[661_Pete]

 billw55, on 2016-August-12, 06:27, said:

Maybe Acol club is different, but my experience in the MBC is that "intermediate" almost always indicates a weak player. There are a few good ones but the success rate is very low.

Ha ha! I've self-rated myself as 'intermediate'. I think I'm being honest, here. But then, I'm not a MBC player. As to whether I'm a weak player or not, I'll let others judge that, if you please - but only after they've played with me or kibitzed me!

Of course I make silly mistakes. Don't we all? And I have - ahem - not been entirely factual* on the chatline. Yesterday I apologised to partner for a "misclick". In fact it was a lapse of attention: I thought I was cashing the thirteenth of a suit in notrumps. It wasn't.....

*i.e. told a porkie.....

[Thiros]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-August-12, 23:32, said:

Guess not - I tried and it said I exceeded my quota of pluses for the day. The maximum for me is apparently zero.

You acquire upvote power once you have made at least 50 posts.

[42xxbfxx42]

You are not being shunned, that would imply that players actively shut you out. You are nothing to them, I am nothing to them, nor will you or I ever be. We are not invited to their tables. Find your own friends, and your own table.

[Kaitlyn S]

 42xxbfxx42, on 2016-August-13, 14:05, said:

You are not being shunned, that would imply that players actively shut you out. You are nothing to them, I am nothing to them, nor will you or I ever be. We are not invited to their tables. Find your own friends, and your own table.

LOL I never thought that I was being singled out. I just wanted to know why I had such bad luck when attempting to enter a locked seat, and that has been answered nicely.

[onoway]

Fwiw I tend to avoid playing with pick up partners who have nothing on their profile because I've no way of knowing if we will communicate at all. It also seems a bit one-upsmanship ish to me, as I can't think of any valid reason not to put at least what system and carding they are basing their bidding and play on.When a pickup partner opens 1♣ it's handy to know if they are playing 2/1 or Precision.( or something else for that matter). There's little point in trying to partner someone who plays something about which you've no idea. Problems come up as it is when people claim to play things they don't, and that does happen sometimes.

A lot of extremely weak players, some of them even beginners, put expert on their profile so that people will play with them, and ignore the fact it becomes very clear very fast they are not, and that nobody plays with them twice. Expert is a very iffy label to claim here. Honesty is appreciated by most of us.

The other thing is that Main tends to be a revolving door so a lot of people play only with friends. If you played in tourneys you would get a chance to meet some people and possibly invite one or two to play outside of the tourney and so begin to build up a group of friends that way.

[661_Pete]

 42xxbfxx42, on 2016-August-13, 14:05, said:

You are nothing to them, I am nothing to them, nor will you or I ever be. We are not invited to their tables. Find your own friends, and your own table.

Is it just me, or do others find these remarks singularly unhelpful?

Yes every online community has its 'cliques', I've been only too aware of this in areas other than the bridge-playing set. Sometimes the only way to cope with cliquism is to walk away. But the last thing I want to do is encourage anyone - certainly not the OP - to do that. To walk away from this site is to deny yourself a wonderful bridge-playing opportunity!

Please be patient. Not everyone on BBO is so insular. Speaking for myself, I'm happy to play with all comers - unless I've had a really bad experience with them in the past. Even then, I'll often give them another chance!

[sfi]

 661_Pete, on 2016-August-14, 01:48, said:

Is it just me, or do others find these remarks singularly unhelpful?

Yes every online community has its 'cliques', I've been only too aware of this in areas other than the bridge-playing set. Sometimes the only way to cope with cliquism is to walk away. But the last thing I want to do is encourage anyone - certainly not the OP - to do that.

It's not about cliques - some people simply use BBO in a different way to you. For instance, I play at tables almost exclusively in set games practicing for tournaments. If I reject you (or anyone else) it is because I'm either waiting for someone who has been disconnected or we have finished and someone has left the table while we are still talking. In either case it is not a reflection on the person's profile or skill level - merely a reflection of how we are using the site.

[Vampyr]

 sfi, on 2016-August-20, 17:12, said:

It's not about cliques - some people simply use BBO in a different way to you. For instance, I play at tables almost exclusively in set games practicing for tournaments. If I reject you (or anyone else) it is because I'm either waiting for someone who has been disconnected or we have finished and someone has left the table while we are still talking. In either case it is not a reflection on the person's profile or skill level - merely a reflection of how we are using the site.

Can tables be made invisible to all but the people who have planned to play on them?

[sfi]

 Vampyr, on 2016-August-20, 17:28, said:

Can tables be made invisible to all but the people who have planned to play on them?

Probably, but sometimes one of the people doesn't receive the invitation and has to find the table. I may try setting that at some point and see how it behaves.

[barmar]

 Vampyr, on 2016-August-20, 17:28, said:

Can tables be made invisible to all but the people who have planned to play on them?

A table is either visible or invisible.

However, if you know any of the players at the table, you can simply look them up and use the "Join Table" button, even if the table is invisible.

[Kaitlyn S]

I'm starting to solve the issue myself, based on the assumption that if I don't see the message "Seat no longer available" and a refresh shows the seat still available, I assume that the person chose to wait for someone better, which could mean someone he is already friends with. I put a note in his profile "Rejected" so that I won't try to partner that person again. I think this will largely solve the problem because I'm probably trying to partner the same person several times since his profile always looks good to me and I don't remember who clicked "Reject". After a while, I will already know most of the people who are going to click "Reject" so clicking on an empty seat will meet with a much higher chance of success.

Incidentally, if you do not wish to play with me, rather than just leave the table in a huff, let me know and I'll put "reject" in your profile and you'll never see me again which will be much easier for both of us.

In case anyone is interested, I've had a much higher success rate with three people at a table - either I am accepted or someone else gets the seat first. It is those tables that have one person and three locks that have a very low success rate. Many of them have perfect bidding profiles but I rarely get into one of those seats which are usually still open after I refresh. I'm still curious about what exactly those players are looking for. Maybe a couple of them can tell me. If I had nerve, I would ask them by chat but that just seems too intrusive but TBH one day my curiosity will get the best of me. I can't believe that it's an "expert" self rating; if it is, then that player deserves to play with one of the BBO "experts" who can't count that they have 9 tricks in 3NT rather than someone who refuses to call herself an expert because she doesn't think she's good enough to be a bridge playing professional.

EDIT: That last sentence sounds snarky or condescending but I don't mean it that way. My point is that the ratings are pretty useless and if anybody uses that as a reason to reject somebody, then they get what they deserve. I'm thinking of a table I sat at yesterday. My partner left and I called in the lobby for a 2/1 partner and the player who came was "Beginner" with no profile. Expecting to be treated to a barrage of ruff-sluffs, leading into tenaces, and getting to play in forcing bids, I was extremely pleasantly surprised when said "beginner" played better than most of the "advanced" players on this site. In several hands he only did one thing that I could classify as an error (how many of your partners can you say that about?), and we won lots of IMPs despite neither of the opponents being a Beginner or Novice. Most people probably see the "Beginner" label and leave immediately.

[billw55]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-August-21, 11:43, said:

In case anyone is interested, I've had a much higher success rate with three people at a table - either I am accepted or someone else gets the seat first. It is those tables that have one person and three locks that have a very low success rate.

Aha, I see. In this case - only the host is at the table - very often he/she is not actively looking to play. It is quite common for people to just sit around by themselves at a table, ignoring all requests to join, perhaps not even looking at their screen. I have never figured out why they do this, but they do. I do not bother to apply to such tables.

[Vampyr]

 billw55, on 2016-August-22, 06:10, said:

Aha, I see. In this case - only the host is at the table - very often he/she is not actively looking to play. It is quite common for people to just sit around by themselves at a table, ignoring all requests to join, perhaps not even looking at their screen. I have never figured out why they do this, but they do. I do not bother to apply to such tables.

Maybe they were playing and just never closed the table.

If you are playing on a tablet and just close the window, is the table still open?

[barmar]

 Vampyr, on 2016-August-22, 06:18, said:

Maybe they were playing and just never closed the table.

If you are playing on a tablet and just close the window, is the table still open?

Yes. Notice that you can reopen the window and you're still logged in. You need to Logout explicitly, or kill the app.

After a while the server will boot the host from the table. It determines that the host isn't really there by noticing the the table has had too many players join and leave, with no hands played, in a certain period of time (something like 10 or 20 minutes).

[lcsmw]

Is the main bridge club the same tables as take me to the first available seat? If it is, people come and go and your partner may leave shortly after you arrive. I currently don't have a partner on BBO except my wife. When she doesn't play, I usually play with robots and hate it. It also costs some money. The best deal on BBO is the Express free individual tournaments.

[barmar]

 lcsmw, on 2016-September-03, 21:05, said:

Is the main bridge club the same tables as take me to the first available seat? If it is, people come and go and your partner may leave shortly after you arrive.

Yes, that's the main bridge club. You don't have to use that, you can get a list of all the open tables and select where to play by hand. But unless you're looking for specific players that you know, there's not much point in doing it that way.

[Kaitlyn S]

 barmar, on 2016-September-05, 07:28, said:

Yes, that's the main bridge club. You don't have to use that, you can get a list of all the open tables and select where to play by hand. But unless you're looking for specific players that you know, there's not much point in doing it that way.

I don't agree. If I take the first available seat, my partner might play ACOL or the Polish Club (he won't enjoy seeing me either.) If I click on the players' names, I can see their profiles and find a partner that plays something that I also play.

[barmar]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-September-05, 09:43, said:

I don't agree. If I take the first available seat, my partner might play ACOL or the Polish Club (he won't enjoy seeing me either.) If I click on the players' names, I can see their profiles and find a partner that plays something that I also play.

The problem is that the method where you click on people's names and decide whether to play with them is slow. While you're thinking, someone else using HMFAG may be put into the seat.

[ladydoc]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-August-11, 11:29, said:

Hi. I'm fairly new to the site. I play 2/1 with many gadgets but prefer not to play O/E discards or Lavinthal or something bizarre that I haven't heard of. So I walk into the main bridge club, click on names until I find somebody that plays 2/1 that either cards standard or UDCA. 95% of the time, the seat partnering this person has a lock. I click on the seat, and out of maybe 500 attempts, I was only allowed to play once. The one time I was allowed to play, I had a good time, but that hardly makes up for the time that I have wasted clicking on spots and being refused.

Many times I have started my own table and requested a 2/1 partner. 90% of the time I get someone who plays SEF or Polish Club or something else foreign to me and I'm shooting in the dark, especially as very few of the players will even say anything about what they play or how they signal. I think that the "Take me to the first open seat" feature is responsible.

I am wondering if my newness is responsible for me being refused. I looked at my profile and I have a 100% hand completion rate so that isn't the issue. I list myself as Advanced and my listed conventions imply that I have some clue, so that doesn't appear to be the problem, although maybe it is. I refuse to call myself an Expert since I feel an expert is somebody that people might pay to play with, and I definitely don't qualify, although I sometimes play live with my friends with thousands of master points and nobody is unhappy to draw me as a partner (I don't do tournament bridge myself.) I have learned that others classify differently though, most "experts" do not realize that double and correct shows significant extra values. I really hope my self-classification isn't the reason I'm being shunned.

If there is some secret place where past scores are shown, that is not what is causing players to reject me, for the few times I have played with a random partner against two random opponents, my IMP score is usually at least twice theirs.

So can one of the experienced players on the site tell me why (a) all 2/1 players that play std/UDCA have to lock their partner's seat, and (b) when I try to play in that seat, I am only allowed to play 0.2% of the time?

Hi Kaitlyn,
I'd like to play with you, so if you see me on, then ask me.
I can play all your conventions, and also prefer udca.
Also, if you're looking for a nice table, join 2shaina... who is Always pleasant, and even if you kib there she'll invariably stand so you can sit.
Gluck,
Shirley

[OldPlayr]

There is such great potential for an improved "find a table" function, where one could specify the bidding system to be played. It has been suggested many times, but BOO seems to have no interest in improving the current function, which drops one at a random table.