District 20 GNTs online 5/12/12

[JLOGIC]

Traditionally this has not been a time limit event in our district at the qualifying level, even though it is at the national level. I am going to suggest adding time limits and monitoring responsibilities to the COCs for next year.

 

I would probably refuse to enter an untimed bridge event, it's bad enough already when it's timed. In an untimed event it would be incentivized to think for 30 minutes if you are playing a hand and still have not figured out the best line. Some hands are like that, you can think for a long long time about the right line but in the real world you usually have to make a play at some point since it's timed. Untimed, just go for it though! And that is not even counting nefarious slow play which would be basically impossible to police with no time limit.

 

Finally, I think an untimed bridge event is a very different game than a timed one. Since you are trying to qualify for the national level of a timed bridge event, perhaps you should keep it timed so that you get the best players who can play within the time limit.

[Siegmund]

Bridge is still a timed event AFAIK

 

No.

 

Serious bridge never was a timed event.

 

That is, it has never explicitly been the intention that a typical player feel any time pressure as a feature of the game. The time limits are set based on how long it takes ~90% of the players to play an event, not the other way round. There is an event schedule and a clock, yes, for the convenience of the players to have an idea when the game will end, and as a means to deal with someone who deliberately filibusters to avoid getting a bad score / playing against someone he doesn't likes / whatever. If a substantial minority of the players are feeling rushed, the clock has been set wrong. (It is a curious bit of psychology that people play faster when the clock is present even if there is absolutely no consequence for playing on past the time it shows.)

 

The fact that the big national team events routinely allow in the vicinity of 9 minutes a board rather than the standard 7 or 7 1/2 is, all by itself, evidence that the clock is not intended to apply time pressure.

 

There are speedballs, where using time efficiently, and blasting to probably-good contracts rather than conducting slow probing auctions (and stalling to get an average rather than a zero), are special skills; and now on BBO there are exotic games where speed is the whole point and you pass out partscore deals because they aren't worth the time to play ... those are all something new and different from garden variety bridge. In the early computer bridge championships a set amount of thinking time was specified, as a special condition on measuring the quality of the software, again for a special extra reason beyond what normal bridge is.

 

End of rant. I have always hated the phrase "bridge is a timed event' and have never seen any basis in law or in tradition for that claim.

 

I agree that the pace described is awfully slow -- but I would not be too worried that once they are used to screens etc they could not fit 60 boards into 8 or 9 hours. (The D18 GNT, entirely online, was also unbelievably slow, though not quite as slow as D20s, to the tune of 4 hours for 24 or 25 boards in the first session, because of so many people new to the software and so many phone calls to coordinate between sites. It did make it hard to keep focus.)

[CSGibson]

I have always hated the phrase "bridge is a timed event' and have never seen any basis in law or in tradition for that claim.

 

 

Every nationals I have been to (and I have only been going to nationals for the past 4-5 years) has had red clocks up in the corners of the room counting down the time to play, and directors willing to enforce slow play penalties (well, unless you are a player they recognize...).

[Siegmund]

Most the regionals I've played have clocks in the corner, too. But they allot between 14 and 16 minutes for a 2-board round, between 21 and 23 minutes for a 3-board round, anywhere from 40 to 50 minutes (to start the last board) for a Swiss match - more or less according to what causes equal numbers of "its too fast" and "its too slow" complaints.

 

The directors enforcing slow play penalties I have only seen once in my life: when I overslept, showed up half an hour late for a morning KO, and got 4 boards taken away and fined 12 imps, despite the fact we played more than fast enough to finish our boards had they been given to us. It was quite possibly the only time I had a proper lunch break between a morning KO and a 1:00 game. I suppose it is a good sign, if there actually are some of these around these days. I still feel their presence is more a reflection of a desire of the majority of the players to play faster, vs. any attempt to impose an outside time constraint on them.

[mike777]

Most the regionals I've played have clocks in the corner, too. But they allot between 14 and 16 minutes for a 2-board round, between 21 and 23 minutes for a 3-board round, anywhere from 40 to 50 minutes (to start the last board) for a Swiss match - more or less according to what causes equal numbers of "its too fast" and "its too slow" complaints.

 

The directors enforcing slow play penalties I have only seen once in my life: when I overslept, showed up half an hour late for a morning KO, and got 4 boards taken away and fined 12 imps, despite the fact we played more than fast enough to finish our boards had they been given to us. It was quite possibly the only time I had a proper lunch break between a morning KO and a 1:00 game. I suppose it is a good sign, if there actually are some of these around these days. I still feel their presence is more a reflection of a desire of the majority of the players to play faster, vs. any attempt to impose an outside time constraint on them.

 

clearly you miss the =entire pt........even as you say it.....you overslept and showed up late.

 

 

1) you never say sorry

2) you never say we should lose no matter what

 

 

You clearly have a huge sense of entitlement

[JLOGIC]

So, Siegmund what you are saying is that in all of your experience bridge games have time limits? I do not think it has to be a speedball, 9 mins/bd is fine, but if you play too slowly you get slow play penalties and are punished. I have never seen a high level brige tournament without multiple slow play penalties, fwiw. Yes, in low level events the directors are less likely to enforce the time rules since slow play is less of a problem there even though they get less time per board.

 

This example is exactly why a time limit is needed, because with no time limits this event took 11 hours to play 60 boards, that is just ridiculous. I'm sure if they were given 9 minutes a board they would have played faster, but somehow their bridge event was not timed unlike every other bridge event which is timed.

 

Edit: And FWIW I am not faulting the forumers involved, if there was no time limit then of course you were entitled to take your time. I would definitely criticize whoever came up with there being no time limit.

[MickyB]

FWIW, a lot of matches are played privately in the UK, and these are all without time restrictions. This includes all matches before the semi-finals of our biggest event. You get the occasional issue with a known slow player but I've never heard anyone suggest the problem was serious enough to do something about it. Then again, there usually isn't a TD present, so it is unclear what could actually be done.

[WellSpyder]

FWIW, a lot of matches are played privately in the UK, and these are all without time restrictions. This includes all matches before the semi-finals of our biggest event. You get the occasional issue with a known slow player but I've never heard anyone suggest the problem was serious enough to do something about it. Then again, there usually isn't a TD present, so it is unclear what could actually be done.

I did once approach the EBU for advice on just this issue, knowing I was due to play against two particularly slow pairs. Their response was that it is perfectly possible to get an offsite TD to help just as with any other ruling that is required. Probably they would then set a time limit for the next set of boards, with potential fines for exceeding the limit, just as in an event with TDs on site. Of course this still won't get you anywhere if there is a lack of agreement about who is responsible for the slow speed of play, but this doesn't have to be the case - some slow players are perfectly well aware that they are slow and will sometimes accept that they have been responsible for a time limit being exceeded.

[blackshoe]

Presumably the "time limit" referenced in the phrase "bridge is a timed event" refers to an absolute limit on the amount of time available for a round (pairs or individual) or match (teams). That being the case, can anyone explain the discrepancy between this limit and the law, which says "Law 8B1: in general, a round ends when the director gives the signal for the start of the following round, but if any table has not completed play by that time, the round continues for that table until there has been a progression of players"? If this "timed event" business were actually true the way its advocates seem to want it to be, it seems to me the law would say "The round ends when the director gives the signal for the start of the following round". Period. No exceptions.

 

Players should, of course, endeavor to play a round within the allotted time, and to catch up if they've fallen behind, whatever the reason. The TD does have the power to deal with excessive slow play in order to ensure the orderly progress of the game. Neither of those things, however, changes the law I quoted above.

[barmar]

I think the point of that law is to indicate that a hand in progress when the round is called is allowed to be completed, it may not be cancelled (BBO timed tourneys actually violate this).

[blackshoe]

I think the point of that law is to indicate that a hand in progress when the round is called is allowed to be completed, it may not be cancelled (BBO timed tourneys actually violate this).

Precisely. Yet I've heard people suggest that when the clock signals the end of the round, that's it, people who are supposed to move have to move. When I ask what they're going to do about hands in progress, I either get a blank look or a "cancel them".

 

The problem we have around here is a bit different. First, directors are continually shaving the allotted time per board, in order to (theoretically, anyway) get in more boards per session. Second, they let the clock call the rounds, and don't generally pay much attention to what people are actually doing — which results in people finishing sometimes as much as five minutes early, and then going and "hovering" near their next table if the folks there aren't done yet. They also immediately ask for a board to pass to the table they just left, interrupting the concentration of those still trying to play. I have seen games where half the field is nearly a full round ahead of the other half. We also have at least one director who starts exhorting people to move as soon as the clock says "three minutes to go, don't start any new boards". This ain't the way I learned to run a game. :(

[barmar]

The formula we generally use is round time = 6 min/board + 3 min. The way I understand this is that most boards should be completed in about 6 minutes, and the 3 minutes is allotted for the occasional difficult hand. By this reasoning, most tables should be finished by the time the 3-minute warning goes off.