 2nd and everybody else gets nothing. The percentage of the prize pool returned to the players is 31.25%. The TD and BBO receives the rest of the prize pool.

 

The percentage of prize pool is extremely tiny compared to an skill-based online poker tournament (typically 90% for small stakes, approaches 95-98% for larger ones). Even in luck-based casino games, a much higher percentage (returns over total wagered) is returned to the player during a typical session.

 

It is understandable that BBO needs to generate money to compensate for their facilities and the TD's time. However, it is necessary to increase the percentage of money returned to player (or in other words, decrease the "rake" %) to make the games more enticing and attractive to the player.

 

The easiest way to achieve this, is to increase the size of the cash tournaments. There is very little reason why an average tournament can't be at least $5 in size, with 50-75% of the prize pool returned to the players. Even larger tournaments ($10-$50) should be organized in a periodic basis (say monthly), mainly catering for the best players.

 

The market is just ripe for the boom of skill-based cash bridge games. Just look at the poker boom. BBO should capitalize on this and make these cash tournaments more attractive.

[fred]

The "cash tournaments" on BBO that you are referring to are what we call "BBO Masterpoint Tournaments". They are run by a small number of groups (BBOLAND, SKYCLUB, BBO_TURKIYE, ILACY, BBOPOLAND, BBOITALIA, BIL, and HOMEBASE) who have obtained permission from our company to run such tournaments. It is far from rare for other groups to apply for permission to charge an entry fee for their tournaments, but for various reasons we rarely grant such applications.

 

These groups operate more or less independently from BBO. We keep an eye on them to make sure we are happy with the way they are treating our members and they pay us a commission on the money they take in, but other than that these groups run more or less autonomously. In particular, it is up to them to decide how much to charge in terms of entry fees and what prize structure (if any) exists in their tournaments.

 

The reason we set up these groups in the first place was so that a BBO member could log in at any given time and have the opportunity to play in a tournament with a professional TD without having to wait a long time. Some of the TDs who run free tournaments are excellent, but it is kind of hit or miss. Besides the quality TDs, regularly scheduled games, and sense of community that these groups offer, the only other value-for-$ that we originally planned was the ability to win BBO Masterpoints (which you cannot win in free tournaments).

 

This started back in 2004. Shortly thereafter the various groups started experimenting with another way to provide value-for-$ to our members: they began to give back some of the $ they collected in the form of prize money.

 

Given the significant overhead that these groups have, I doubt they could offer much more in the way of prize money and still make a profit. Raising the entry fee would give them some additional money to play with, but since they pay BBO on a % basis (as opposed to a fixed rate per player) it would not help as much as you might think. Also, their overhead rises when their tournaments get bigger because a given TD can only handle so many tables at a time - after that quality really starts to suffer.

 

As far as I can tell these groups are very tuned in to the desires of their regular players. Probably some have tried charging a higher entry fee and giving away more in terms of prize money (in general the groups like to experiment) and given up because such events were not popular. It could easily be the case that the many people who play in these tournaments on a regular basis are not especially interested in playing for significant cash prizes. It could also be the cases that these groups are afraid that offering such prizes would create a serious cheating problem in their tournaments.

 

Anyways, if you would like to see these groups try something new, I suggest you contact them directly. If you login to BBO, click "Useful links and information" and then "BBO Masterpoint Tournament Organizations" you will be able to access the web sites of these groups and send them your suggestions.

 

But don't expect that they will ever offer anything close to the 90% return you see on poker sites.

 

There are other types of tournaments on BBO that are closer in nature to the poker tournaments you refer to. These are called Money Bridge Tournaments (or MBTs). 80% of the money that we collect in MBTs is returned to the players, but in practice they do better than that: each month we run a contest in which people who play in MBTs have a chance to win substantial extra prize money (without having to pay any additional fee).

 

MBTs do not require a TD and this helps keep the overhead down so that we can give more money back to the players. Also, since MBTs are "owned" by BBO itself there is no "commission to BBO" involved. There is still more overhead for us to run MBTs than there is in running online poker tournaments and unfortunately these costs increase (linearly) with the number of players. So if the # of MBT players were to dramatically increase, it would have little or no effect on the % of money we could afford to return to these players.

 

At this point in time all of our MBTs have a $1 entry fee. There was a time in which we ran $2 MBTs as well, but these were not very popular. Occasionally people ask us to start running MBTs with even bigger entry fees (and prizes), but since the $2 MBTs did not attract much of a crowd I suspect that $5 MBTs would not be a success either.

 

One nice thing about MBTs is that you cannot cheat so, as far as that issue is concerned, we are not afraid to offer larger prizes (based on larger entry fees of course) if there proves to be a demand.

 

But so far the demand does not seem to be there. This has been both surprising and disappointing to me - when we first started running MBTs I thought they would be massively popular. I also thought it was only a matter of time before we started running MBTs with $5, $10 and perhaps even higher entry fees.

 

That was one of the worst predictions I have ever made! While MBTs have a dedicated following, they are not anywhere close to as popular as the BBO Masterpoint Tournaments. I have a few theories on why this is the case (and hope to do something about it one day), but I will save that for another post.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[MomoTheDog]

Thank you for your very detailed response Fred.

 

Raising the entry fee would give them some additional money to play with, but since they pay BBO on a % basis (as opposed to a fixed rate per player) it would not help as much as you might think.

 

Perhaps introducing a diminishing fee percentage would be the necessary impetus that drives the growth of larger cash-based tournaments. i.e. a higher fee tournament would results in a "discounted" fee percentage to the BBO. (eg. $5 tournament --> 20% goes to BBO, $10 --> 18% goes to BBO, $20 ---> 16%). These groups may then feel more encouraged to try higher tournaments.

 

I will try your suggestion and contact these groups directly to give my opinion. Great site by the way!

[zman102]

Fred,

 

I would play in money bridge tourneys (with GIB's), but I live in Arizona...USA..and it is not allowed. If that has changed please let me know.

 

I have contacted my US Senators, my Congressman and my state Senator and assemblyman. No luck from those I have heard from (not all have responded).

 

Don't know what else to do.

 

Seems like a good way to play. Can't get them to tell me why it is not allowed.