[inquiry]

I am thinking about running an occassional bidding contest, open to forum members (at least one member of each pair has to be a forum poster, with at least 50 post).

The idea might be to have four pairs of players bid the hands or even more and judge who wins, or we might do it like a magazine thing with only two pairs bidding the same hands and then the winner gets to take on another pair. Or run brackets with different groups bidding different pairs of hands and winners moving up.

I would be willing to find the hands (hopefully challenging ones) and run the bidding contest online using teachign tables. We could also have someone else do some of the events and of course forum members could submit hands for use.

I would think kibitzers will be blocked from all the contest or we could block the kibitzers on all but the last pair to bid the hands. But the hands would be posted in the forum with the auctions provided and further discussion after all the participants have bid them. It would not be necessary for the bidding to take place at the same time.

[hotShot]

Are you talking about a contest where:

a] everybody has to use the same bidding system described at yyyyyyyy.
    The majority/expert panel decides what the best bid is.

b] everybody uses his favorite bidding system that he publishes prior to the contest. The boards are difficult to bid games/slams/grands that have to be reached or avoided.
    Getting to the best spot will be rewarded.

c] The problems are from various bidding systems, you have to pick from a set of bids with explanations given.

[Free]

I'd like a "challenge the champs" type PBC, which is what I think Ben is suggesting (maybe with more pairs). I definitely want to participate, but the problem is to get partner and a moderator online...

Didn't we do something similar in the past, but with a whole bunch of pairs?

[hanp]

I think it is a good idea and I would enjoy participating.

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Jul 9 2010, 08:56 AM, said:

I am thinking about running an occasional bidding contest, open to forum members (at least one member of each pair has to be a forum poster, with at least 50 post).

The idea might be to have four pairs of players bid the hands or even more and judge who wins, or we might do it like a magazine thing with only two pairs bidding the same hands and then the winner gets to take on another pair. Or run brackets with different groups bidding different pairs of hands and winners moving up.

I would be willing to find the hands (hopefully challenging ones) and run the bidding contest online using teachign tables. We could also have someone else do some of the events and of course forum members could submit hands for use.

I would think kibitzers will be blocked from all the contest or we could block the kibitzers on all but the last pair to bid the hands. But the hands would be posted in the forum with the auctions provided and further discussion after all the participants have bid them. It would not be necessary for the bidding to take place at the same time.

Hi Ben

I think that this sounds like a very interesting idea. I'd be happy to participate (with luck, Free would be willing to drag out the old MOSCITO notes)

I do have a few comments:

1. Barring kibitzer's seems nonsensical. If a pair wants to cheat, they're going to be able to find a way to cheat. Barring kibitzer's might help if one member of a partnership wants to cheat. Personally, I prefer to put my faith in the forum members.

I don't think there is any real "value" to scoring high. What is this supposed to earn us? Some kind of bragging rights?
We all know that folks are going to be pouring over the results. The risk of getting caught making an extreme call seem great.

2. I've always been concerned that participant's knowledge that these are particularly hard hands distorts their bidding. If this is CoC, we all "know" that we need to avoid the obvious 3N and play in our 4-3 Moysian... I would prefer to see a format in which players bid a large number of hands (30 - 50). If you want to "seed" the corpus of hands with a few bitchy ones, that fine. But don't put us all in a position where we're looking for excusing to distort our bidding.

3. Associated with this, I like to believe that (consistently) scoring well on "bread-and-butter" hands is much more important than a rare flamboyant success. Case in point: Playing strong club, we expect competition over our strong club opening and risk a bad score because of it. We accept this, because we think that the costs outweigh the benefits. However, if all the hands are slanted towards spectacular slam oriented hands and the odds of a strong club opening start to drift upwards...

4. One thing that has always annoyed me about these types of contests is that scoring system only values the final contract and says nothing about the road to that contract. I'd argue that a short, non-informative auction is a virtue in and of itself and this should factor into a bidding contest.

Here's how I'd like to see things run:

1. Structure the contest such that it involves both a N/S pair and an E/W pair bidding at the same time.

2. Use a relatively large number of hands (50 or so). It should still be possible to whip through these relatively quickly.

3. The majority of the hands should be unconstrained. (everyone should play the hands, but don't pre-select them to be interesting). Its fine to slip in some "interesting" hands, but keep the number small.

4. Everyone who participates should agree in advance that they're willing to provide a reasonable details explanation why they chose a given bid. (I suspect that the real value of this exercise will be as much about judgment as system)

[gwnn]

dont ban kibs

[hanp]

I also agree with Richard on not banning kibitzers. I don't really agree with the rest but maybe he can keep an alternative score that factors in short non-informative auctions.

[Fluffy]

I also believe bannings kibs and stuff is not neccesary since I trust everyone not to cheat. But well, I trust people too much often so if Ben thinks its ok, then its ok, after all kibitzers won't get much from kibitzing other than what they can get reading later.


I like the idea, and I'd like to participate.

[kfay]

hanp, on Jul 9 2010, 05:09 AM, said:

I think it is a good idea and I would enjoy participating.

I think we should try to maintain some quality standards in the pairs that participate.

[hanp]

Plays one tournament in China and immediately thinks he is a star.

[inquiry]

So far it is 24 to nothing in favor of this type of contest.
So far, kibitzers allowed is a strong prefernce.

I had no plans to limit bidding systems and don;t think you should, you bid what you want (we would have to restart the BPO bridge poll if we want to limit system).

Richard likes the idea of 50 hands. I am thinking that is quite to many, but if eveyone agrees 50 is a good number we could do that. I was thinking eitehr 10 or 12 but obviously with no playing of the hands, we could go more than that. If we had as many as 50 we could have some variations on the same hand/hand type I guess which is fun for me, but maybe not for other people.

The only reason I didn't want kibitzes is not obvious cheating, but rather the fact that contestants might not bid the hands at nearly the same time and I didn't want someone posting hands here before all pairs bid them, or people talking about them. But kibitzers certainly ok with me.

Discuss in this thread an optimal number of hands for such a contest.

[jdonn]

Multi should not be allowed.

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Jul 9 2010, 06:17 PM, said:

Richard likes the idea of 50 hands. I am thinking that is quite to many, but if eveyone agrees 50 is a good number we could do that. I was thinking eitehr 10 or 12 but obviously with no playing of the hands, we could go more than that. If we had as many as 50 we could have some variations on the same hand/hand type I guess which is fun for me, but maybe not for other people.

The main reason that I wanted a large corpus of hands was a (general) concern that a bidding content that features 10 "freak" hands isn't indicative of real world behavior.

I thought that a large number of hands would let you seed 5-6 "interesting" hands into the total while still ensuring that folks bid normally.

First time out, it probably makes sense to start with a smaller # and work some of the kinks out...

[Vampyr]

jdonn, on Jul 9 2010, 04:34 PM, said:

Multi should not be allowed.

Why not? It is a very popular convention.

[inquiry]

jdonn, on Jul 9 2010, 10:34 AM, said:

Multi should not be allowed.

why? Just curious.

There will be no opponents at the table, just a pair of people bidding EW hands. Seems like anything should be allowed including forcing pass should someone play that.

[kfay]

While I'm willing to agree that 10 is a small number of hands I think it's still fine. Maybe 15 or 20 at the most if we want to do more but 50 is way too many. Frankly I wouldn't really want to participate in such a thing, if invited, with that many hands. Sure we're not playing the hands but I'd still probably think more than normal.

And I'd definitely lose interest reading through 50 hands that another pair bid. No I think 20 is the limit for me.

50?!?!?!?!

[jdonn]

inquiry, on Jul 9 2010, 10:40 AM, said:

jdonn, on Jul 9 2010, 10:34 AM, said:

Multi should not be allowed.

why? Just curious.

There will be no opponents at the table, just a pair of people bidding EW hands. Seems like anything should be allowed including forcing pass should someone play that.

Sorry I didn't follow Nigel's advice and include yellow smiley faces to signify humor

[Hanoi5]

If there'll be N/S and E/W how are pranksters (?) going to be handled? What if I enter EVERY auction the opponents have? I'm not saying psychs HAVE to be prohibited but probably limited. Maybe negative points for pairs who get in the way of others auctions and get doubled in ugly contracts...

Another thing is: MP's or IMP's? Generally speaking most of these contests in magazines are thought of in MP's, is it going to be the same here?

hrothgar mentioned evaluation based not only in results but also in the process. Evaluation terms have to be very clear then. Do all hands have the same value? 10 as in challenge the champs?

Where are the hands coming from? I'd love to participate as a contestant but if you want me to I can help getting some hands from BW's, IPBM's, etc.

[jdonn]

Btw I'd enjoy this a lot. I think 12-16 is about the right amount of hands.

[jjbrr]

jdonn is the best bidder in the entire world.

we're all playing for second place.