[uday]

Fun money MB is now available on "production" if you have the beta and don't live in a US state where this sort of stuff is forbidden (apparently it isnt in florida, maryland, and a few other states)

FG and i have decided to start with a 5-point-per-player-per-hand fee, minimum 2 cents, no fee for passouts. We will pass transaction charges onto the players for deposits/withdrawals. There won't be any such charges for people who pay/withdraw w/checks(on US banks). Paypal charges us in the neighbourhood of 3-5% for deposits

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_...ay-fees-outside


If this doesnt make any economic sense for us or for you we'll tweak it later. I like Hrothgar's word, "transparency", and Justin has convinced us that our first thought (10 points per player) was not reasonable.


None of this is set in stone, but it seems like a reasonable place to start.

[Deanrover]

Are you going to allow deposit by neteller? You would be making a very big mistake if you didn't.

[nickf]

Deanrover, on Mar 13 2006, 06:02 PM, said:

Are you going to allow deposit by neteller? You would be making a very big mistake if you didn't.

Unsubstantiated sweeping statements like these are of no value to this discussion.

Please explain why BBO Inc "would be making a very big mistake if it didn't"

nickf
sydney

[Deanrover]

nickf, on Mar 13 2006, 12:20 PM, said:

Deanrover, on Mar 13 2006, 06:02 PM, said:

Are you going to allow deposit by neteller? You would be making a very big mistake if you didn't.

Unsubstantiated sweeping statements like these are of no value to this discussion.

Please explain why BBO Inc "would be making a very big mistake if it didn't"

nickf
sydney

Well I believe that a significant part of BBO's clientelle will also be online poker/casino/backgammon etc. players. By FAR the most popular conduit to transfer funds from one site to another is via neteller. AFAIK, NONE of these sites even accept paypal, and I suspect lots of only gamblers will have neteller accounts and not paypal (I online have a paypal account because I use Ebay). I also believe that neteller has lower fees than Paypal, although I am only 90% sure of this. Yes, people could get by without neteller, but BBO should want to make their service as easy as possible to access and use.

Dean

[uday]

Neglected to mention that the change to the MB (moneybridge) fees will take effect when installed on production (the current production setup still uses 10-points). I will try to get these changes into production sometime tonight. If I'm ambitious I'll get the real deposit-MB$-via-credit-card working today so we can start losing money to each other asap

One reason we can accept credit cards is that we can accept credit cards (they are not legal for use with casinos. This is a primary reason for contortions like neteller, AFAIK. Another is that neteller says it indemnifies the vendor from fraud by the player.)

We'll undoubtedly accept neteller at some point in the future, if MB turns out to be popular.

You don't/won't need a paypal account to use a credit card on BBO. Paypal is simply the processor who validates the credit card for us. Similarly, you've never needed a paypal account to add BB$

[Deanrover]

I am able to deposit to poker sites using my debit card, but maybe that is due to be being from the UK/my type of card etc.

The reason I use neteller is that enables me to transfer from one site to another without incurring exchange costs. If I had to withdraw my $ account to my debit card and then deposit from my £ account with the same card every time it would get highly expensive....neteller removes this significant cost for me. I'm not sure but I think neteller processes my money faster - my bank account takes a few days to process foreign currency transactions. I am also more secure having my money in neteller - I think it is much less likely someone will get hold of my neteller details than my debit card details.

Neteller is also excellent at protecting against fraud - they will freeze your account if they notice a deposit from an unusual IP address. Further, since you say online casinos/poker rooms don't accept credit cards, and this will remain the case for a long time - lots of your users will have significant amounts of money online/in neteller, but not on their credit cards. For these people, the use of neteller would be sweet.

[uday]

Quote

The reason I use neteller is that enables me to transfer from one site to another without incurring exchange costs.

They charge ~3% to the merchant for each incoming deposit. The poker sites (and the one backgammon site) shield the user from this fee (and presumably make it up with higher table fees )

Anyway: I will take a look at these guys once I know it is worth the time and cost to do so.

[Deanrover]

So say I withdraw $100 from one site, and deposit to another - do both sites gets charged ~$3?

[uday]

Yes. I believe they charge on the way in and the way out.

[CarlRitner]

uday, on Mar 13 2006, 10:48 AM, said:

Yes. I believe they charge on the way in and the way out.

PayPal never charges you to transfer money out of your account, either to another person's PayPal account, or to your checking account.

PayPal also does not charge fees whenever money is transferred into your PayPal account from your own checking or savings account.

PayPal does charge a fee for someone else to put money into your PayPal account (i.e. a buyer sends the seller payment for an auction).

Cheers,
Carl

[Deanrover]

In the new version I can't add any 'money' - so the only option is to play at the play money tables. Just checking this was intentional.

I am ready and waiting to test it out now, if anyone is up for it.

[uday]

Yes, intentional. Am poking at "settlement" code now. When that's done, i'll open up the real $ rooms (along with the add-real-$ function). Schedule: "any day now" (tho i recall saying that yest.)

[Deanrover]

You should make the time aspect more transparent. i played many hands without having a clue how much time I was allowed. Then I got a message which seemed to hint that you were allowed x seconds per move (where x = 30,60,90 when speed = slow, medium, fast). I also don't think this is the best way to implement a timing element - it should be x minutes allowed per board imo. Bridge decision's are not monotonous - some of them, typically at the beginning of a board, may require a couple of minutes thought - others are pretty much automatic. It would be nice if you could introduce a funky little 'timer' somewhere on the screen - this would make the situation much more clear (bear in mind that not everyone will understand the little text message that appears).

Another thing - please enable GIB to claim! It uses this facility excellently in its original form, if you could allow it to do this on BBO, not only would it mean happy customers, but also more hands/hr = more $ to you!

e.g. this hand just played

Scoring: IMP

---

West North East South

- Pass 1NT Pass
2♦ Pass 2♥ Pass
3♣ Pass 4♥ Pass
4NT Pass 5♣ Pass
6♥ Pass Pass Pass


C4 CA C5 C8
H6 H4 HJ HA
C6 CK H7 C9
S2 SA S5 S4
H2 H8 HQ H9
CQ S8 S3 C2
CT DT HK C3
D4 D8 DK D6
D5 D7 DA D9
SK S9 SJ S7
D3 DJ HT DQ
H5 S6 D2 C7
H3 SQ ST CJ



Really not necessary to play this one out. (OK OK, I only included this one to show off my lead, you got me.......)


Other feedback - the move to have GIB take a couple of seconds minimum per move has been implemented excellently. It feels much more natural now, and the risk of UI is greatly diminished.

Dean

[mr1303]

There are still a lot of bugs in GIB's bidding. We had this sequence the other day:

1D (1H) X P
3S (4H) 5H P
5S P P X

Partner, the negative doubler and 5H bidder held:

AKxx
AKxxx
x
xxx

5H was booked for -1100

Similarly, the sequence

1NT P 6D P
7NT all pass

1NT opener and opening leader were GIBs, and partner had AKQx of hearts to lead from.

[CarlRitner]

These might be bugs (outright errors) or they might just be undefined sequences (holes in the database). Defaulting GIB to "always make the book bid" can exacerbate this in some cases, since GIB cannot simulate its way out of the hole. In all honesty I'm not sure just what GIB does here so I could be way off the mark.

There can be "subtle appearing" errors when looking through the database but these can manifest themselves in glaring ways, as you point out.

It will be interesting to see if BBO money players are willing to dismiss this sort of mistake by rationalizing how it all evens out in the end.

Cheers,

Carl
ACBL Library Used Bridge Books

[cherdano]

mr1303, on Mar 16 2006, 01:09 PM, said:

There are still a lot of bugs in GIB's bidding. We had this sequence the other day:

1D (1H) X P
3S (4H) 5H P
5S P P X

Partner, the negative doubler and 5H bidder held:

AKxx
AKxxx
x
xxx

5H was booked for -1100

What is wrong with this sequence? 5H is a cue-bid in support of spades for me, and I would make the same bid.

Arend

[Sigi_BC84]

cherdano, on Mar 16 2006, 05:31 PM, said:

What is wrong with this sequence? 5H is a cue-bid in support of spades for me, and I would make the same bid.

You would not penalty double instead?

--Sigi

[cherdano]

Sigi_BC84, on Mar 16 2006, 06:54 PM, said:

cherdano, on Mar 16 2006, 05:31 PM, said:

What is wrong with this sequence? 5H is a cue-bid in support of spades for me, and I would make the same bid.

You would not penalty double instead?

--Sigi

I think it is too likely we have slam. If the bidding so far makes sense, there is a lot of distribution on this deal, so 6S looks more profitable than 4H X (and a grand is possible). It depends on the vulnerability, of course.

Arend

[barmar]

cherdano, on Mar 16 2006, 11:31 AM, said:

mr1303, on Mar 16 2006, 01:09 PM, said:

There are still a lot of bugs in GIB's bidding. We had this sequence the other day:

1D (1H) X P
3S (4H) 5H P
5S P P X

Partner, the negative doubler and 5H bidder held:

AKxx
AKxxx
x
xxx

5H was booked for -1100

What is wrong with this sequence? 5H is a cue-bid in support of spades for me, and I would make the same bid.

Arend

What about the strange 3♠ bid? 2♠ would be invitational, and 4♠ is the way to force to game. Is 3♠ really natural in this sequence? Are you sure the 1♥ bid wasn't actually 2♥?

As for whether to double or explore for slam, it probably depends on the vulnerabilities. Also, I'd be worried about the ♣ suit.

[uday]

This isnt "meckwell in a box" in spite of its occasional aggression. Your opponent is the other human at the table. You will have an extra edge if you are better at managing GIB than he is.

At speed-setting=fast, "book bidding" is turned on for GIB.
At medium and slow, it is not. I'll publish all the settings we use once they're locked in.

Gib claimed, when i re-ran the hand, that

2S
That bid shows: 3+ D; 4+ S; 15-17 points

3S
That bid shows: 3+ D; 11-21 HCP; biddable S; 12-22 points

with book bidding, it always made a slam try, forcing to 5S.

Without book bidding, it signed off at 4S when opener bid 2S and it made a slam try when opener bid 3S.