[eyhung]

On fees:

I think comparing your fee structure to live bridge clubs and online poker/backgammon is misleading.

First: comparing to live bridge clubs. Live bridge clubs incur more scalable bridge costs than online bridge clubs. If BBO has 10 money bridge vs. 100 money bridge players, it probably doesn't make much of a difference to BBO's expenses, but a live bridge club has to provide more real estate, more cards, pay to replace cards 10x as frequently, have many more people there to adjudicate, etc. Also, live bridge clubs deal more slowly than online bridge clubs. You will note that online poker clubs charge significantly less than live poker, but they make more money due to higher volume and more scalable costs.

Second, comparing to poker/backgammon. Both poker and backgammon have a higher skill advantage. Given the choice between making money purely by skill of play at poker/backgammon or bridge, most people choose one of the former because it's more consistent. (I'm not talking about being paid to play, I'm talking about actually winning money from the cards.) It would be better to compare bridge table fees to poker tables where one expects to earn the same rate. I do not expect a penny/point player to earn nearly as much per hour as a player at the $1/$2 limit poker tables online. (You can get statistics from pokertracker databases to see how much money people tend to make per hour at poker tables, and see the equivalent rake and earn rate--rake ranges from 4.5% at nolimit tables to 3% at low limit tables to 1-2% at high limit tables; earn rate is around 2-3 big bets ($4-$6 here) per 100 hands.)

Also, the poker fees are dampened by the fact that you only pay the rake for pots you win. Most of winning poker involves avoiding a majority of hands, and thus avoiding the rake on most hands. When poker tables are played headsup (2 players only), players pay the rake much more frequently, and you will see that many cardrooms lower the rakes proportionally to make the game viable for its players.

That being said, it is in general better to lower rakes than to raise them. So I understand why you are being conservative in your estimate. But ultimately I think you want to promote volume -- get people to put money into BBO, and then play the money game. Poker (and to a lesser extent, bg) has a large user base of money players. There is much less of a user base for money bridge right now. Having a rake that's too high will impact building this user base. I think the best business strategy here is to build the market by offering low rakes and then, if necessary, use your monopoly on the money bridge scene to raise them. People will grumble but if they're hooked, they'll keep playing.

Right now you're supporting 2000-3000 play bridge players for free. Surely you can support another 100-200 money bridge players for a small cost to get the user base up and going.

Eugene

[pdmunro]

Gerben42, on Mar 5 2006, 09:49 AM, said:

I think the human should be declarer in all the boards. This is also to increase the edge of the stronger human player.

I not sure if I want to be declarer whenever our side wins the contract: I seem to need the mental break I get from being dummy. I played 9 hands, then 8 hands, on money-BBO. Both times against an obviously talented opponent. I did OK, but it was certainly quicker than the usual BBO. At the end, I felt punch-drunk.

This is just a first impression. It can change.

[Chamaco]

uday, on Mar 4 2006, 05:05 AM, said:

The way we expect to handle cases of missing/disconnected players:
.................

In the chess server, this issue is dealt in a similar way.

There, people do not play for money but .. for rating (yes, people are nuts LOL).
And they care a lot for it.

So, there are occasionally people who shall logoff in a clearly lost position, to avoid the completion of the game and the loss of rating points.

The procedure to handle this is the following:

1. the game is stored, recorded in the list of "adjourned" games.

2. at any times the 2 players are on, they can agree to resume the game.

3. at any times 2 players with a pending game are logged at the same time, they are both notified that there is online XXX player with an unfinished game

4. any given player can have AT MOST 10 unfinished games; when this number is exceeded, he cannot play other games on the server

5. if we are having an adjourned game for a long time against another player, and we have tried unsuccessfully to contact him to complete, it is possible to contact a service similar to ABUSE. This service is called ADJUDICATE, and can basically assess the result of a game when there are reasonable elements (e.g. the position is clearly lost for the disconnector AND/OR one player has tried hard to complete the game for MONTHS, but the other player has always avoided the solicitations)



The above are just ideas, not sure how much of this can be applied in a money game, and not sure how much ches and bridge can be different from these viewpoints.

But they have worked quite well.

For more info on these chess servers and how they handle such issues, lookout for the FICS server and ICC server (there is another server called Playchess):

FICS
http://www.freechess.org/
http://www.freechess...judication.html

ICC
http://www.chessclub.com/
http://www.chessclub...r/introadj.html

[fred]

Quote

I think comparing your fee structure to live bridge clubs and online poker/backgammon is misleading.

We certainly are not trying to mislead anyone and these comparisons are close to all that we have to go on. Comparing online money bridge to live car washes or the online porn business, for example, would be worse.

I don't think a typical money bridge player would care about (or even think about) that online bridge clubs have lower scalable costs than live bridge clubs. People who play to make money only care about making money and that the rake is sufficiently small to make this possible for them. People who are there primarily for entertainment only care that they are receiving reasonable entertainment value for their money.

Quote

Both poker and backgammon have a higher skill advantage.

And you know this how?

Even if you could demonstrate that this was true, I don't buy your argument that since bridge has a lower skill advantage, it should also have a lower rake.

In any case, I agree that achieving a high-volume low-rake situation would be best for us from a business point of view. I also agree that increasing fees should be avoided (unless it proves to be necessary of course). It very much goes against the grain for us to take advantage of a hypothetical future monopoly position in order to rip off our customers.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

fred, on Mar 6 2006, 10:08 AM, said:

Quote

Both poker and backgammon have a higher skill advantage.

And you know this how?

I don't know about backgammon, but I think I see where he's coming from regarding poker.

In bridge, if the opponent gets dealt a hand that's easy to bid to a cold game or slam, you're going to lose a significant amount of money on that hand. In poker, if you get dealt a worthless hand you just fold and the most you lose is the ante or blind. It seems like there may be more occasions in bridge where the card gods decide who's going to win a board than the players (this is why duplicate is considered a better test of skill).

Of course, in the long run these factors should even out -- you should get dealt the slam hands as often as opponents. But unless you play very frequently, it can take a while to see this.

[ng:)]

"It seems like there may be more occasions in bridge where the card gods decide who's going to win a board than the players (this is why duplicate is considered a better test of skill)"

This problem could be solve by Russian Scoring. It is not perfect, but better than Total Points. Works fine, social bridge players love it in Hungary.

Gabor

[eyhung]

Quote

We certainly are not trying to mislead anyone and these comparisons are close to all that we have to go on. Comparing online money bridge to live car washes or the online porn business, for example, would be worse.

I wasn't trying to imply that you were consciously, maliciously comparing house-favorable structures to bridge -- just that while it seems like a fair comparison at the surface, it's not. And I speak as a player who regularly plays online poker and sometime plays online backgammon -- one who has shown willingness to wager one's money on the Internet, a trait that is rarer than one might think. (For example, I've had great difficulty persuading many people to play online poker, even though poker has a high attraction factor.)

Quote

People who play to make money only care about making money and that the rake is sufficiently small to make this possible for them. People who are there primarily for entertainment only care that they are receiving reasonable entertainment value for their money.

Yes, for the second type of player, the rake is not as important, but without a large enough user base, they don't get as much entertainment. And my argument is that the rake as it currently stands does not provide the first group enough of an edge to play, which impacts the second group. The bridge vs. poker skill advantage is well documented (ask Bobby Baldwin) or the bridge vs. backgammon skill advantage (ask Kit Woolsey). The reasons are what barmar wrote in his post : in bridge, one frequently loses a lot of points through no fault of one's own.

BBO was founded with the model in that it's better to have a large user base (which results from free membership) with users who might drop extra money once they are dedicated to the server, than it is to have a small, dedicated user base (from pay membership). I think it's the right model given the status of bridge, and money bridge, in online gaming today.

Another thing you might want to try is to have no rake for an introductory period. The biggest differential in all of business is free vs. not-free. The mere fact that money bridge requires people to open up the wallet to put money into BBO will significantly impact the number of people who try it, let alone the rake. Why not nurture your user base and collect statistics on how well people do without rake before imposing a rake structure that might be better suited to other games? You can also advertise that this is temporary, so that customers won't feel betrayed? (It would also encourage people to try while the rake is non-existent -- people like deals and sales.)

Eugene

[FrancesHinden]

As the only way I'd be playing is when I lose my job for wasting company time on BBO forums, you can treat these comments with the respect they are due....

- I would expect the rake to relate to the stake. I haven't played much ftf rubber, but when I have the table fee has always gone up as the stakes go up. Although that is clearly unrelated to the cost structure, it seems to be good (psychological) sense.

- In the days when we had a gambling (betting) tax in the UK, you had a choice: you either paid a percentage of the stake, or a percentage (the same, I think) of your win. Most amateur gamblers paid on the win. Would a similar model work here? Players have a choice: pay 10% of the stake per 100 (10 cents for a $/100 game), or pay out 10% of their winnings? I'm only guessing, but I guess that would encourage more people to play 'for fun' and fewer people to play solely to make money. I don't know what you actually want....

[fred]

Quote

And my argument is that the rake as it currently stands does not provide the first group enough of an edge to play

And how would you know this?

Do you have any idea what expected per hand return a strong player partnering a GIB would have over a weak player partnering a GIB?

Do you have any idea how changing the GIB's speed from slow to medium to high might impact this (if at all)?

Do you have any idea how much money a typical person in country X who hopes to make a profit from money bridge needs to make in an hour to make it worth his while?

No doubt there are other factors as well that would have to be considered in order to make a statement like the one you made with any confidence.

Your opinion could easily be right, but I think you are guessing.

If that is the case, then say so. Don't present your opinions as if they were "facts".

Quote

The bridge vs. poker skill advantage is well documented (ask Bobby Baldwin) or the bridge vs. backgammon skill advantage (ask Kit Woolsey).  The reasons are what barmar wrote in his post : in bridge, one frequently loses a lot of points through no fault of one's own.

With all due respect to Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Woolsey, I don't think their opinions in these matters are worth much more than yours (with all due respect to you too!).

If "well-docmented" means "you can ask person X who is an expert at both games" I am sorry but I don't buy it.

To me in order to "well-document" something like this, you would have to look at a lot of data from both games and do some kind of comparitive statistical analysis.

I am not saying I think that you (or Baldwin or Woolsey) are wrong but I can admit that I really don't know. Unless you have some statistics to back up your opinions, I don't think you (or Baldwin or Woolsey) really know either.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Can you please explain how Russian Scoring works?

Thanks,

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[ng:)]

In a pack there are 40 points. A pair that gets more points finds its theoretical value in following table:

Expected points:

HCP NV Vul

20 0 0
21 50 50
22 70 70
23 110 110
24 200 290
25 300 440
26 350 520
27 400 600
28 430 630
29 460 660
30 490 690
31 600 900
32 700 1050
33 900 1350
34 1000 1500
35 1100 1650
36 1200 1800
37 1300 1950
38 1300 1950
39 1300 1950
40 1300 1950

This is the value of expected points which a pair should get with the specified number of HCPs in hand. It is compared with the real value of the received points. The difference between those values is transformed to IMP's. For example if a pair received 50 points more than it was predicted, they get 2 IMP's. If the difference is -170, which means a pair had less than expected they lose 3 IMP's. The rest of rules are exactly the same as in the Chicago system.

Regards,
G.

[andych]

Epoch making ...

I play some money bridge with my friends and our scoring method is called 'Shanghai scoring' (unsure how it comes from and if it is right).
It is basically IMP scoring discounted by the extra hcp. If you score +400 (=9 IMP) with a combined hand of 24 hcp. Your actual score is 9-4=5.
If you screw a slam (-50 = 2 IMP) with a combind hand of 30 hcp. You lose actual score 10+2 = 12.
We swap partners every 8 hands. Still the player getting the cards more often end up the winner though.
If there is any consideration to implement other scoring (e.g. Russian scoring mentioned in this thread), kindly give it some thought too....
So interested to see how the BBO money bridge would develop ......

[andych]

Question....

Will the myhands page show the hands from Money bridge room? Any different colour to easily identify the hands played from Money bridge room? Though one could spot it out with human-GIB vs human-GIB, some colour makes it easy if these hands would be shown. Will the results (in points) be shown somehow?

[andych]

How to handle OD/bad debt?

Unlike blackjack/poker, you place your bet and the most you lose is your bet already deposited. One does not know how much a bridge hand costs until it's over....

Will a maximum stake be set for each hand?

The initial deposit has to be carefully selected and the balance have to be updated instantly

How would the BB$ be cashed?

[pigpenz]

Rain, on Mar 3 2006, 08:22 PM, said:

btw, GIB's system as far as we can make it out to be is here.

http://online.bridge...ystem_notes.php

actually the retail version of GIB has several versions of bidding allowed including moscito.....http://www.gibware.com


Maybe you could allow games where we you can set the amount of the wager say some amount per imp....Like that previous post.....SCREW MASTERPOINTS....bring on the bucks

[jikl]

Saying the skill vs luck thing is so misguided. There are people that garner a living from rubber bridge. One very good Australian player kept statistics over a long period of time (decades), he would average nearly 2 points a rubber. Therefore for every rubber he would gain 2*stakes/100. On average then, this means about $60 an hour ($10 per hundred). Back to the luck thing, some days he would lose a lot, but the key is the average. On an average (8 hour) day this is $480 per day.

Sean

[mike777]

jikl, on Mar 6 2006, 11:32 PM, said:

Saying the skill vs luck thing is so misguided. There are people that garner a living from rubber bridge. One very good Australian player kept statistics over a long period of time (decades), he would average nearly 2 points a rubber. Therefore for every rubber he would gain 2*stakes/100. On average then, this means about $60 an hour ($10 per hundred). Back to the luck thing, some days he would lose a lot, but the key is the average. On an average (8 hour) day this is $480 per day.

Sean

I do not understand this math, are you saying on average he is broke? What value is average?

[eyhung]

Fred --

I am sorry if my earlier posts came out as critical in tone or content, or did not clearly delineate between statements of opinion and statements of fact. This will teach me not to post replies hurriedly in the morning.

I would be willing to continue this discussion if you wish, either in public or in private. I still believe I have made some valid points which have not been resolved. If you find them (correctly) lacking in hard data, then how about the idea to maximize participation via an initial no-rake policy? That will enable you to collect as much hard data as you can so that you can make an informed decision about the eventual rake. I will of course respect your decision should you prefer to consider this discussion closed.

I would like to reiterate my support for both your service and your committment to innovation, which are still the best in the business. And I remain committed to helping you with constructive and (hopefully) intelligent feedback.

Eugene

[pigpenz]

fred, on Mar 6 2006, 01:01 PM, said:

Quote

And my argument is that the rake as it currently stands does not provide the first group enough of an edge to play

And how would you know this?

Do you have any idea what expected per hand return a strong player partnering a GIB would have over a weak player partnering a GIB?

Do you have any idea how changing the GIB's speed from slow to medium to high might impact this (if at all)?

Unless one has been there and gone through it one cannot kow what the adrenaline rush is like meeting world champions in the finals of a KO or Swiss Team round 8 at a regional.

Now play a game where you are playing for real money dollars for imps or points at rubber bridge. sure there is luck involved with the lay of the cards especially rubber bridge....but unless you have been there, its alot harder than you think.....I think JLALL was talking about Ira Corush(sorry about spelling), people like these who dont hang around to much at ACBL or WBF events but are great rubber bridge players...these guys usually are great players.