[pclayton]

Mark:

I'm glad you posted BPO-9. I think when the Bridge Poll Online section was set up several years ago, we envisioned that polls would take place on a much higher frequency than what happens now, so I'm pleased you took the 'bull by the horns' and showed some initiative.

Frankly, I see nothing wrong with having overlapping polls either. Someone could start BPO-10 and before the answers come in, BPO-11 could come out. Hell, if I wanted to have a poll and call it BPO-PC-1, I think that would be OK. We need more polls.

What I didn't like were tseveral things. The lag between the questions and the answers took a very long time. Also, as I mentioned in one of threads, I think you needed to go to a specific group of experts to find out what the best calls were. It may have turned out our majority vote would have matched the results of a random group of experts, but what I appreciated when Ben conducted the poll a few times isn't so much what the 'right' answer was, it was the thought process of a top player as he approaches a problem. Sometimes he's way out of step with other experts, but its educational to listen to him. Ben did a very good job moderating and distilling these comments too.

Anyway, I hope you take these comments in the right spirit and I'm glad you did the poll. I hope others will follow, but they try to keep these thoughts in mind.

[mr1303]

Yes, I'm sorry about the time lag involved between the poll going out and the results coming in. Unfortunately work commitments over the past month or so have made things difficult, and I haven't been able to spend the time necessary. I think I was a bit hasty in volunteering to do a poll, since I didn't quite appreciate the amount of work involved to do a proper job if it, particularly the expert views, which I initially assumed would happen semi-automatically.

However, most people who sent their answers in also provided their thoughts about why they made the bids that they did. I took these into account when assigning the scores, in addition to my own views, and also those of some local players who's views I respect.

A lot of the time, the majority score did score the highest, but this was not always the case (Hand 6 for example). I did not actually take the poll myself, so as not to overly bias the poll with my own views.

All in all, I hope people find the job I did acceptable (although I freely admit that I did not do the best job possible) and enjoyed the poll a lot.