[the hog]

"2. All contestants play exactly the same system and playing conventions."

Carl, I am curious. What system would that be, Acol? If not, why not? Why should those who prefer a 12-14 NT opening be forced to play a 15-17 range, just as one example.
By the way, I agree about the slow play. It makes watching very boring.

[han]

 chudecek, on 2011-May-17, 09:03, said:

I have spent the last several days watching (painfully) what is described
as expert IMP bridge, but is actually a contest involving unusual methods,
furious overbidding to minus scores, phantom saves ad infinitum, director calls,
system inquiries, and worst of all, interminably slow play by some contestants,
to the detriment of the spectators, most contestants, and the game itself.

I think your comment about the slow play is most welcome. I am not sure if your solution is best, but there are definitely several options available. It seems that currently the main problem is that rules are not enforced, and that seems wrong.

As for your bidding comments, I think you don't know what you are talking about.

 JLOGIC, on 2011-May-17, 10:39, said:

As a participant, I must say I am torn on the slow play stuff. On the one hand, it's supposed to be a timed event, however penalties are not really imposed. On the other hand, I feel like this is the finals, and it's ok for everyone to take as much time as they want.

I don't agree with this. I would say that especially in the finals, rules should be enforced. It also seems to me that there is a reason that bridge is a timed game, and there is a good reason for this.

[mrdct]

 chudecek, on 2011-May-17, 09:03, said:

... a contest involving unusual methods, furious overbidding to minus scores, phantom saves ad infinitum, director calls, system inquiries, ...

Have we been watching the same event? The bridge has been absolutely awesome, high presure, in-your-face, tough-as-nails bridge; and I've loved every minute of it.

Standardising systems would be ridiculous. In any case, there are far too many combinations of auctions to ever properly document what they all mean. Looking at the latest and greatest methods that the top experts are using is one of the most enjoyable aspects of vugraph.

I tend to agree on the slow play bit though, but I'm not sure that computer-based play and/or automated timing systems are really the answer unless the latter is very unobtrusive and isn't going to further slow the game down. I guess the table could be fitted with some sort of optical or proximity reader to automatically capture each card as it's played and I imagine bidding boxes would need to be replaced by some other system to capture bids electronically; but what ever system is employed it must not interfere with the essence of our game which is deck of 52 cards held in our sweaty hands in the heat of battle. I expect that if players have to play their cards in a specfic location on the table and receive some sort of beep or light acknowledging that it's been detected, it would be incredibly distracting and I can't see it happening.

For vugraphed events, the BBO system could be employed as a time monitor of sorts with some software modifications, but even that won't be completely fail-safe as the tempo in which the operator enters bids and plays rarely coincides with the actually tempo at the table for several reasons. What could be workable is once a BBO pause during the auction reaches a certain threshold (something like 5 seconds) a pop-up prompts the operator to confirm who is in the tank and then starts ascribing time to that player. For tempo during the play, I'm quite confident that any variation between reality and operator entry would be immaterial. At the end of the session, if slow play penalties need to be handed-out, there will be a pretty accurate representation of who soaked-up more than their fair share of the time.

It's hard to imgaine that a perfect system could be devised as you can't really cater for the scenario of declarer prolonging the play to make the defence think they have a problem and then the defence wind up having a whole bunch of time ascribed to them which wouldn't have happened if declarer just claimed. Although I guess you could have GIB determine the point where declarer has the rest of the tricks on all layouts and then all time from there until the claim gets ascribed to declarer.

[mike777]

so the issues are:
1) enforce any time limits?
2) time limits should be 7x15 or 9x15?

[barmar]

While I agree in general with enforcing slow play penalties, I think the time limits for high-level events have to be longer than club games and local tourneys.

Others have mentioned the delays added by screens. But more to the point is that players in these events often have more to think about. They bid more aggressively, and that makes planning the play and defense harder. Furthermore, the reason that these players are at the top of the field is because they actually use that thinking time well, to come to the right conclusions. So if we were to limit the time they can spend to the usual 6 or 7 minutes/board, the bridge play is not going to be as good.

Remember when your bridge teacher told you that when the dummy comes down, you should spend time planning the play or defense. These guys actually do that. Even on the hands that look straightforward, they think about potential problem layouts and whether they can deal with them.

It's unfortunate that watching people think (or just looking at a Vugraph screen, so you can't even see the thinkers) is not "exciting". If you want fast-paced, watch tennis, basketball, or hockey. Bridge is a mind sport, and thinking is an important part of the game. And just as you expect the tennis ball to go faster in a Grand Slam event, we expect more thinking in national and world championship bridge.

[blackshoe]

When you're running a club, you have to think in terms of the number of boards the players want to play, and the length of time you have for the whole session. The amount of time you allocate for one board is an outcome of that thought process, and is constrained by those two variables.

When you're running a high-level tournament, the total time for the session is largely irrelevant, or should be. Remove that constraint, and you effectively remove any constraint on the length of time needed to play a board.

At the clubs around here, consideration of the constraints has led to the somewhat ridiculous conclusion that boards should be allotted at most six minutes, and "moving time" between rounds should be allotted roughly fifteen seconds. This is hardly likely to decrease "slow play" incidents - particularly where the players need to think about even the simplest most obvious actions. And believe me, we get a lot of that.

[bluecalm]

Slow or not the point is that it should not be possible for one pair at the table to take significantly more time thus gaining unfair advantage.
I think one solution is to have some kind of bridge clock at the table. While it's not possible probably to make it similar to chess you could use it the following way:
-after dummy is tables declarer is allowed 60 seconds think time and defender 20 seconds after card is played
-every pair is allowed only one 90 second tank a hand
-all other plays must come in at most 30 seconds

You just click a clock if opponent start thinking.
It can be easily extended for the whole segment where one can for example choose:
-two 3minutes tanks
-12 90 seconds tanks

Or something like that. Constructing such a clock is very easy and probably even chess dgt clocks could be used.
The key for the solution is to break prisoner dilemma like situation which now gives advantage to people who break the rules (everybody hates them for that but they still have advantage). We should stop thinking in terms of stopping slow play in general and start thinking about ways to punish/stop slow play of any given pair. Solutions which doesn't address this just won't work (7minutes per board is one example, it doesn't matter how much time there is per board, it matters how much time one pair could take).
Personally I don't mind slow play at all. There is a lot to think about in bridge. What drives me mad though is that just because someone is taking a lot of time other people have to play faster to catch up. It shouldn't be the case.

[MrAce]

It never looked slow to me, since i usually kib one hand instead of 4. Actually it looks very fast when u do that especially if the person u are kibbing is a very good player, because they seem to find the right play or bid faster (assuming that i see the same play, not always the case of course)

Overall i am against compromises from bridge quality just to make it more spectator friendly game.

And i definetely disagree with everything Carl said here.

[Zelandakh]

I propose a change to the rules of football (soccer to the Yanks). Every team needs to play a strict 4-4-2 formation, deviation to be punished by the award of a goal to the opposition. Whenever a player obtains possession of the ball a timer is started; if they keep possession for more than 10 seconds then the opposition is awarded with a goal, and each subsequent 10 seconds thereafter forfeits a further goal. For throw-ins, goal kicks and corners the timer is evry 5 seconds.

I feel that these changes will allow football to appeal better to the masses as there will be more scoring, players will be unable to waste time with the ball, and everyone will understand the tactics. We could also discuss similar changes to ice hockey and some other sports and games...

The idea of timing players and penalising slow play has merit and is done in many major competitions. It is not always easy to decide if extra time is being taken because, for example, the opponents play some unusual methods and it is necessary to consider the ramifications of those methods, or just because the player is being unreasonably slow. The idea of limiting players to a single system is ridiculous - who should decide what the system is? I have my own system - can I force everyone else to play it? Similarly, awarding faster play with bonuses is terrible - what about a player who has muscle difficulties and simply cannot play at break-neck speedß Do you really mean to penalise such players?

In other words, either this post is meant as a troll, or it has not been thought through at all and seems to have little merit as a basis for any proposed solution to the perceived issue.

[qwery_hi]

 Zelandakh, on 2011-May-18, 04:21, said:

In other words, either this post is meant as a troll, or it has not been thought through at all and seems to have little merit as a basis for any proposed solution to the perceived issue.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[Tomi2]

I do not think bridge is a timed event, imo the time limts are just there to prevent "endless" team sessions and to make a pairs tourney run in some way... but its not the aim to find somebody who plays the best bridge in xy minutes (only in speedball this is)

if you want to play timed events, then come to Germany - here our tds apply those penalties for slow play as often as possible.

this leads to beeing declarer in 4hearts doubled and td saying "you have 48 sec to finish this board"
this leads to endless td calls "opps are playing slowly and i want to prevent the penalty fo us" OR "we have not called but THEY were playing much slower than us" - both create a very friendly atmosphere at the tables and fastens up the events...
or some see others leaving the playing area late - call td "didn't you see they were late? we got that penalty, why did you miss them?"

ah yes, and if you have a car accident and miss one segment of 16 boards the td picks his calculator to estimate the 27 VP ((16*8.75-5)/5) penalty for you and you can start regaining the imps by going into the 2nd session with -3*16 imps (sry, have no calculator here)

[TMorris]

It's strange. I often watch US events in particular on vugraph and think how slow they are to the extent that I switch off & do something more interesting. These trials were I thought actually played at a reasonable pace. In comparison to many US events on vugraph they were IMO speedy.

There are people who I will not watch on vugraph due to how slow they are (Muller & Feldman spring to mind - I'd rather watch paint dry) but not in these trials. There were a few long pauses but not too many and plenty of quick claims which are seen far too rarely.

The Bathhurst team in particular seemed refreshingly fast.

[bluecalm]

Quote

I do not think bridge is a timed event, imo the time limts are just there to prevent "endless" team sessions and to make a pairs tourney run in some way... but its not the aim to find somebody who plays the best bridge in xy minutes (only in speedball this is)

That's the trick. I can play much better if I play slower and if I take one hour for every play then my cardplay will be on elite level. This is true for most semi-decent players.
The system as it is now punish the players who feel obligation to play reasonably fast and reward players who take 3 minutes for every card (we have some of those in Poland).
As to the pace of USBC finals I really don't think it was particularly slow but of course it's subjective impression of mine.
Bridge doesn't benefit from sponsor's money who want the game to be fast so why make it this way ? Just make it fair and enjoyable for all which require everybody having similar amount of time to use.

[chudecek]

The players in the later rounds of these big events use laptop computers or touch-screen tablets to enter their bids, plays and alerts. The auction and tricks are displayed on each person's screen, along with supplementary information such as alert explanations, session results, and time consumed.

This system SAVES money by preventing revokes, "tempo" issues; and director calls. The sponsoring organization also saves money on cards, bidding boxes, private scores, pencils, committees, and directors. The computer cost is amortized over a couple of years and dozens of uses.

 mrdct, on 2011-May-17, 22:03, said:

Have we been watching the same event? The bridge has been absolutely awesome, high presure, in-your-face, tough-as-nails bridge; and I've loved every minute of it.

Standardising systems would be ridiculous. In any case, there are far too many combinations of auctions to ever properly document what they all mean. Looking at the latest and greatest methods that the top experts are using is one of the most enjoyable aspects of vugraph.

I tend to agree on the slow play bit though, but I'm not sure that computer-based play and/or automated timing systems are really the answer unless the latter is very unobtrusive and isn't going to further slow the game down. I guess the table could be fitted with some sort of optical or proximity reader to automatically capture each card as it's played and I imagine bidding boxes would need to be replaced by some other system to capture bids electronically; but what ever system is employed it must not interfere with the essence of our game which is deck of 52 cards held in our sweaty hands in the heat of battle. I expect that if players have to play their cards in a specfic location on the table and receive some sort of beep or light acknowledging that it's been detected, it would be incredibly distracting and I can't see it happening.

For vugraphed events, the BBO system could be employed as a time monitor of sorts with some software modifications, but even that won't be completely fail-safe as the tempo in which the operator enters bids and plays rarely coincides with the actually tempo at the table for several reasons. What could be workable is once a BBO pause during the auction reaches a certain threshold (something like 5 seconds) a pop-up prompts the operator to confirm who is in the tank and then starts ascribing time to that player. For tempo during the play, I'm quite confident that any variation between reality and operator entry would be immaterial. At the end of the session, if slow play penalties need to be handed-out, there will be a pretty accurate representation of who soaked-up more than their fair share of the time.

It's hard to imgaine that a perfect system could be devised as you can't really cater for the scenario of declarer prolonging the play to make the defence think they have a problem and then the defence wind up having a whole bunch of time ascribed to them which wouldn't have happened if declarer just claimed. Although I guess you could have GIB determine the point where declarer has the rest of the tricks on all layouts and then all time from there until the claim gets ascribed to declarer.

[mrdct]

 chudecek, on 2011-May-18, 07:04, said:

The players in the later rounds of these big events use laptop computers or touch-screen tablets to enter their bids, plays and alerts. The auction and tricks are displayed on each person's screen, along with supplementary information such as alert explanations, session results, and time consumed.

This system SAVES money by preventing revokes, "tempo" issues; and director calls. The sponsoring organization also saves money on cards, bidding boxes, private scores, pencils, committees, and directors. The computer cost is amortized over a couple of years and dozens of uses.

lol

[olien]

 Tomi2, on 2011-May-18, 05:05, said:

I do not think bridge is a timed event, imo the time limts are just there to prevent "endless" team sessions and to make a pairs tourney run in some way... but its not the aim to find somebody who plays the best bridge in xy minutes (only in speedball this is)

if you want to play timed events, then come to Germany - here our tds apply those penalties for slow play as often as possible.

this leads to beeing declarer in 4hearts doubled and td saying "you have 48 sec to finish this board"
this leads to endless td calls "opps are playing slowly and i want to prevent the penalty fo us" OR "we have not called but THEY were playing much slower than us" - both create a very friendly atmosphere at the tables and fastens up the events...
or some see others leaving the playing area late - call td "didn't you see they were late? we got that penalty, why did you miss them?"

ah yes, and if you have a car accident and miss one segment of 16 boards the td picks his calculator to estimate the 27 VP ((16*8.75-5)/5) penalty for you and you can start regaining the imps by going into the 2nd session with -3*16 imps (sry, have no calculator here)

I heard about this from a friend, about the car accident and subsequent penalties. Sounds like the german TDs are gestappo? xD

[Phil]

 mrdct, on 2011-May-17, 22:03, said:

Although I guess you could have GIB determine the point where declarer has the rest of the tricks on all layouts and then all time from there until the claim gets ascribed to declarer.

Just when I thought this thread couldn't get any better, I read this.

[han]

 bluecalm, on 2011-May-18, 05:56, said:

if I take one hour for every play then my cardplay will be on elite level.

Double.

Quote

This is true for most semi-decent players.

Redouble!

[helene_t]

 bluecalm, on 2011-May-18, 05:56, said:

That's the trick. I can play much better if I play slower and if I take one hour for every play then my cardplay will be on elite level. This is true for most semi-decent players.

hmmm maybe I am not "most" or maybe I am not semi-decent, or maybe my assessment is wrong. But: I think the normal rate of 5-10 minutes per board is optimal for me. More time would make me worse.

As for first-order effects, more time would make me less likely to misthink. While most of my losses are due to short-memory lapses, and some are due to lack of knowledge and psychological insight, misthinks play a significant role as well.

But spending more time thinking would make my brain wear out quicker and I would start suffering from decreased short-time memory sooner.

At the local club I play much faster than most others and I have the impression that by doing so I intimidate partner and opps to play fast as well. So we usually end the round before most other tables and have a few minutes extra break. Usually I will not spend precious brain cells on post mortems but just switch off my brain during those minutes. This allows me to stay reasonable awake throughout the session.

[matmat]

 chudecek, on 2011-May-18, 07:04, said:

The players in the later rounds of these big events use laptop computers or touch-screen tablets to enter their bids, plays and alerts. The auction and tricks are displayed on each person's screen, along with supplementary information such as alert explanations, session results, and time consumed.

This system SAVES money by preventing revokes, "tempo" issues; and director calls. The sponsoring organization also saves money on cards, bidding boxes, private scores, pencils, committees, and directors. The computer cost is amortized over a couple of years and dozens of uses.

This is terrible.
I can just see it now, some not-so computer savvy player taking three minutes to type in a sentence into the machine with one finger, looking for the right key to press at every letter. It would add to stress and distract the players. One of the beautiful things about bridge is that the mechanics are remarkably simple and intuitive (despite the rules,systems, and alert procedures being arcane, and play generally hard).

Session results? are you suggesting a shift to barometer scoring for national level events?

Furthermore, I am not convinced the hardware or software costs would be amortized any faster than the cost of cards, bidding boxes, and screens. We are all very spoiled by the use of BBO for free, software that would be used for this non-commercial purpose would be very unlikely to be so. What if the network gives out (like it seemed to during the Vegas broadcasts)? You still need cards, boxes, private scores, pencils etc. as backup....

Also, please explain how this saves $ on committees and directors? what if someone misclicks a bid? what if a system locks up or becomes sluggish in response and that causes a delay? I think it just changes the types of rulings and appeals these people would have to face. What if a computer crashes midhand?

I also think that this can be a source of UI. Unless the players are in different rooms, you;d be able to tell who is typing, who is thinking etc. Say p is asked about a bid and starts typing an explanation -- keyboards are loud (to be fair, though, I have little experience with screens and am not sure how much of such information can pass through those).