The shrinking number of free tourneys

[kfgauss]

In my own case, if I ran a dime tourney, I think I'd be tempted to give a prize to the low guys for sticking in rather than leaving and forcing me to sub them.

This seems to me to be a bad idea. I fear it will encourage silly results in the last round by pairs that are "in contention" for the low prize.

 

An alternative: try charging double and then giving everyone half back if they finish the tourney. Maybe this is bad business as it'll look like your tournament charges twice as much (I understand you're not necessarily in it for the business, but this could be a suggestion to other TD's too), but one hopes that people will understand what's going on and that this won't harm business too much and will lead to more people finishing. I don't know how big an issue this is, though, as I don't really play tournaments very often.

 

Andy

 

[edited for typo]

[hrothgar]

An alternative: try charging double and then giving everyone half back if they finish the tourney. Maybe this is bad business as it'll look like your tournament charges twice as much (I understand you're not necessarily in it for the business, but this could be a suggestion to other TD's too), but one hopes that people will understand what's going on and that this won't harm business too much and will lead to more people finishing.

I really like this idea...

I REALLY like this idea...

 

I'd almost go so far as to say that it should be promoted as the default pricing method for fee based tournements.

 

You'd want to add in an exception such that players who get booted by the TD don't lose their deposit. (Providing TD's with a financial incentive to boot players would probably be a bad thing).

 

In theory, the best of all worlds would be a mechanism by which players who get booted forfit their money to BBO but NOT to the TD.

 

1. Players have an incentive to finish tournaments

2. TDs have a credible threat that they can use against players

3. BBO has an incentive to add the new code

 

Players who behave have the same expected price.

Its a win/win/win scenario...

[jillybean]

This may be a silly question but thats never stopped me before.....

 

Are deserters a real problem in pay tournaments?

 

jb

[rigour6]

My understanding from uday is no. In fact, limiting deserters was one of the main reasons why I wished to consider the "dime a dozen" series. Although you could argue who'd stay for a dime, a person could also say who'd stay for a dollar? But people do. This is a principle of life, which is that people follow thier money, however little it is. I learned this first hand in community organizations. If you want to have a committed and active membership base, you MUST charge a membership fee - even if it's only $1 (ideally I have found the number is about $10). That weeds out the people who sign up just to get rid of you from those who are actually interested to and committed to your cause. People will sign cards, take your literature etc etc. but when you get their money then you know you have a commitment.

[uday]

There is a slightly smaller ratio of deserters. At a quick glance, one club has half the rate of the free tourney disconnection rate while others have just about the same rate.

[rigour6]

It's a year later. Has the "problem" got better or worse?

 

In the next hour:

 

2 Moneybridge Tourneys

7 Pay Tourneys

4 Country Restricted Tourneys

 

1 Open (4 boards)

[Rain]

I don't think the points you raise are accurate.

 

1) Country restricted tourneys may still be free (and in this context are probably free). Ditto any other restrictions by age, club, etc.

 

2) http://web04.bridgebase.com/tourneyhistory...=All%20Tourneys

This is a far better indicator of tourney numbers, since it presents a more comprehensive picture than your snapshot.

 

3) If you're talking about completely open tourneys--what about enemy restriction? What if the creator has 10 enemies? What if the creator has 100 enemies? So maybe completely open tourneys should not be enemy restricted.

 

In which case you're asking for someone/group of people to run tourneys gratis, whether or not they can understand a language, whether or not they are willing to direct for people they dislike and marked enemies.

 

4) I think the only trend that is disturbing is not raised, which is the increase of playing TD tourneys (and subsequently, less of normal tourneys with normal TDs) I cannot believe a playing TD would be a good director. But I have no stat to back this up.

[inquiry]

Free tournament directors tend to list their events at the last minute (or with say, 15 minute notice). So if you watch, you will see new free ones pop up, but the pay ones list themselves days in advance. There is a variety of reasons for this, but just because there is only 5 free tourneys in the next "hour" doesn't mean that 7 or 8 will not be run.

 

BTW, if anyone is interested, homebase returns this week (close to the weekend I believe), but of course, it is not free either.

[jillybean]

4) I think the only trend that is disturbing is not raised, which is the increase of playing TD tourneys (and subsequently, less of normal tourneys with normal TDs) I cannot believe a playing TD would be a good director. But I have no stat to back this up.

It seems that the majority of players do not mind having playing TD's.

Tournaments are listed as playing TD, 1trick penalty for failure to alert,

no psyches, no adjustments etc and all have a good following.

 

The yellows may not like playing TD's but the rest of BBO dont seem to mind.

 

Its just a game after all :D

 

jb

[rigour6]

I rarely play in tourneys I TD (largely because despite my CLEAR postings I spend the whole tourney explaining to people I can't come to the table) but when I do it's because I want to play and there was no alternative. If people would prefer there be NO free tourneys at that time, well, they can simply ignore my tourney and they will get their wish. As it stands, I am not going to feel too badly if once every ten tourneys I TD I actually play in it.

 

I agree that looking ahead may be an inaccurate way of measuring the number of free tourneys. That point is well taken, and tends to weaken my point, but perhaps not refute it entirely.

 

 

 

Now I don't blame anyone for excluding enemies, I too maintain a ban list, and that just good policy for any TD. Those people have EARNED their exclusion from the tourney. I ban them as a service to the good players. And by good I don't mean skilled I mean polite and diligent. I also understand Lnaguage restrictions, they again have a functional purpose. But what is a Country restriction all about? Isn't that just a way of saying "No Turks allowed" or "Poles need not apply"? Is it just me who finds that a little bit off-putting?

 

Let's say for example I was a new BBO member online today and went to the Tournament section, what would I conclude?

Just doing another random check right now:

 

Moneybridge: 2

Pays: 7

Restricted: 2

Open: 0

 

I think the reasonable person would look at this and say: the Tournament Area is NOT a place for people unless they are in a club or willing to pay.

 

I consider that unfortunate. It makes the site less cosmopolitan, less welcoming.

 

I sense that I have become a big of a wag on this so I am going to drop the subject. But I do want the spirit of the site to preserve the following aspects:

Friendly

Free

International

 

Right now, that does NOT describe the way our Tournaments Section looks.

I don't know the answer, so I shall say no more until I can think of one.

 

No criticism of ANYONE is intended by this post or thread.

[Al_U_Card]

Let's not kill the goose.....this is the primo site (and getting to be the only one apparently) and I have no problem finding a game with good people and decent partners anytime free or pay. The main room is available when tourneys are not (and often preferable with being able to put your own criteria on the restrictions at your table....) and I will NEVER complain about this place....(and I am a chronic complainer, trust me :( )

[Booze]

BBO has recently lost 3 TD machines as I know,

 

Udcadenny, sh?? , foxwhiz

 

may affect numbers of free tourneys a lot I think

 

sadly its seems like quality of tourneys are worse then ever, as a sub I got blacklisted

in one last week, when I notified a bidding to TD where opps passed at 5 level in an unbid suit with 4-4

 

Bo :P

[jikl]

After seeing the re-emergence of this thread yesterday, I decided against my better judgment to run a clocked swiss pairs. 5 2 board rounds.

 

In this time I made about 30 subs, blacklisted 9 people. This is why TDs choose to not run pairs. In an Indy you have far less dropouts.

 

And yes, whenever I run something, it is starting in 10 minutes or so. Therefore it will only be seen by those that happen to go to the tournament section during those 10 minutes. I agree with Ben that there are many free Tourneys per hour, but none are pre-scheduled. This probably does put off new players to the Tourney area when all they see are restricted or pay events but little can be done about it as all free Tourney TDs are volunteering their time, and it is up to them how to schedule their events.

 

Sean

[fred]

BBO has recently lost 3 TD machines as I know,

 

Udcadenny, sh?? , foxwhiz

 

may affect numbers of free tourneys a lot I think

 

sadly its seems like quality of tourneys are worse then ever, as a sub I got blacklisted

in one last week, when I notified a bidding to TD where opps passed at 5 level in an unbid suit with 4-4

 

Bo :P

I don't think it is fair to say we "lost" these TDs. Their TDs rights were taken away because they broke our rules.

 

Of course we would like it if there were lots of free tourneys going on all the time, but we depend on volunteers for this. It would obviously not be economical to pay people to run free tournaments for us. Maybe if we make a lot of money one day we will be willing to do this, but I doubt that will happen any time soon.

 

As far as the quality of free TDs go, I don't think anyone should be surprised that sometimes you get what you pay for.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Free]

Imo organizing more free money bridge tourneys would be a great improvement on short term. At the moment, you have about 5 seconds to register or it's full, and you can wait for another hour. Either allow more players, or organize more of these tourneys. As far as I know there's no need for a TD in those, and people can play for free.

 

Or am I missing something?

[fred]

Imo organizing more free money bridge tourneys would be a great improvement on short term.  At the moment, you have about 5 seconds to register or it's full, and you can wait for another hour.  Either allow more players, or organize more of these tourneys.  As far as I know there's no need for a TD in those, and people can play for free.

 

Or am I missing something?

Yes you are missing something.

 

The GIBs that supply your partner and opponents in these tournaments run on our servers. Only so many GIBs can run on each server and each additional server we add results in hundreds of extra dollars of costs for us each month.

 

In prinicple it would be possible to run these GIBs on the computers of the people playing in these tournaments but:

 

1) It would then be possible for people to cheat and one of the beauties of these tournaments is that cheating is impossible.

2) People with faster computers would have an advantage.

 

Besides that, we do not want to destroy the market for GIB CD-ROMs and GIB rentals on BBO. Not only do we make money from this, but our friend Matt Ginsberg, the author of GIB, has been very good to us - I would hate to see his income from GIB dry up as a result of us making it possible for anyone to use his program for free.

 

As you may have noticed we now have tournaments just like MBTs that offer BBO masterpoints instead of real $ prizes. The entry fee for these tournaments is only 25 cents. Not free, of course, but I suspect that anyone who can afford a computer can afford to play in a few of these tournaments each day.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[rigour6]

After seeing the re-emergence of this thread yesterday, I decided against my better judgment to run a clocked swiss pairs. 5 2 board rounds.

 

In this time I made about 30 subs, blacklisted 9 people. This is why TDs choose to not run pairs. In an Indy you have far less dropouts.

Yes, this is very true in my observation. I very regularly get messages along the lines of "please sub me (or my p). They are an idiot/ beginner." Which I differentiate from "they are rude".

 

It is also why unfortunately:

 

a) I can't run very many cross-IMP tourneys. Although I actually think in some ways this is a better form of scoring, the disconnects sky-rocket when you have a swingy hand and people know they are on the wrong side of it.

 

b ) I always turn off the barometer, which I really hate to do because that is a FANTASTIC feature, and a real nice bonus online play has over ftf.

[jillybean]

Hmm, I have quite a different experience. I run comparatively small (max 30-40table) cross imp tournaments and have only a small number of deserters. Even fewer now that there is a language restriction, it is not uncommon now to need no subs.

 

In an individual I have significantly more players who exit, a large number of these occur after a bad result. Accidental disconnects where the player does not reconnect imho are rare.

 

If a player asks to leave I will always sub them, life goes on and interruptions happen. I can’t quite decide if the players who leave after bad result should be also free to play in my next tournament, or if I should use up time, energy and frustration trying to prevent them.

 

jb

[Mr. Dodgy]

2) http://web04.bridgebase.com/tourneyhistory...=All%20Tourneys

This is a far better indicator of tourney numbers, since it presents a more comprehensive picture than your snapshot.

FWIW, which isn't much:

 

Taking data from the last 2 days, you will see on average, each hour:

 

4 MBTs

2 RRs

1 pay Pairs

3.5 pay Individuals

2 free Individuals

4 free Pairs

[rigour6]

Unfortunately, when you look in retrospect I don't think you can distinguish the "open" frees from the "closed" frees (private club, country restricted, etc).