SKY CLUB Tournament Series

[Zmey]

Hi

 

SKY CLUB exists 10 months already. We had a lot of tournaments, give a lot of awards, had a lot of problems with incorrect players and not only..

 

But until today, we don't have feedback from you, our players.

 

We'll be happy, if you write here about your problems, ideas, etc. so we can find a solutions together.

 

Let's make SKY CLUB better.

 

Regards

 

Andrey PETRENKO

Zmey on BBO, SKY CLUB

[guggie]

I started a thread on the multiple postponements of the starting time. It drove me crazy - and away from the sky tournaments.

 

About the misconduct of players:

I think the pay has something to do with it: they pay their dollar and feel they have therefore rights. Furthermore if in a free toournament a player is not behaving you can kick him out. In a payed tournament you kick a customer out of your shop. bad for sales

[sceptic]

I like the Sky Club tourneys, I have not played in many but, what I have played in have been a pleasant way to spend some time.

 

Growing Sky Club. maybe ask fred to allow less Pay Tourneys, I think there are far to many and they all aim for the same type of person, masterpoint collectors and the odd hustler after a few bucks in prize money.

 

Everyone, seems to concentrate on giving away prize money (ACBL I think are the only exceptions, they would rather give away points(not sure what good they are as most of the people with lots of them don't really care about them)), I would rather have a hand synopsis after the event, than points or prizes,

 

may be the hands could be pre dealt and an analysis by one of your experts emailed to all participants after the event, you may even be able to charge a premium for this, once a week would be nice, my personal opinion is that this may well be something you can build on.

[inquiry]

I like the Sky Club tourneys, I have not played in many but, what I have played in have been a pleasant way to spend some time.

 

Growing Sky Club. maybe ask fred to allow less Pay Tourneys, I think there are far to many and they all aim for the same type of person, masterpoint collectors and the odd hustler after a few bucks in prize money.

 

Everyone, seems to concentrate on giving away prize money (ACBL I think are the only exceptions, they would rather give away points(not sure what good they are as most of the people with lots of them don't really care about them)), I would rather have a hand synopsis after the event, than points or prizes,

 

may be the hands could be pre dealt and an analysis by one of your experts emailed to all participants after the event, you may even be able to charge a premium for this, once a week would be nice, my personal opinion is that this may well be something you can build on.

I would be VERY LEARY of using predealt hands in tourneys with cash prizes. Also sky club runs too many tourneys a day to do the work required for predealt hands. However, it is very easy to take the hands that were played, run them though deep finessee or Jack, and print out a post event sheet in PDF with all makable contracts for that event and the par result. You can even add the actual results (contracts and IMPs or MP) and post on your website.

 

This requires little input from the skyclub staff (jsut run jack, add the actual results post). People can look and see that 3H was the limit EW and 3C NS and what the par result was and what people did on the hand. No need for a lot of verbage describing what should have happened and what could have happened.

 

Also, note as it is, some of the ghoulash tourneys use the same hands over and over again. And those hands are so unusual, they are actually fairly easy to remember. You can imagine the problems THAT might cause if it was for anything more than fun.

[Zmey]

About the postponements - We try to start on time, w/o any added time, but... most of the players register on 1st tournament in row, no matter of the host, and a lot of players didn't register, if time to start is more than 15 min ... So, now we have different strategy - all the starting times are scheduled, you can find them at

 

www.sky-club.org/tournaments.htm

 

About the misconduct - I'm not agree, that we "kick a customer out of your shop", if we kick them from our tournament - actually, it's better to kick him, but not to loose another 3 players at table, and, after all, if we didn't kick him, in the club will remain only players like him...

 

and, finally, about predealt hand and analisys ... It's another story, we start to create such a tournaments with analisys 5-6 months ago, but ... well, it didn't work well. Maybe will try to do it again in the future, but no more than 2-3 tournaments per week, max 1 per day

[mesoza]

I love your club the place where we can play good bridge.

[guggie]

About the postponements: nothing changed, every tournament again the moment you register 3 more minutes are added. My current policy is to unsubscribe immediately after any postponement.

 

It is an infectious diaease, BBOland and BBOitalia suffer also from postponeritis.

[jillybean]

Another problem (not your group exclusively) are the pay TD’s hassling the free TD’s.

I put up a pairs tournament last night , 10minute start and received annoying messages from a pay TD who was starting an indy in about 17mins. This included a message saying "I work here"

 

I have checked previously with Uday if there are any restrictions to free tournaments and there are none. I do take care not to compete directly, if a pay pairs is coming up I will start an indy or visa versa. Pay tournaments openly compete with other pay tournaments.

 

If the messages continue or get excessive – I have had a pay td come to a tournament I’m running and spam the kibitzers! I will notify abuse.

 

jb

[inquiry]

Couple of issues.. JB is correct, free tourneys can schedule when they want. And only people with YELLOW NAMES should be able to say to others, "I work here". Anyone else making such a claim faces risk of severe sanctions.

 

Postponmentitis. This is an ongoing problem. I continue to register for pay tourneys, and the time slips. I give a single three minute slip without much concern. If it slips by more than three minutes, or if it slips more than once, I continue to cancel my registration. I have signed up and then cancelled for more than FIVE skyclub tourneys. I wish every user adopted this policy. IT would serve functions. It would encourage TD's to list the start time accurately, and it would force users to go ahead and signup and not wait until they can see which tourneys have the most registered based upon slipping start times. And besides, it would make me happy. :-)

[barmar]

All the times I've seen postponements, there have only been about 10-15 players signed up at the time. I actually appreciate them postponing, so that we get a decent number of tables. I usually play in indies, and with only 3 or 4 tables you keep seeing the same people.

[uday]

It is true that "I work here" might be interpreted as "I teach students here" or "I run pay tourneys here" but only a handful of names (some of the yellows) can say it with a straight face.

 

1. If you are hassled by a pay T email uday@ or abuse@ and we'll deal w/it.

 

2. Don't chase free Ts with your pay Ts

 

3. we allow the TDs to delay their Ts by a few minutes. Not much longer than that. Excessive slippage will lead to sanctions against the organization running the pay Ts. I am slightly more liberal about the slippages than Ben seems to be. If the slippage is excessive, though (say, more than 10-15 minutes, tops) the pay org will be sanctioned.

[inquiry]

I am slightly more liberal about the slippages than Ben seems to be. If the slippage is excessive, though (say, more than 10-15 minutes, tops) the pay org will be sanctioned.

Well,,, if I was issuing formal sanctions, I would be more lenient than the three minute, once slippage. But since the only "sanction" I am using is voting with my Dollar... one minor adjustment seems fine. It is very irratating (especially with the you can't join a table) to see a tourney slip time and time again.

 

I don't mind a bit if a tourney is listed as 2 hours away, and it slips to 3 hours. It is the one 3 minutes away, that I say, hey, here is a good one, and then it slips, and slips and slips. I would think the longer away the starting time, the more I am acceptable of slippage (if it is more than an hour away, I don't even know it is listed... lol....

 

ben

[candybar]

Despite your statement a couple weeks ago that you would end it, I saw a Sky Club tourney in the last 2 or 3 days that still said "no opening NT with singleton". I didn't play in it so I don't know who the TD was.

[luke warm]

re: postponements... those are a big pet peeve of mine... i really believe that if every tourney started exactly when they advertised they start, people would get there on time... you'd have to bite the bullet the first week, but i think it'd get better... i really hate it when one starts in 2 minutes, then you look again and it's 5 minutes, then again, then again

[candybar]

re: postponements... those are a big pet peeve of mine... i really believe that if every tourney started exactly when they advertised they start, people would get there on time... you'd have to bite the bullet the first week, but i think it'd get better... i really hate it when one starts in 2 minutes, then you look again and it's 5 minutes, then again, then again

And I'm here killing time by reading the forum because the Sky Club tournament I'm registered for is delaying over and over ... it was originally supposed to start 7 minutes ago, had 3 delays by resetting the time from 1 minute to 3 minutes.

 

Can't tell you who the TD is because the tourney description says

"TD: ".

 

Ah, there, it finally started 8 minutes late.

 

(pause while bidding the first hand)

 

And the TD is (drum roll) ........ Zmey!

[han]

Well Zmey, to quote your title, let's make things better.

 

I have played in Sky club tournaments a couple of times and didn't like it. The tournaments NEVER started when they said they would, and I didn't appreciate the extra rules (never open 1NT with a singleton).

 

If the tournaments really will get better then I will try again.

 

However, you will never be able to compete with free tournaments that start on time, run by non-playing directors who impose no extra rules and make a serious effort to apply the laws of bridge correctly.

[Brandal]

About the postponements: nothing changed, every tournament again the moment you register 3 more minutes are added. My current policy is to unsubscribe immediately after any postponement.

 

It is an infectious diaease, BBOland and BBOitalia suffer also from postponeritis.

Another thing is flooding the Lobbychat with announcements

every 2-3 minutes,seen at least 2 Skyclub TD/hosts do this.

 

First a simple "."

then the announcement "starts in 10 mins,8 mins,6 mins,4 mins

2 mins....4 mins....2 mins....5 mins.....3 mins....5 mins"

 

It is virtually impossible to have lobbychat on when 2-3-4

paytourneys are within 15 minutes to begin.

[Walddk]

It is virtually impossible to have lobbychat on when 2-3-4

paytourneys are within 15 minutes to begin.

Why do you think some of us have lobby chat turned off constantly? I turned mine off 2 years ago, and I haven't missed it since. Pollution is a nice word for what I saw when I decided to tick the box.

 

Roland

[Brandal]

It is virtually impossible to have lobbychat on when 2-3-4

paytourneys are within 15 minutes to begin.

Why do you think some of us have lobby chat turned off constantly? I turned mine off 2 years ago, and I haven't missed it since. Pollution is a nice word for what I saw when I decided to tick the box.

 

Roland

So is mine :)

 

But I like torturing myself once in awhile :lol:

[Zmey]

Hi again

 

Yes, postponents are bad, i know it, and, to be clear and correct with players in SKY CLUB, we decide to put on title of tournaments starting time (in CET). I hope this will resolve the problem.

 

About adding minutes... I don't like to do it, but on previous try, when we start positioning tournaments right on time, we lost 20% of players .... I don't know why, but don't blame us. It looks like players wait for last few minutes to register. Anyway, we'll try to resolve this issue too, positioning tournaments to max 7-8 min from starting time (remember, it's writen on tournament title, or in tournament description).

 

About rule for NT opening with single - we already decide it, pls, i need the name of TD, and will fix this. I can't stay 24h per day in tournaments, to see each tournament "advice" of each TD. That's why we create this issue. We NEED YOUR HELP for that.

 

And finally, THANKS AGAIN for your support. I'm really happy, when someone write something about SKY CLUB - good or bad. This mean, that you care about SKY. We can fix each problem, when we know that there's a problem

 

Regards

 

Zmey

[rona_]

Zmey,

 

I think it would be a good idea for you write the start time on the tournament description, as you mentioned in one of your posts. I registered this evening for the pairs tournament, got upset because the TD kept adding time and withdrew. Later I went and checked out your website and saw that your tournament actually started exactly on time. 19.45 Paris time. When I signed up, the tournament list showed it as starting in 24+ minutes, but when it went down to 5 minutes time was being added. Now, I realise you have to add time so that you can start at 19.45 as advertised, but surely there must be a better way to do this? I suspect most people don't check the website and get upset when they think you are delaying. What are we supposed to understand from 24+. It could be 24+24. It's so simple to just write it there. Paris time, NY time, whatever time but..make it easy for people to figure out what is going on.;)

 

Rona

[candybar]

I also tried to play a Sky Club tourney yesterday, but I cancelled the first time you added time, and I will do so every time.

 

The only thing I look at (and I suspect the same for most people) is "xx+ minutes to start". If it says "20+ minutes to start" when I register, I plan for that, and if you change it, you lose me, period.