Speedball tournaments and timing

[inquiry]

I love the ability to play on-line tournaments here. Great work Fred and Uday. I have no complaints about how they are done (although I can hardly wait for team events... maybe knockout events over a couple of days would be so cool, two rounds today, two rounds tomorrow kind of thing... or even a board-a-match kind of thing).

 

I am writing to comment on the idea of how much time is needed per hand for on-line bridge. I played in a speedball tournment hosted by Rain (THANKS!!) with five minutes per board, as well as numerous ones at 7 minutes per board (maybe even 7.5 minutes as the earliest number is 14 minutes remaining, but maybe it jumps down from 15 too fast to see as you move to the table).

 

It seems to me that 7.5 minutes per hand is just about right. I usually finish a round with two minutes or so to spare, but each event there has been a round or two, where another minute would make all the difference (claim fast if claim is there should be a sound rule here). Playing at 5 minutes per hand, however was like just too fast. My bridge, which is hardly error free, suffered from looking at the clock and just playing any card trying to speed things up. Round after round we failed to complete the second board. Add to that, any connection associated problems in a 5 minute/board round and there is no way to finish the two hands.

 

Also there is little time to review opponents methods etc in the fast paced computer driven time clock. I wonder if the BBO staff is going to play with the time per round to see if there is a number of minutes that improves the quality of the bridge without boring the partipants. Clearly for me, 10 minutes for 2 boards is too fast, 14/15 minutes is just about right. Maybe 16 minutes would be better.

 

Just my thoughts.. I am going to play rather it is 10, 12, 14, 16 or 18 minutes a round. It is just too much fun to pass up.

 

Ben

[bglover]

I am a strong proponent of Speed pairs... 5 minutes per board. When we ran a speed tourney last week we have 70 tables... so there was presumably a lot of interest, but it was not a success according to Rain. Lots of time issues...

 

I attribute this more to the fact that we didn't highlight the speed aspect of this tourney as much as we should have. Speed bridge can be a lot of fun but, also, is not for every player. Players who feel pressured by the 5 mins/per board format should not enter it.

 

I am hoping that we run another speed pair but better advertise the SPEED aspect of it. A smaller tourney with pairs equipped to handle the shorter time limit could be run concurrently with a "normal" event, giving people the option to play one or the other.

[inquiry]

Well, I am glad Steve likes speedball play. I know there is a desire for this type of bridge. I use to play in the midnight speedball swiss events a lot (usually after gettting knocked out the main event) when I was younger. Those were fun, of course, you played 5 or 6 hands very fast and one or two very slow (the problem ones). No such luxury in two boards per round.

 

My post had more to deal with the general timing of events... 5 minutes to fast, 7.5 about right. The last few events I have played in was 16 minutes per round. Generally I finished with from 3 to 5 minutes remaining. Once with 10 minutes remaining. So 16 minutes seems a like a reasonable maximum for two boards on line to me. But hopefully with the new "move-when-ready" thing Uday is hoping to impliment, we can have the best of both worlds...take time when needed and not slow the event down. The tourney's should finish faster using this. This doesn't mean that clock can't be used in some events, like speedballs, if there is a desire for them.

 

Ben