Remarks concerning tourneys

[Cosey]

Hi all,

 

I first want to thanks all "Yellows" for their great job in organizing tourneys, and all BBO users who do the same. The program allow us to create them in a very user-friendly way and Fred & Uday must be thx for that.

 

But...as more and more people are able to create tourneys, it appears that more and more tourneys are created. Which is good AND bad as the same time.

 

I'm not going to explain why it's good, but some things might be improved.

 

1- the fact that lots of tourneys exist lower the interest of winning or loosing since it lost an "exceptionnal" aspect . The more tourneys, the more common it becomes and so there is less interest in winning..."just a game among others" a bit like a normal game in main club. Or we are players....we need glory !! A general ranking, taking into account results of every tourney -or maybe only official ones driven by "yellows"- could be a nice way to keep some interest into them. Each player individually would receive a score. Like if there are 50 pairs, the first 25 will receive points. 50 for both winners and 1 for both 25th....no points for the rest of them. (or neg pts ?) The more pairs the more important the tourney will be...

 

2- Since tourneys are becoming more and more common, it appears that some consider them as just another option of BBO and play in tourneys as they play in main bridge club. Which mean that they feel free to leave anytime.....and that's why so many sub are needed in every tourney.

 

It slows down tourneys, annoys directors, perturbs the results, etc...

 

It would be nice to find a way to refrain players from leaving.

 

For instance if it would be possible to keep trace of players' departure you might be able to create a "tourney-credit". Each player will have 3 credits to start, and each time one leave before end, he looses 1 credit, and each time he finishes one, he wins one credit. To enter a tourney one need a positive number of credits.... Maybe some will enter tourney more carefully.

 

We all know that it's possible to have a connection problem or an emergency, but we need to find a way to limit them.

 

I hope it's clear & helpfull ....just my 2 cents

Cosey

[hrothgar]

I think that Cosey has raised a cogent point.

 

It hadn't occured to me before, but there probably is a relationship between the frequency of tournaments and how seriously individuals take them.

 

I like the token strategy that he suggests:

 

I would probably suggest some slight modifications.

 

For example, I would prefer to measure "completing a tournament" as starting it and then finishing it. No sense in punishing someone if they accidently reboot the PC in the middle of the game.

 

I also think that some kind of mechanism that measured what percentage of tournaments had been completed might be more useful than an absolute count.

 

Finally, tournament organizers should have the option to configure a threshold value.

 

As I have mentioned in the past, it might be interesting to see different "clubs' emerge. For example, we might have some tournaments organized using ACBL standards, while others would be run based on EBU regulations. [i'd be interested to see which would grow and flourish]