[Fluffy]

This is just my opinion, and I don´t feel this very strongly but still

When the goodwins went to the BBOF challenge, I didn´t feel like they were part of the BBF comunity at all. TimG has contributed enough (althou not as much as others), but his partner was totally unknown to me.

We all want to win, but having some pair who has 325 posts in 1 player and 23 on the other wouldn´t make me feel like they are part of the team. Even if they played semifinals in the bermuda bowl on last decade. I would rather have rex&jay as team mates.

Putting a limit will always have problems, because there is a continuous distribution among posters and no limit will be fair. But putting no limit would be even worse IMO.

[MrAce]

My opinion is , we should let our players with BBO Star play if they volunteered for that week. And we should ask our other regulars to register with their forum pd. This pdships can change too.

For example i may play with Gonzalo this week and i can also register with Phil, Cherdano, Nuno or Hroathgar at get our name in the list and can play with them lets say4 weeks later in another match or 8 weeks later. We dont have too many players with stars so i am expecting to run out of star names due to theor availibility pretty soon, probably in less than 1 or 2 months.

So if we have a star player or pdship, they gets the spot auto, the other table (if there isnt any other star player or pdship) is one of the registered pdships. Lets say Timo-Phil registered and played this week and Timo is also registered by Nuno and Phil is also registered by Sathya, after they play this week their other pdship auto goes to the bottom of the list to wait their turn to come again. We post this list and update it every week.

How shall the the list will be sorted for the first time ? We can simply throw a coin for first sort, totally fair, no ?

This makes things easier and simple for me too. I regularly email every week to our star players " Mike or Andy or whoever, do u wanna be in this week? " Mike says " Yes i am in with this or with that person" Andy says " Yes or no..." I come and update the current weeks rroster; Table 1 = mike and Cherdano Table 2= No star so whoever is at the top of the list gets in, if they say they are not available this week the pair after them gets in but the pair who couldnt make it keeps its place for the next week. The pair who got to play this week goes to bottom of the list after that.

I insist we shd keep this in BBF and not with our best pd, but whatever u guys say will happen so please give more input about keeping it among us or not please.

What do u think ?

[wank]

i wouldn't pay too much attention to who has a BBO star. they give them out like confetti.

[MrAce]

 wank, on 2012-February-02, 09:54, said:

i wouldn't pay too much attention to who has a BBO star. they give them out like confetti.

I am talking about the ones in forums, who regularly writes here and eventhough i agree with you on what you said in general, i dont think thats the case for the ones we have here.

Also i think people, when watching a player with star, forget one important thing that these guys are playing in their home environment, not fully focused or prepared or not with their best pd. Before internet bridge we used to see good players like Hamman, Zia , Rodwell once every year in a bridge magazine or book where the hands are hand picked by editor or author and we thought these guys were godlike.

Now we know they are not. We know if u hit hard they bleed too. We now know Bob Hamman can fail to count trumps or his tricks in 3 NT when he is tired or distracted for whatever reason. We know Erick Rodwell fails to count in a grandslam contract in defense and lets Fred Gittelman make it. And none of those are internet games. I can easily see people, if their name was not Hamman or Rodwell, saying that "Where did this guy take his star from, flee martket ? " Even if someone belives that he wld not make this mistake, this doesnt change the fact thatthey are still great players and at the level that this someone will probably never be.

[Fluffy]

The idea looks fine on paper.
The problem will be to pick between the regulars, BBF has something great and that is that between BILs and JLall you can find a continous looking spectrum of levels. This thing is however not so great for this differentiating. Having to put a discriminating criterium where someone is in and someone is not must lead to some feelings hurted of why someone yes and why someone no.

[MrAce]

 Fluffy, on 2012-February-02, 10:08, said:

The idea looks fine on paper.
The problem will be to pick between the regulars, BBF has something great and that is that between BILs and JLall you can find a continous looking spectrum of levels. This thing is however not so great for this differentiating. Having to put a discriminating criterium where someone is in and someone is not must lead to some feelings hurted of why someone yes and why someone no.

Yes, i personally dont want this thing to be a challenge between forum members. In fact my intention was to make us even closer and more tolerated to each other and create a friendly event that we can both learn, improve and auto creates some more materilas for forums as well as some more traffic from BBO who doesnt even know BBF exists.

[phil_20686]

I would like to play.

I suspect the easy way to restrict to the forum community is to require some fairly substantial number of posts. >1000 say? That would immediately limit people complain about who does and doesn't count as a "forum regular". It also might act as a bit of a spur to improve post volume, which seems to have been low this year.

I also think that at least for the first game one should strive to put out a very strong team. First impressions are important, and if they think of us as generally strong they will overlook when we field weaker teams. I suspect this will happen anyway.

I suspect we will find that there are few regular partnerships who are both forum regulars. In a way I would not be that bothered about partnerships, part of the interest that is likely to come out of this is that we will have disagreements about sequences and carding and that kind of thing. Probably if you pick partnerships from roughly the same region there will be fewer misunderstandings.

[wyman]

 Fluffy, on 2012-February-02, 10:08, said:

The idea looks fine on paper.
The problem will be to pick between the regulars, BBF has something great and that is that between BILs and JLall you can find a continous looking spectrum of levels. This thing is however not so great for this differentiating. Having to put a discriminating criterium where someone is in and someone is not must lead to some feelings hurted of why someone yes and why someone no.

Having an occasional pro-am would be one way to deal with this (for example, if a pair thinks it's ready, but the organizer doesn't, then perhaps it can be 'sponsored' by an expert pair, whereby either they play as a pro-am, or the expert pair agrees to play opposite the borderline pair). But honestly, this honor/privilege/whatever should be reserved for the better players. If someone can make a compelling case that they are ready, I'm sure whoever's picking the team will give them a shot. But we shouldn't field teams that are expecting to get blown out. And honestly, I am excited at the prospect of having a weekly set of hands on which I have records and can ask "what was your thought process at trick 4 on board 17?"

This is a great idea, Timo.

[phil_20686]

 MrAce, on 2012-February-02, 10:15, said:

Yes, i personally dont want this thing to be a challenge between forum members. In fact my intention was to make us even closer and more tolerated to each other and create a friendly event that we can both learn, improve and auto creates some more materilas for forums as well as some more traffic from BBO who doesnt even know BBF exists.

Meh, we are all big boys (and girls). I imagine we will learn to live with our disappointment.

[wyman]

 phil_20686, on 2012-February-02, 10:17, said:

I would like to play.

I suspect the easy way to restrict to the forum community is to require some fairly substantial number of posts. >1000 say? That would immediately limit people complain about who does and doesn't count as a "forum regular". It also might act as a bit of a spur to improve post volume, which seems to have been low this year.

I also think that at least for the first game one should strive to put out a very strong team. First impressions are important, and if they think of us as generally strong they will overlook when we field weaker teams. I suspect this will happen anyway.

I suspect we will find that there are few regular partnerships who are both forum regulars. In a way I would not be that bothered about partnerships, part of the interest that is likely to come out of this is that we will have disagreements about sequences and carding and that kind of thing. Probably if you pick partnerships from roughly the same region there will be fewer misunderstandings.

Not that I'm lobbying to play (I think I'm borderline and probably missing the cut tbh, which is fine), but I have 7xx posts at the moment, and I feel like I'm part of the community enough to be in consideration. Point being: I think your 1k post mark is high.

Additionally, I think # posts is a bad metric, though I understand the need/desire for objectivity. But, I can spam the water cooler all day and never post about bridge, and on the other end of the spectrum, I could never "+1," never make a sarcastic post, and only post high-content, high-quality posts once a day. Is it clear who should be in the mix? Not to me. The former poster is a bigger part of BBOF culture, but the latter is making contributions to bridge on the forums. Both are valuable.

[phil_20686]

 wyman, on 2012-February-02, 10:25, said:

Not that I'm lobbying to play (I think I'm borderline and probably missing the cut tbh, which is fine), but I have 7xx posts at the moment, and I feel like I'm part of the community enough to be in consideration. Point being: I think your 1k post mark is high.

Additionally, I think # posts is a bad metric, though I understand the need/desire for objectivity. But, I can spam the water cooler all day and never post about bridge, and on the other end of the spectrum, I could never "+1," never make a sarcastic post, and only post high-content, high-quality posts once a day. Is it clear who should be in the mix? Not to me. The former poster is a bigger part of BBOF culture, but the latter is making contributions to bridge on the forums. Both are valuable.

OTOH, might just encourage you to post a bit more

But sure, there are a number of posters in the high hundreds who are probably "members of the community". Suspect there should be some "recent activity" criteria too. There are people like jdonn who havent been seen for years.

[wyman]

 phil_20686, on 2012-February-02, 10:32, said:

OTOH, might just encourage you to post a bit more

I think this would encourage more low content posting, honestly.

"I would lead a spade" instead of just voting in the poll, etc.

edit: but this thread is getting me closer

[MrAce]

 wyman, on 2012-February-02, 10:25, said:

Not that I'm lobbying to play (I think I'm borderline and probably missing the cut tbh......

No you are not, u are as good as anyone here. Bro as i said before and as Roger stated, you guys are making a big deal out of this match. They been playing this matches 2 times a day, 7 days a week and at least 3 or 4 years now. It is nothing but practice and fun for them, and professional reasons for some of them.

They have been beaten by very weak teams, but they win majority of the matches. Regardless of the result, what matters for them is if we are playing honest (cheat free) and reasonable bridge. Thats what usually matters for the kibs too. I have seen teams booed who won vs JEC but they made silly/stupid/childish things and got lucky. I have seen JEC team being booed even when they crushed other team. Or vice versa, u may be booed by some kibs regardless, because some of them believes they know better than Lauria or Duboin or Versace.

I agree that first couple weeks we shd try to get our best team if we can. Such as Andy-Frances MikeH-someone Cherdano-Han Mich-somone or whatever. I didnt say Fred's or Justin's name because i predict they will not want to participate due to professional reasons that comes to my mind and i understand that. Also they are pretty occupied timewise i am sure. But hey if Justin or Fred says "i am in with Fred or with Josh" oh well that would be a sexy team

[MrAce]

Number of posts is not a good criteria imo.

First of all someone may have joined 6 months ago and have only X number of posts but his post per day may be more than others. For example my posts per day is higher than Fred or some of those who joined much before me. But that doesnt neccesarilly make me more regular than they are or vice versa.

[phil_20686]

 MrAce, on 2012-February-02, 10:59, said:

Number of posts is not a good criteria imo.

Not sure there are any good criteria, just bad and worse.

[MrAce]

 phil_20686, on 2012-February-02, 11:03, said:

Not sure there are any good criteria, just bad and worse.

True, and u guys will understand what i meant when i said " We will beg people to play" in less than 3 months.


Here is the JEC Schedule,

-2 games a day 7 days a week (except nationals and other big events)

-2 pm eastern time and 7 pm eastern time.

We will have to agree whatever day of the week given us by Larry Lande. Nothing much i can do about it because they have regular opponents just like us who managed to get a day of the week. But due to having a lot of A/E forum regulars from europe, i think i will try to get a 2 pm eastern time from Larry. Which is not available untill the next nationals in Memphis. And not warranted after that either, i will do my best though to get it.

[BunnyGo]

This all sounds like a great idea Timo. Most of the suggested details sound like they would be fine (but varying degrees of work for you). Let us know when you actually need volunteers to play.

[gnasher]

I think it's a good idea.

Regarding eligibility for the team, I have mixed views. I agree that if the team is representing the forums, it ought to consist of people who post in the forums. However, that would also make it less attractive for me. There are some very good players on these forums who I would be delighted to play with if I had unlimited time, but I don't. Playing in an ad-hoc partnership is often fun, but it doesn't help much with preparing for major events. So, like MickyB and MikeH, if I couldn't play with a regular partner I probably wouldn't be participating much.

Regarding criteria for picking the team:
- If you hold a tournament to determine the right to play, you're asking for a big commitment of time, so I don't think you should go down that route.
- I don't think you should use stars. Fred has made it clear that stars are awarded for single achievements, and aren't intended to indicate a player's actual ability. Furthermore, the criteria for awarding them have changed: they used to be given rather generously, but now they're quite hard to obtain. Using stars would unfairly favour anyone who received a star a few years ago but wouldn't get one now.
- If you want to pick the best team, the "Reputation" figures are not a good measure. It might be a reasonable way to pick a popular team, or to reward people who make good posts. However, it's dangerous to make the up-votes actually worth something - it may encourage people to try to manipulate the system.
- I think a good way to do it is to appoint someone to select the team and leave him to get on with it. I'm sure MrAce would do a perfectly good job of it.
- Even better would be to have a small group of selectors, who take it in turns to pick the team. For example, MrAce could pick the team one week, Phil the next, Fluffy the week after, etc. That might lead to a friendly rivalry between the selectors, which would encourage them to pick good teams.

[Phil]

 MrAce, on 2012-February-02, 11:17, said:

True, and u guys will understand what i meant when i said " We will beg people to play" in less than 3 months.


Here is the JEC Schedule,

-2 games a day 7 days a week (except nationals and other big events)

-2 pm eastern time and 7 pm eastern time.

We will have to agree whatever day of the week given us by Larry Lande. Nothing much i can do about it because they have regular opponents just like us who managed to get a day of the week. But due to having a lot of A/E forum regulars from europe, i think i will try to get a 2 pm eastern time from Larry. Which is not available untill the next nationals in Memphis. And not warranted after that either, i will do my best though to get it.

Has Llande indicated to you how often he wants to get a forum-based team to compete?

By the way, what prompted this discussion in the 1st place if I may ask?

[wank]

i don't think it should include people from outside the forums.