Onedown Posted March 18, 2004 Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Hi-- This is OneDown, well known Internet Bridge Teacher/author Some of you have attended my free Q&A forums on BridgeBase. I am polling Beginner/Novice to Intermediate players if they would be interested in participating in Play and Learn Tourneys for a small fee. The initial idea is to play 10 boards and then attend an after session/live/interactive of all the boards played in a teaching room, conducted by Onedown. The cost would be somewhere between $1 and $2 per player. Additionally, prizes will be awarded based on the consistency of the events. These events will be slated to run Thurs/Fri for now and if enough interest an initial free trial period will be offered over the next 30-60 days. Let me know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Hmmm, paying for lessons these people can get for free? I hope you have some luck to earn some money... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jillybean Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Hi, I am interested in bridge coaching but I haven’t heard of your teaching sessions or your book(s), can you tell me which books you have published please. Also, what type of prizes would be awarded and for what would they be awarded? Thanks. IMHO I don't think this will fly. :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rado Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Hi allI have the feeling that posting advertisements for payed lessons/tourneys seems to be out of the scope of BBO due to several reasons:1. BBO is free of charge online place to play GREAT THANKS TO FRED2. BBO stuff, tech support, "yellows", TD's, club hosts all of them are volunteers sharing their time and skills for free - THANKS TO ALL VOLUNTEERS3. BBO forums are free of charge4. BBO forums moderators are again volunteers5. One of the basis principles of BBO is NO RANKINGS, NO PRIZES which gives a great chance to keep cheating at minimum possible levels, allowing all of us to enjoy friendly atmosphere for playing bridge, discussing bridge, learning bridge or just making new friends all over the world Of course since it's Private site only the Owners of the site may decide whether to allow or not such posts RegardsRado Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mpefritz Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Umm.. As I understand it, Fred introduced BBO$s with the intention of allowing people to pay for whatever they felt had value -- lessons, tournaments, playing with someone and subsequent hand analysis, etc.. AND that a portion of each BBO$s purchase would assist in maintaining BBO as FREE. So in effect OneDown is trying to generate some revenue for BBO (and self) while teaching some B/I players. I know this opens a HUGE can of worms of who feels they deserve what, but BBO$s now exist. If there is no interest then the market had said so. I think it is up to Fred to determine what sort of advertising can occur in relation to these activities on his site, though (perhaps the advertisers must pay BBO$s for each chat message they send :rolleyes: . fritz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrothgar Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 I have absolutely no problem if One DOwn wants to use the BBO forums to inquire about whether there is demand for commercial services. With this said and done, I would be very worried about "selection bias". The membership of these forums does not accurately reflect the BBO membership as a whole. I suspect that the data you get will be far from robust. Potentially, the best course of action would be to build a polling mechanism into the BBO client itself. I recognize that this would require some coding, however, nothing substitutes for good market intelligence. With this said and done: I wish you luck with your endevours... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inquiry Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 I moved this thread from "Beginner/Intermediate" to "find teacher/partner" because people looking for teacher are often beginner and intermediates. NExt, to the question is it ok for look for students here. This isn't even a close call. Of course DownOne can advertise for "students" here for use in the BBO. If the ad was for people to play in OKBridge, I might have deleted the post, simply because I see no reason to use the BBO forum to publically support competition to the BBO site. I say this in part because although Richard (onedown) didn't mention it, he has providing tutoring and the like on okbridge for many years. And in response to the earlier question, about does he have published works. The answer is a qualified yes. If I recall he has a web-based course material that can be called a web-book if you like. Rado and Richard raised a few a few issues that should probably be addressed, at least from my view. First, people already pay for what is offered for free. An example is wonderful shep who offers free classes on BBO, as well as intensive and excellent tutoring sessions for a nominal fee. Second, people also advertise here for paying clients. Greg Hinze, Bob Mcphee Daniel Korbel and Susan Harbour (in addition to shep) have all posted offers to serve as tutors/trainers/teachers on the BBO. I know that all of these people are well qualified to help the people in need of their services. There is little doubt that some money is exchanging hands though the use of the BBO site. It would be wonderful, if BBO$ could become the paypal type devise for these ongoing transactions so that the site that supports such commerce would generate at least a small amount of the income. Will OneDown's lessons be "worth a dollar"? I don't know (and this is not a question of the amount of money), simply because I don't know Richard. While I have played against Richard once or twice in BBO and I think once in OKBridge a very long time ago, I don't remember much more than his nickname. Is Onedown an EXCELLENT teacher whose lessons will be worth ten times the asking price? I have no idea. But if he is a great teacher, and people try his approach and like it, no doubt there could be a huge market for his sessions. I would suggest perhaps discounted lessons or one free lesson to each new "student" so they can try his approach out before they buy might be useful. In my opinion however, the future of BBO-based training is to play with a "semi=pro" who is not too expensive, and who will be willing to give you a written critique of your preformance.. .what you did right, what you did wrong, and why a day or two after the session. Maybe on a card-by-card basis, maybe by marking up the lin file you played, and letting you replay it in a "deal of the week" kind of format with questions that pop up. Such a lesson even with a semi pro would not be cheap. For one thing, the time of the actual play, let's say 2.5 hours, then double that for a write up, you are talking about maybe 7 hours of someone's time if making up the lin file. The tournment format spread this out... where the "what should have happened" is prepared first, then everyone can see it afterwards at a considerable savings per person. Ben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slothy Posted March 20, 2004 Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 The expression "One Down is good bridge" comes to mind ;) :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WGF_Flame Posted March 23, 2004 Report Share Posted March 23, 2004 I know this dilema of playing for training from other games i played, and as it is here, it felt out of place, because we were there playing not working, but i think its a good thing and the initial feeling is just because its still new.at the end it will make better teachers and better players. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom1629 Posted April 15, 2004 Report Share Posted April 15, 2004 Hello OneDown, Yes -- I'd be interested. Let me know when you have more info. Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uday Posted April 15, 2004 Report Share Posted April 15, 2004 We hope and expect that as our commerce engine comes up to speed, Teachers and Students will use it to hook up with each other. For now, ads in the forum are completely fine as long as they are within sane bounds (ie, no spamming, no okb ads, etc). Down the road FG and I want to create a more formal "Classified" section of BBO where teachers/students, sellers/buyers can hook up. So, ads are fine, and I trust and expect that the rest of us will not trample on the ads with "why would I want to participate?" messages. I do not know OneDown personally, but I believe that FG does. Onedown has hosted more than one lecture on BBO in the past. As time passes, we'll authorize known-to-be-competent teachers and TDs and privateclubhosts to charge for their events using BBO$. We could do it now - the software has been capable of this for a while. The italians, with Vincenzo's help, are planning something very similar, with Fantoni as the lecturer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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