SLOW Play USA Trials

[chudecek]

I think 3 1/4 hours for a 32 board session is MORE than enough, but if someone

wants to increase the allocated time to 105 seconds average (adding 32 minutes to a

session), I would not quibble. Remember- these pairs are SITTING at the same table for

16 to 32 boards, so time is not lost in moving (or reviewing systems).

 

Something really should be done about this, at least to more strictly enforce the time regulations already in place.

 

The same problem comes up in the Spingold and Vanderbilt, and even in some of the top-flight pairs events. The people who play slow all to often end up gaining an advantage, as their opponents are unused to this pace and either have trouble concentrating during the long delays (it's easy to forget what's going on in the hand when your opponent takes ten minutes to play a card) and/or are unused to having the director at the table telling them to play faster (even though penalties are almost never handed out). It also creates problems in long events, since if one team plays slow opponents and finishes at 3 AM, they are at a disadvantage the next day against a team that finished at a normal time and got more rest.

 

Bridge is officially a timed event, and I don't think the winner should necessarily be the team that would play better if given unlimited time, if the same team is unable to play comparably well within the officially required time limits.

 

With that said, chudecek's solution seems draconian and ridiculous, and I'm not sure we'd call such a game bridge any more once no one is allowed to play even the methods commonly allowed in club games, nor allowed to take the time per hand commonly permitted in club games.

[qwery_hi]

Something really should be done about this, at least to more strictly enforce the time regulations already in place.

 

The same problem comes up in the Spingold and Vanderbilt, and even in some of the top-flight pairs events. The people who play slow all to often end up gaining an advantage, as their opponents are unused to this pace and either have trouble concentrating during the long delays (it's easy to forget what's going on in the hand when your opponent takes ten minutes to play a card) and/or are unused to having the director at the table telling them to play faster (even though penalties are almost never handed out). It also creates problems in long events, since if one team plays slow opponents and finishes at 3 AM, they are at a disadvantage the next day against a team that finished at a normal time and got more rest.

 

Bridge is officially a timed event, and I don't think the winner should necessarily be the team that would play better if given unlimited time, if the same team is unable to play comparably well within the officially required time limits.

 

Yes, either allocate more time officially or enforce the existing rules. It looks like the directors are intimidated by the players to enforce time penalties.

[AlexJonson]

I noticed it was a bit slow, and went to bed when I might of stayed up if it was faster.

 

But, if I was competing to represent an expected favourite in the BB, I might not care who

went to bed while I was thinking.

 

Mostly I watch Chess live, especially right now, but a one on one game is much easier to control

with clocks.

[barryallen]

Something really should be done about this, at least to more strictly enforce the time regulations already in place.

 

The same problem comes up in the Spingold and Vanderbilt, and even in some of the top-flight pairs events. The people who play slow all to often end up gaining an advantage, as their opponents are unused to this pace and either have trouble concentrating during the long delays (it's easy to forget what's going on in the hand when your opponent takes ten minutes to play a card) and/or are unused to having the director at the table telling them to play faster (even though penalties are almost never handed out). It also creates problems in long events, since if one team plays slow opponents and finishes at 3 AM, they are at a disadvantage the next day against a team that finished at a normal time and got more rest.

 

Bridge is officially a timed event, and I don't think the winner should necessarily be the team that would play better if given unlimited time, if the same team is unable to play comparably well within the officially required time limits.

 

With that said, chudecek's solution seems draconian and ridiculous, and I'm not sure we'd call such a game bridge any more once no one is allowed to play even the methods commonly allowed in club games, nor allowed to take the time per hand commonly permitted in club games.

 

You either do nothing or you apply penalties. To me this is all about the players and it should be their decision upon how this is handled. But a slow player can affect concentration levels in others and that can be an unfair advantage. Officials have to have discretionary powers taken away from them and a set scale of penalties applied should players fall short, that way you get consistency and officials are just applying the rules, not making an interpretation.

 

If you do apply penalties you should make allowances for items out of the players control and times set per event or by agreement. Then once you have decided to penalise slow opponents, you have to devise a fair method. Personally I would go with something like a percentage of the difference in points between the pairs over the session in question.

 

This will never effect me or my enjoyment which ever way things turn out. But if the authorities decide something should be done, take the pressure off the officials with the rules so there are no arguments / inconsistencies and the players know exactly where they stand.

[paulg]

I think 3 1/4 hours for a 32 board session is MORE than enough, but if someone

wants to increase the allocated time to 105 seconds average (adding 32 minutes to a

session), I would not quibble. Remember- these pairs are SITTING at the same table for

16 to 32 boards, so time is not lost in moving (or reviewing systems).

Have you played with screens?

[Finch]

All the top events have time regulations. The trick is to enforce them. 10 minutes over one card is fair enough if it's an important card, it's when it happens over and over again that it's really frustrating to play against.

 

If (e.g.) Justin finds it off-putting when his opponents are taking longer than they are supposed to be, then that's not fair: as others have said time limits are enforced in the BB, so they should be here too.

 

p.s. bridge does take longer with screens. The EBU trials give you 2 hours 50 minutes for a 20 board set, exactly the same as the European championships (deliberately). This equates to about 2 hours 10 minutes for 15 boards I think.

[qwery_hi]

I have. What's your point?

 

All the talk about bridge taking longer with screens is a red herring. Longer than what? A pair game where every pair has to move between hands and learn what new system their opponents are playing? I don't think so.

 

Have you played with screens?

[benlessard]

The best examples for intelligent and diverse time controls come from Japan. My estimate is that Go is twice as complex as shogi (japanese chess) and shogi is twice as complex as bridge/chess and they have every format from 15min each players to 2 days games.

 

The majors titles in Japan each players has 8H(go) + nap/lunch and 6H(shogi). Today there is no adjournement (sealed moves)(in chess computers killed adjournement but in go computers are not good enough to help but it will come)

 

Anyway an interesting read

 

http://gobase.org/reading/trivia/?id=thinking

 

IMO Time controls serve many purpose

 

Most important is to teach beginners/intermediates to play quicker. Before a certain point players improve faster if they just play and learn rather than think too much. I know some will disagree with this but im 200% sure of this.

2- If you want to make a show/get sponsors you have to have time controls no choice.

3- To protect against super slow/deliberately slow players (mostly for slow games rather than bridge/poker/backgammon)

 

In chess modern and faster time controls (2/2.5H) per players are being the norm, people were sceptic hated them at the start but now they are accepted, more mistakes, more agressive games & reduced draws it also allow 2 games per day for tight schedule amateur tournament.

[matmat]

I think Carl is onto something, but his proposed changes simply do not go far enough. I would propose the following changes:

 

1) I would recommend that all participants in an event be given the same final score in order to avoid feelings of shame, inferiority and inadequacy.

 

2) I would mandate that all participants wear the same shade of clothing, that way nobody will stand out or offend anyone's sensibilities

 

3) All two way finesses must be taken into one's RHO,

 

4) All 9 card fits with the AK must play for the drop,

 

5) No falsecarding, no signalling. You must always follow suit with the lowest spot card available if you cannot win the trick.

 

6) No smoke breaks. No hospitality breaks. You must sit through the entire session.

 

I'll try to define some more rule changes later.

[glen]

I really enjoy watch football games as shown on the NFL Network's NFL Replay - this is 1 1/4 hours per game before I fast-forward past the ads. They edit out all the huddles, timeouts, coach's challenges etc. to produce a fast-paced and highly entertaining show. Imagine if the US finals were recorded live, but shown on vugraph with a start time an hour later than actual, and giving one of the commentators the ability to fast forward during the many slow spots, and if necessary, say when somebody fails to take their 9 tricks in a 3NT or makes a clever squeeze to bring in a contract, then a quick instant replay for all those watching who like to watch big hits and touchdowns.

[ggwhiz]

I'm not interested in system restrictions but slow play is a big drag on the game.

 

Similar to Zero tolerance, lack of enforcement of the existing rules is what bugs me. Train the Directors and if they don't follow suit hire ones that will.

[awm]

I'm not interested in system restrictions but slow play is a big drag on the game.

 

Similar to Zero tolerance, lack of enforcement of the existing rules is what bugs me. Train the Directors and if they don't follow suit hire ones that will.

 

I agree with this.

 

However, before we all blame the directors, consider that the current system is quite hard on them. First, the director often will not know who is at fault for slow play. He notices when a table is behind, but he's not actively timing each bid and play. The players usually aren't helpful in this (slow players tend to deny they are slow). The director might have outside knowledge of a particular pair's history, but if he allocates a penalty based on that he is subject to charges that he's ruling based on "who the people are" and that his outside knowledge might be quite subjective. Second, the penalties to be assessed are often "director's judgment." Suppose a director assesses a penalty that ends up changing the result of a match. Since there's no formal policy, there will be all kinds of questions as to whether the penalty was "too big".. whether the director would've allocated the same penalty against a "famous" team or whatever. It's a very tough situation to be in.

 

Some sort of electronic monitoring combined with specifically proscribed penalties for slow play would help quite a bit.

[nige1]

Welcome Carl.

• I agree with Carl that it would be a good to set time-limits but
• I think a slightly better protocol would be to insist that a player must make each bid or play after a specified time and before another specified time. (say 5 and 10 seconds. (A general rule -- there would be some specified exceptions). This would eliminate most tempo problems and speed up the game. As in chess, each player would soon learn to use the other players' thinking time.

• I agree with Carl that there should be some competitions, especially individual tournaments, where all must use a standard system. At world championship level, this would make it easy for commentators and spectators and help to popularise the game.
• I think, however, that most competitions, including most world championships, should have no system restrictions.

[Quantumcat]

he is punished one IMP per minute overtime, and rewarded 0.2 IMPS for every minute under his allocated time.

 

If I were playing in this tournament, my partner and I would agree to always open 3NT in 1st or 2nd seat, no matter what. We would get swings from hard-to-bid and hard-to-defend games, plus all our opponents would lose some IMPs from having to spend extra time thinking about the defense, and we would earn about 5+ IMPs each from quick play. If our teammates would do it too, I estimate about 10 IMPs per match from the swings(some big wins and mny small losses), and an extra 20-30 IMPs per match for our quick play and their slow play. I don't know the VP scale off by heart, but I'm sure that's at least 20 VPs per 32 board match.

[chudecek]

The computer program would take care of delivering the TWO bids in a timely fashion at each turn. Say after a 5 second minimum wait, as you suggest. If there are huddles longer than that, the calls would be delivered when they are made.

 

 

Welcome Carl.

• I agree with Carl that it would be a good to set time-limits but
• I think a slightly better protocol would be to insist that a player must make each bid or play after a specified time and before another specified time. (say 5 and 10 seconds. (A general rule -- there would be some specified exceptions). This would eliminate most tempo problems and speed up the game. As in chess, each player would soon learn to use the other players' thinking time.

• I agree with Carl that there should be some competitions, especially individual tournaments, where all must use a standard system. At world championship level, this would make it easy for commentators and spectators and help to popularise the game.
• I think, however, that most competitions, including most world championships, should have no system restrictions.

[the hog]

"2. All contestants play exactly the same system and playing conventions."

 

Carl, I am curious. What system would that be, Acol? If not, why not? Why should those who prefer a 12-14 NT opening be forced to play a 15-17 range, just as one example.

By the way, I agree about the slow play. It makes watching very boring.

[han]

I have spent the last several days watching (painfully) what is described

as expert IMP bridge, but is actually a contest involving unusual methods,

furious overbidding to minus scores, phantom saves ad infinitum, director calls,

system inquiries, and worst of all, interminably slow play by some contestants,

to the detriment of the spectators, most contestants, and the game itself.

 

I think your comment about the slow play is most welcome. I am not sure if your solution is best, but there are definitely several options available. It seems that currently the main problem is that rules are not enforced, and that seems wrong.

 

As for your bidding comments, I think you don't know what you are talking about.

 

As a participant, I must say I am torn on the slow play stuff. On the one hand, it's supposed to be a timed event, however penalties are not really imposed. On the other hand, I feel like this is the finals, and it's ok for everyone to take as much time as they want.

 

I don't agree with this. I would say that especially in the finals, rules should be enforced. It also seems to me that there is a reason that bridge is a timed game, and there is a good reason for this.

[mrdct]

... a contest involving unusual methods, furious overbidding to minus scores, phantom saves ad infinitum, director calls, system inquiries, ...

Have we been watching the same event? The bridge has been absolutely awesome, high presure, in-your-face, tough-as-nails bridge; and I've loved every minute of it.

 

Standardising systems would be ridiculous. In any case, there are far too many combinations of auctions to ever properly document what they all mean. Looking at the latest and greatest methods that the top experts are using is one of the most enjoyable aspects of vugraph.

 

I tend to agree on the slow play bit though, but I'm not sure that computer-based play and/or automated timing systems are really the answer unless the latter is very unobtrusive and isn't going to further slow the game down. I guess the table could be fitted with some sort of optical or proximity reader to automatically capture each card as it's played and I imagine bidding boxes would need to be replaced by some other system to capture bids electronically; but what ever system is employed it must not interfere with the essence of our game which is deck of 52 cards held in our sweaty hands in the heat of battle. I expect that if players have to play their cards in a specfic location on the table and receive some sort of beep or light acknowledging that it's been detected, it would be incredibly distracting and I can't see it happening.

 

For vugraphed events, the BBO system could be employed as a time monitor of sorts with some software modifications, but even that won't be completely fail-safe as the tempo in which the operator enters bids and plays rarely coincides with the actually tempo at the table for several reasons. What could be workable is once a BBO pause during the auction reaches a certain threshold (something like 5 seconds) a pop-up prompts the operator to confirm who is in the tank and then starts ascribing time to that player. For tempo during the play, I'm quite confident that any variation between reality and operator entry would be immaterial. At the end of the session, if slow play penalties need to be handed-out, there will be a pretty accurate representation of who soaked-up more than their fair share of the time.

 

It's hard to imgaine that a perfect system could be devised as you can't really cater for the scenario of declarer prolonging the play to make the defence think they have a problem and then the defence wind up having a whole bunch of time ascribed to them which wouldn't have happened if declarer just claimed. Although I guess you could have GIB determine the point where declarer has the rest of the tricks on all layouts and then all time from there until the claim gets ascribed to declarer.

[mike777]

so the issues are:

1) enforce any time limits?

2) time limits should be 7x15 or 9x15?

[barmar]

While I agree in general with enforcing slow play penalties, I think the time limits for high-level events have to be longer than club games and local tourneys.

 

Others have mentioned the delays added by screens. But more to the point is that players in these events often have more to think about. They bid more aggressively, and that makes planning the play and defense harder. Furthermore, the reason that these players are at the top of the field is because they actually use that thinking time well, to come to the right conclusions. So if we were to limit the time they can spend to the usual 6 or 7 minutes/board, the bridge play is not going to be as good.

 

Remember when your bridge teacher told you that when the dummy comes down, you should spend time planning the play or defense. These guys actually do that. Even on the hands that look straightforward, they think about potential problem layouts and whether they can deal with them.

 

It's unfortunate that watching people think (or just looking at a Vugraph screen, so you can't even see the thinkers) is not "exciting". If you want fast-paced, watch tennis, basketball, or hockey. Bridge is a mind sport, and thinking is an important part of the game. And just as you expect the tennis ball to go faster in a Grand Slam event, we expect more thinking in national and world championship bridge.

[blackshoe]

When you're running a club, you have to think in terms of the number of boards the players want to play, and the length of time you have for the whole session. The amount of time you allocate for one board is an outcome of that thought process, and is constrained by those two variables.

 

When you're running a high-level tournament, the total time for the session is largely irrelevant, or should be. Remove that constraint, and you effectively remove any constraint on the length of time needed to play a board.

 

At the clubs around here, consideration of the constraints has led to the somewhat ridiculous conclusion that boards should be allotted at most six minutes, and "moving time" between rounds should be allotted roughly fifteen seconds. This is hardly likely to decrease "slow play" incidents - particularly where the players need to think about even the simplest most obvious actions. And believe me, we get a lot of that.

[bluecalm]

Slow or not the point is that it should not be possible for one pair at the table to take significantly more time thus gaining unfair advantage.

I think one solution is to have some kind of bridge clock at the table. While it's not possible probably to make it similar to chess you could use it the following way:

-after dummy is tables declarer is allowed 60 seconds think time and defender 20 seconds after card is played

-every pair is allowed only one 90 second tank a hand

-all other plays must come in at most 30 seconds

 

You just click a clock if opponent start thinking.

It can be easily extended for the whole segment where one can for example choose:

-two 3minutes tanks

-12 90 seconds tanks

 

Or something like that. Constructing such a clock is very easy and probably even chess dgt clocks could be used.

The key for the solution is to break prisoner dilemma like situation which now gives advantage to people who break the rules (everybody hates them for that but they still have advantage). We should stop thinking in terms of stopping slow play in general and start thinking about ways to punish/stop slow play of any given pair. Solutions which doesn't address this just won't work (7minutes per board is one example, it doesn't matter how much time there is per board, it matters how much time one pair could take).

Personally I don't mind slow play at all. There is a lot to think about in bridge. What drives me mad though is that just because someone is taking a lot of time other people have to play faster to catch up. It shouldn't be the case.

[MrAce]

It never looked slow to me, since i usually kib one hand instead of 4. Actually it looks very fast when u do that especially if the person u are kibbing is a very good player, because they seem to find the right play or bid faster (assuming that i see the same play, not always the case of course)

 

Overall i am against compromises from bridge quality just to make it more spectator friendly game.

 

And i definetely disagree with everything Carl said here.

[Zelandakh]

I propose a change to the rules of football (soccer to the Yanks). Every team needs to play a strict 4-4-2 formation, deviation to be punished by the award of a goal to the opposition. Whenever a player obtains possession of the ball a timer is started; if they keep possession for more than 10 seconds then the opposition is awarded with a goal, and each subsequent 10 seconds thereafter forfeits a further goal. For throw-ins, goal kicks and corners the timer is evry 5 seconds.

 

I feel that these changes will allow football to appeal better to the masses as there will be more scoring, players will be unable to waste time with the ball, and everyone will understand the tactics. We could also discuss similar changes to ice hockey and some other sports and games...

 

The idea of timing players and penalising slow play has merit and is done in many major competitions. It is not always easy to decide if extra time is being taken because, for example, the opponents play some unusual methods and it is necessary to consider the ramifications of those methods, or just because the player is being unreasonably slow. The idea of limiting players to a single system is ridiculous - who should decide what the system is? I have my own system - can I force everyone else to play it? Similarly, awarding faster play with bonuses is terrible - what about a player who has muscle difficulties and simply cannot play at break-neck speedß Do you really mean to penalise such players?

 

In other words, either this post is meant as a troll, or it has not been thought through at all and seems to have little merit as a basis for any proposed solution to the perceived issue.

[qwery_hi]

In other words, either this post is meant as a troll, or it has not been thought through at all and seems to have little merit as a basis for any proposed solution to the perceived issue.

 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.