Subbing issues

[Gweny]

;) It occurs to me that majority of tds job is sub relate. yes i know this is not exactly breaking news to we who do much hosting.

 

But are we on right track? We keep asking for better ways TO sub when maybe question we really need to ask is how can we return booting players faster thereby eliminating majority of our need/td duties.

 

When I am on dial up it can take anywhere from speedy 3 mins to annoyingly long 8 min to log on to bbo from time i click "log on".

 

Part of this is amount of data bbo server must send to me before it lets me into bbo. I am assuming that majority of this very fluid info is about state of lobby. I guess my question is if we limit amount of data server wants to send to me will this speed up my connection time?

 

So maybe instead of showing me entire lobby it only shows me my friends list and yellows. So instead of sending me data about 3000+ users it sends me some reduce set of info when i am in tournament or at least gives me some option to speed my return to table in event i do lose connection during tournaemtn.

 

What say ye Uday/Fred? do some method exist where we can reduce amount of data bbo server must exchange prior to getting me back to table?

[uday]

This is an architectural issue that FG and I have been batting back and forth for a while. One of us feels that it is good that the client knows about all that is going on (so that you can, for instance, mouse over someone and see his profile instantly) while the other feels that this knowledge is not worth the price we pay for it (bandwidth, long login times).

 

This is not something that we can solve in a hurry, since we need to resolve this dispute, then (assuming we agree to reduce the amt. of information ) make sure the client won't care about the now-missing information.

[inquiry]

More and more people are getting broadband.. I think to rewrite now to not add this information is backwards looking. So I vote to count on people getting quicker connections and more forward with that thought in mind. BTW, I am still DIAL UP.. but plan to switch to DSL when I get back from trip to Sweden.

 

ben

[DrTodd13]

Uday,

 

A couple of issues. During login time, what percentage of the time is devoted to:

1) table state

2) tourney state

3) team game state

4) lobby state

 

If #4 is a big percentage then is there anyway you could do this part lazily after the GUI is already up and running? You could see people's names but wouldn't be able to mouse and see their profile until the lobby (player) state was downloaded.

 

Another alternative is to cache profiles locally on the client along with a checksum and to only transmit the checksum at login time and the client could send specific update requests for users that they have never seen before or whose checksum differs from what is cached.

 

Todd

[Gweny]

Well Ben,...

If you are USA or Canada yes I am sureDSL is readily available - but what of rest of world?

 

Majority of our subbing problems come not from north american, south american or european users, but rather from eastern european, middle east, and indian connections. Is dsl readily available in this areas? As in debate we hear when Uday give us wonderful autoban tool main arguement is it penalizes people who DO dial up - ie users from areas I mention above...

 

So we are back to ways to reduce this set of info server wants to send. - If we can get users back within 3 mins then our sub issues basically disappear. as it is at present if you are on dial up and you boot your tournament experience is basically over.

 

And as number of tournaments increase at some point we are going to run out of people who are willing to sub. It is already happening - you can tell this by flood of sub requests from desparate TDs trying to hold together their tournametns. Anytime you doubt this I am happy to add you as co-td in early fishy.

 

I am sad to report I am back to marking people with bad connections to keep them out of early fishy to help reduce sub load - but what can i do? When I keep seeing same people day after day booting then for sake of other players I must take action.

 

Will this offend some of our users? Yes it will, and I do not enoy conversations I know are coming.

[inquiry]

Well, I think the work around is survivor with zero cuts, and letting the players try to find their own subs... but that is just me... :-)

 

Ben

[1eyedjack]

Well, I think the work around is survivor with zero cuts, and letting the players try to find their own subs... but that is just me... :-)

 

Ben

I saw this once. Can someone explain to me what is the difference between a survivor with zero cuts, and a competition that is not a survivor at all?

[mink]

Can someone explain to me what is the difference between a survivor with zero cuts, and a competition that is not a survivor at all?

Hi Jack,

 

in a normal swiss movement the number of tables never changes. If you make a survivor with 0% cut this is the same if nobody ever loses connection. But if at the end of a round there are pairs with at least 1 player missing (totally red), then these pairs are excluded from the tourney. If this results in an odd number of pairs, the pair worst score so far is excluded, too.

 

This sounds nice at the first glance. But there are several disadvantages:

 

1. In order to avoid a sitout table the exclusion of a complete pair is done no matter how many boards have been played yet. So maybe one bottom and a board you could not finish because of slow opps already kicks you out of the tourney. This is even worse if you have 1 board/round. I strongly recomment that in a survivor a complete pair should never be kicked out with less than 4 boards played.

 

2. Wether you have to leave the tourney or not depends on the time when you lose connection. If this occurs in the middle of the round your odds to come back in time are not bad, though the game is delayed. But if you lose connection near the end of the round, maybe with all boards finished already, then you are kicked out if you cannot make it back before the next round starts. There should be some delay after a lost connection before the pair is really kicked out.

 

3. The whole thing does not work for players who are not totally red, but only have red dot or no indication of their bad connection besides that they do not play. It would help here if such players became totally red after no action for some time, as I proposed in another thread.

 

Karl

[hotShot]

This is an architectural issue that FG and I have been batting back and forth for a while. One of us feels that it is good that the client knows about all that is going on (so that you can, for instance, mouse over someone and see his profile instantly) while the other feels that this knowledge is not worth the price we pay for it (bandwidth, long login times).

 

This is not something that we can solve in a hurry, since we need to resolve this dispute, then (assuming we agree to reduce the amt. of information ) make sure the client won't care about the now-missing information.

Hi uday!

 

You say that at the login you transmit a lot of data to the client.

 

Asuming the server would set a flag/coockie when playing a tourney, the client could sent a resume tourney request instead of a new login request.

 

The server could put the player back to the tourney, sending the other data later. (i think the automatic update does something like that).

 

After the last board played that coockie should be removed.

This coockie (saved on harddisk) could even survive a reboot.

 

have a nice day

hotShot

[bambi1]

And as number of tournaments increase at some point we are going to run out of people who are willing to sub. It is already happening - you can tell this by flood of sub requests from desparate TDs trying to hold together their tournametns.

If tournaments are scheduled 30 minutes apart (like recommended by the TD Coalition) the number of sub requests would decline. There are someitmes 5 or 6 tournaments running at the same time, which makes it very difficult for TDs to find substitutes.

[Gweny]

FYI... unless i am mistaken swiss and survivor with 0% cut are virtually same thing. missing players are excuse.

[EdmundB]

I am sad to report I am back to marking people with bad connections to keep them out of early fishy to help reduce sub load - but what can i do? When I keep seeing same people day after day booting then for sake of other players I must take action.

 

I don't see any way around this, either. Same for the people who call the TD to the table to ask for an adjustment.

[fred]

I strongly believe that the time will come in which

just about everyone who has a computer, even those

living in "poor counties" will have:

 

1) A broadband connection

 

2) Either a credit card or some other convenient method

of being able to participate in e-commerce

 

I have no idea how long this will take, probably many

years, but it will happen - that's just the way that the

world works. I am sure some student of economics out

there can explain why this is the case.

 

I am playing bridge next week with Bill Gates. I will

ask him how long we have to wait :blink:

 

I am not suggesting that we necessarily make design

decisions based upon these predictions.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[TimG]

One of us feels that it is good that the client knows about all that is going on (so that you can, for instance, mouse over someone and see his profile instantly) while the other feels that this knowledge is not worth the price we pay for it (bandwidth, long login times).

I think my biggest complaint about the BBO interface is the (annoying to me) mouseover pop-ups. I would much rather get the information only when I ask for it. The tournament listings are especially annoying to look through with the information pop-ups covering half of the list.

 

So, from my point of view, BBO is paying a price (bandwidth, long login time, and probablyother stuff) to make the interface less attractive.

[scoob]

I am playing bridge next week with Bill Gates. I will

ask him how long we have to wait :)

while you're at it, ask him how long before we see an MS *nix platform

 

would it be difficult to give users an option to choose their connection type which determines how/when the various states are sent to them?

[Gweny]

:) Well Ben...

Fishy IS survivor. with healthy cut of 35%.

 

And while it is all well and good to say they are remove/excuse at end of round this do not sooth poor opps who is sitting waiting for sub so they can do what they come to do - play - not sit.

 

On topic of finding your own sub when you are playing this is fine IF and Only if subs are available. Otherwise we see flood of calls to lobby. Also people often are reluctant to sub out partner resulting in crippling delays which mean more work for td, and unhappy players when td, in self defense, extends time of round.

 

Problem at present is same people who are bar for 1 week only to come back and boot for 2nd week bar for week 3 back for week 4...

 

maybe it is time to consider permanent tournament bar for people with habitual connectiona problems. It creates situation where helpless tds are ready to cancel tournament for lack of subs, and frustration at seeing same people return time and time again only to boot yet again.

 

Is it fair to poor person with bad connection? Sadly no it is not. But imo, it is even more unfair to partner, opps and tds to need to constantly replace, every other week this same group of people.