Individual Tournaments

[McBruce]

The individual tournament box is there but not yet implemented. I hope this will be a priority. Consider the advantages that individual tournaments offer:

 

1. All pairs must play the same system, so we can have 'BB-Basic' Indys, 'BB-Advanced' Indys, 'sayc' Indys, '2/1' Indys, even 'training' Indys for players learning systems followed by a chat room discussion of the boards in the tourney and what the best auctions might be.

2. No need for partnership desk. None. You sign up, you're in. No need to set a system, the system is set. (The director should be able to post one convention card for everyone.)

3. No alerts, no explanations needed since all play the same system. If you don't play the advertised system you will most likely lead your partner into trouble. Forget what a bid means? Look at your convention card! Oh, the opponents are sticklers and claim this is against the rules? Fine. Look at THEIR card. They're playing the same thing!

4. There is a tendency for players in indy games to be more civil, because you need your ever-changing partners to play well to do well and grumpiness does not accomplish this!

5. For most indys I have played in real life, the opportunity to impress the partners who are good players outweighs the frustration of suffering opposite the very bad.

6. Cheating, the bane of on-line bridge, is incredibly difficult when you don't know who your partner will be until you sit down. In fact, when I played on OKBridge I once suggested that the best way to get meaningful ratings would be to hold individual tourneys with barometer scoring where the system was set up so players had no idea who their partner or opponents were! Sure, this takes away all the fun of creating a detailed system with your favorite partner, but many of us like to just PLAY, and are at a disadvantage against these well-practiced pairs.

 

The programming snag, I imagine, is a movement for individual games. One way is the rainbow movement which I think works for prime numbers of tables of at least 5 (5, 7, 11, 13, or 17: which are games for 20, 28, 44, 52 or 68 entrants). Players play three board rounds, and after each board they rotate around North: East becomes South, South becomes West, West becomes East. (If playing two boards a round, South and East switch chairs for the second.) After the three boards are done they move as follows: North stays, South players move to the next higher table, East players skip one table higher, West players skip one table lower. Since players will never play against any of the players who start at the same compass position they do, the final rankings can be in one list for each direction and an overall list.

 

Since there is this inordinate concern here about 'fair movements,' as though WHO you play or compare against is as important as HOW WELL you play (it's not, HOW WELL you play is like 12 times more important), the movement could be rotated as follows:

--play two or three boards as above, then:

--North goes to West at the same table

--West goes two tables down and becomes South

--South goes one table up and becomes East

--East goes two tables up and becomes North

 

As for running such a tournament, director calls I imagine would likely be based on "he used a non-system bid and he fielded it!" Of course, with alerts and explanations completely unnecessary there would be less director calls. Subs would be needed, probably more than usual for the number of tables, since each table has four, not two, entrants.

 

As I've stated elsewhere, searching for the perfect pairs movement is like repainting a Formula One car: it will still go fast, and any difference in speed is far more likely due to the skills of the driver than the paint. Indy tourneys offer a whole bunch of advantages: let's get them moving!

 

--McBruce

[uday]

We will implement tourneys. They will not be fully functional until everyone receives a new copy of BBO, so that wont be for at least a couple of weeks

 

a) The long beach ACBL national starts very soon

:( We usually like to make sure there is significant new functionality in each release we force-download to all customers.

 

Still, yes, we are going to implement them

 

What is wrong, though, with a movement like our current pairs movements?

 

Play a round (lets say we rotate opps after each board if there is more than one round).

 

After the round, randomly reassign players and tables?

[McBruce]

If random is easier, go for it! I think the rainbow movements ensure that two players never meet at the same table more than once though. But I think that a sizable portion of players on BBO will enjoy individuals, even if the movement at first is not quite perfect!

 

Cheers,

 

-McBruce