Speedball vs Slowball

[glen]

Starting speedball and slowball BBO ACBL pairs at the same time is not a good idea.

 

Sunday, 11 am (eastern):

 

Speedball: 71 pairs

Slowball: 3 pairs (it appears a pair agreed to move to the slowball to get to 2 tables)

 

--- ---

 

11:10 - the slowball appears to have disappeared, perhaps moved into the Individual. The Individual has 8 tables, and the total of 35 + 8 tables has 1 TD so I have not asked the TD what happened to the slowball because he must be quite occupied.

 

--- ---

 

When I sub into the middle of a hand, is there anyway to do a review of all the tricks before I guess what to do next?

[mike777]

yes, speedball seems to have killed off slowball. Survival of the fittest? What a cruel, cruel world bridge is.

 

2) No you cannot review past tricks even as a Sub except the last one. In any case in speedball you would not have time, you are already running too late, Hurry!

[runewell]

I'm a bit disappointed to what has happened to the slowball tourneys. My regular partner can barely play 2 hands in 14 minutes as it is, so speedball isn't an option for us. As long as one decent sized section can be maintained that would suffice, but I've seen instances where turnout is very low or a cancellation is necessary. I wouldn't be surprised if speedball brings in more $$ but you may lose the customers that want a slower game. I'm going to have to look into the alternative sites as a result to see what is available. I don't want my tournament to be a no-show again.

[jmc]

Before the speedballs, I was very disapointed in the state of the slowballs. The rounds took significantly longer than boards in real life, despite their being no need to remove cards from the board, sort one's hand, or pass boards. I found the slowballs to be sooo slow as to feel almost unplayable. Maybe a time bank could solve this problem and maybe not.

 

I will gladly continue to avoid playing the slowball and I think most others agree. It is nice to see people vote with their feet.

 

jmc

[mike777]

Having just played a f2f club game, no way slowball is any slower than "real life"

 

I do agree many complained that slowball was too slow on bbo.

 

I also miss the midnight slowball game but the public voted with their money.

[mycroft]

f2d - face to desk? Wow, that must have been slow. Even I usually stay awake at the club...

[mike777]

f2d - face to desk?  Wow, that must have been slow.  Even I usually stay awake at the club...

I must admit I have a terrible time trying to stay awake at the club. 27 bds that seem to take forever and forever....

Add in all the holiday food they have, and I do need a nap at the 13 bd mark.

Add in having to drive there and back...geez I feel exhausted.

 

compare that to just playing 12 bds online in an hour......:)

[A2003]

ACBL Speedball tournaments:

From looking at the game results,

Average of 12-16 tables are unfinished in the entire tournament.

Board 12, being the top, average of 6-8 tables are unfinished in each tournament.

I cannot find a single tournament with all completed boards.

This creates too much work for TD's unnecessarily for adjusting the boards for lots of reasons.

 

ACBL Slowball tournaments:

Down to one section most of the time. Anywhere between 4 to 16 tables.

[ASkolnick]

I am one of the people who was disappointed the midnight slowball's seemed to have disappeared. Unfortunately, due to commitments, midnight is the time I can first get online.

 

The other problem is we are trying to play a unique, yet relatively natural system with some follow-ups, that would require too much explanation in a speedball tournament. The simple one is our 2 bids are all natural, promising 6 and promise values between a 1 and 2 bid. We have two artificial forces, 1C & 1D with 1C saved for two suited intermediate hands.

 

I have no problem coming up with a reasonably timed event, but speedball is very difficult.

[jtfanclub]

ACBL Speedball tournaments:

From looking at the game results,

Average of 12-16 tables are unfinished in the entire tournament.

Board 12, being the top, average of 6-8 tables are unfinished in each tournament.

I really wish that they'd add 1 minute/hand to the last round, if mainly to give them time to adjust while people are stilll playing.

[Cascade]

I cannot find a single tournament with all completed boards.

I think this would be because players are too slow to even start the third board of the round.

 

The tournaments I direct I try to adjust all boards started to actual results. This is not always possible as the outcome is sometimes far from certain. I would think the norm is that all boards started are adjusted or looked at but no doubt occasionally one gets away on me.

[mike777]

ACBL Speedball tournaments:

From looking at the game results,

Average of 12-16 tables are unfinished in the entire tournament.

Board 12, being the top, average of 6-8 tables are unfinished in each tournament.

I cannot find a single tournament with all completed boards.

This creates too much work for TD's unnecessarily for adjusting the boards for lots of reasons.

 

ACBL Slowball tournaments:

Down to one section most of the time. Anywhere between 4 to 16 tables.

Yes, if you do not start the last bd with 3 or 4 minutes left you lose it.

 

Add in if you do start but do not finish the last bd in a round you need to bother the director and ask for an adjustment, when possible.

[Cascade]

ACBL Speedball tournaments:

From looking at the game results,

Average of 12-16 tables are unfinished in the entire tournament.

Board 12, being the top, average of 6-8 tables are unfinished in each tournament.

I cannot find a single tournament with all completed boards.

This creates too much work for TD's unnecessarily for adjusting the boards for lots of reasons.

 

ACBL Slowball tournaments:

Down to one section most of the time. Anywhere between 4 to 16 tables.

Yes, if you do not start the last bd with 3 or 4 minutes left you lose it.

 

Add in if you do start but do not finish the last bd in a round you need to bother the director and ask for an adustment, when possible.

I actually find it is much easier to do the adjustments if the players do not bother me when they have not finished. I do not know for certain what all other directors do but when I am scheduled on my own I specifically ask the players not to ask me for adjustments.

 

I monitor all of the tables. The software will generate a report of tables still in play. I refresh this as often as possible near the end of the round so I can see all of the tables that did not finish or only just finished in time. I then go to all of these tables and see if they need an adjustment and if so I make an assessment of the likely result. Sometimes it is too hard to determine a likely result in which case I leave the software assigned average minuses unless I am aware that the slowness was caused by one side or the other in which case I will vary the result to average plus/average minus or average/average plus etc etc

 

Players that call me for an adjustment when I am looking through the tables actually slow me down in the process of making adjustments.

 

Personally I think there are times when average minus is far too generous to players that have caused the late finish.

[A2003]

I actually find it is much easier to do the adjustments if the players do not bother me when they have not finished. I do not know for certain what all other directors do but when I am scheduled on my own I specifically ask the players not to ask me for adjustments.

 

I monitor all of the tables. The software will generate a report of tables still in play. I refresh this as often as possible near the end of the round so I can see all of the tables that did not finish or only just finished in time. I then go to all of these tables and see if they need an adjustment and if so I make an assessment of the likely result.

 

Personally I think there are times when average minus is far too generous to players that have caused the late finish.

===========================================

TD's are NOT supposed to work hard for adjustments.

This is unnecessary. I don't even know there is an established rule to do this by ACBL.

Or some players can delay the game to get ave score, if they know that they are doing good in previous boards.

 

How was the 60 minutes selected for all 12 boards?

From looking at the game results, there was not a single tournament with all completed boards within the prescribed time.

So, the arbitrary timing of 60 minutes is not sufficient.

So, TD should have the ability to allow grace time of 4-6 minutes in the increment of 2 min each round when needed to complete the boards. This will minimize TD's efforts for adjustments.

Who is in charge for ACBL tournament TD's? Is there a list of TD's?

[Cascade]

How was the 60 minutes selected for all 12 boards?

From looking at the game results, there was not a single tournament with all completed boards within the prescribed time.

So, the arbitrary timing of 60 minutes is not sufficient.

So, TD should have the ability to allow grace time of 4-6 minutes in the increment of 2 min each round when needed to complete the boards. This will minimize TD's efforts for adjustments.

These tournaments are speedball. They are designed to be fast. It would defeat the intent to add time to each round. If you do not want to play fast there is a choice speedball or slowball.

 

In the slowball games directors are authorized to add time to the round. Personally I will not normally do this because players are slow but will do it if there has been a problem - disconnection or a TD ruling that has taken some time. I will also do this if the hand is very nearly finished and I am aware of the problem as usually a short time extension is easier to arrange than looking through the hand and making an adjustment.

 

For me speedball is a fun game with the requirement that players make an effort to play faster than usual.

[A2003]

2pm speedball tournament, Jan 1st, 2008 ACBL tournament: Record

Board 12, 23 tables unfinished : TD will have to adjust for 23 tables.

This is out of 46 tables.

Still, I don't understand why TD's have to work hard to figure out adjustments.

Board 10-thru 12 are programed to be difficult boards to bid or play and generally seems to consume more time than the alloted for these boards.

[glen]

For Speedballs, we need a new button - "Request Adjustment" and it prompts for board number. This will hopefully reduce the amount of Call Director button clicks that do not need the TD at the table.

[mike777]

"Board 10-thru 12 are programed to be difficult boards to bid or play..."

 

 

NO!

[A2003]

"Board 10-thru 12 are programed to be difficult boards to bid or play..."

 

NO!

I have checked and kibitzed several boards of board 11 and 12 in ACBL tournaments.

These boards creates swing in the tournament.

Players consume a lot of time in handling Board 11 either in bid or during the play and end up losing board 12 to play.

That is why the board 12 is unusual number of unfinished boards in each every tournaments.

This is observed in scoring results.

This is compared to board 3 and board 6 and board 9.

[blackshoe]

Board 10-thru 12 are programed to be difficult boards to bid or play and generally seems to consume more time than the alloted for these boards.

"Bridge" online is indeed a very different game from the one I learned to play face to face. :)

[mike777]

"Board 10-thru 12 are programed to be difficult boards to bid or play..."

 

NO!

I have checked and kibitzed several boards of board 11 and 12 in ACBL tournaments.

These boards creates swing in the tournament.

Players consume a lot of time in handling Board 11 either in bid or during the play and end up losing board 12 to play.

That is why the board 12 is unusual number of unfinished boards in each every tournaments.

This is observed in scoring results.

This is compared to board 3 and board 6 and board 9.

No.

 

The boards are not programmed differently.

 

In any case boards do not create swings.....the players do and yes players tend to try and create more swings on later boards.

 

It may just be proof that the last round the players play slower for other reasons..they simple do not care or they are tired or other......

 

Yes if players consume more time, they will tend to have more unplayed boards, so?

 

None of what you say is proof of bds 11-12 being programmed differently. It may be proof players take more swingy actions which consume more time...perhaps....

[hrothgar]

Board 10-thru 12 are programed to be difficult boards to bid or play and generally seems to consume more time than the alloted for these boards.

Like other people, I'm quite skeptical about this claim

 

1. Correlation does not imply causation. Even if players spend more time on boards 10-12 doesn't mean that the hand generators have been tweaked to make these boards more difficult to play.

 

2. I have no idea how I would design a hand generator to make boards difficult to play. It sounds like a pain in the butt. I could, in theory, select boards by hand but this also requires a lot of work. Last, but not least, rigging boards is often considered an offense. I think that some players would get quite peeved if they knew that this was occurring.

In short, there is a substantial cost associated with this course of action. Conversely, I don't see any gains to offset these costs? Why would anyone want to do such a thing?

 

3. If you are going to make this type of accusation you really should try to back it up with some kind of statistical tests. Demonstrate that the hands dealt in set 10-12 differ in some way from hands 1-8 (the expected strength of different hands is significantly different, the expect distribution of shapes is significantly different etc)

[Al_U_Card]

The only reasonable solution is to make the speedball into the fastball with 10 boards of 6 minutes each. When I play ACBL. I prefer the speedball but when playing vs. the slomos it is frustrating to lose a couple of boards per tourney because they look at the previous hand before bidding to the next one.....to say nothing of a 30 sec. pause before passing!

[uday]

I'll run some trials and see if we can either slow down the speedballs a tad, or (more likely) speed up the slowballs a tad.

[Guest movingon]

I think I only recall one time that the third board didn't pop up in a round because of time.

 

I do recall, however, many times, when we had 3 minutes or less to play the last board after the bidding was completed. And most of the time we get it done.

 

But what is frustrating is when the LAST board is not completed, not just at your table but at other tables, because not everybody seems to know that they should ask for adjustments (or perhaps their game is poor enough that they don't care if the board is adjusted). And failure to adjust boards at other tables ALSO affects the results at other tables, both on a specific board and on the final rankings.

 

Also, when the td DOES adjust the final board after the game is over, the adjustment does not show up in the final board by board tally.

 

I have noticed lately that some tds HAVE been adding a minute to the last round. It makes sense to me. One should know what the final result is when the tournament is over.