[qwery_hi]

ACBL speedball directors are useless in penalizing slow play. What is the point of playing speedball if slow play is not penalized? Look at boards 1-3 of the Friday 7pm speedball
on Friday June 24th.

If the software cannot determine the time each player takes to play, it should do so. Why should the onus be on the players to keep calling the director
for slow play?

[barmar]

The point of playing speedball is to finish the tourney in under an hour.

In a f2f game, slow players delay the game, and can delay several tables if they can't make up the time. But in online speedballs, everyone moves when the round is called, even if they haven't finished the hand. So slow players don't delay the game, and there's less need to penalize them.

I don't think I've ever encountered anyone so slow that we had more than about 4 tricks to go when the round has changed. The likely result is almost always obvious to the TD, and the adjusted score always seems fair.

[qwery_hi]

Did you look at the tournament I mentioned? Only 2 tricks were played on board 3 before the round was called, and the opponents took up most of the time on the first two hands. The software already keeps track of time for some of the automated tournaments, why can't it do the same in speedball?

Clearly speedball is a big moneymaker, and Fred and Co. could be wary of making any changes, but the way it is organized today is very much lacking.

barmar, on 2011-June-26, 20:20, said:

The point of playing speedball is to finish the tourney in under an hour.

In a f2f game, slow players delay the game, and can delay several tables if they can't make up the time. But in online speedballs, everyone moves when the round is called, even if they haven't finished the hand. So slow players don't delay the game, and there's less need to penalize them.

I don't think I've ever encountered anyone so slow that we had more than about 4 tricks to go when the round has changed. The likely result is almost always obvious to the TD, and the adjusted score always seems fair.

[barmar]

No, I didn't look at that tournament. Does such slow play really happen often? I can't recall ever starting the 3rd board with less than 4 minutes, except maybe in cases where one of the players was disconnected for a couple of minutes.

[blackshoe]

The issue of slow play delaying the game is, as barmar points out, primarily germane in f2f bridge. But that doesn't mean that slow play isn't a problem online. When the software says "forget this board, move to the next round", the players are deprived of the opportunity to obtain a result based on their playing skill. They get whatever the software (or the TD) decides they get. If one pair is responsible for this, the other pair ought, it seems to me, to get redress. Perhaps they do, I don't know. Possibly the pair at fault should also be penalized, if they are frequently at fault. I sincerely doubt that's ever happening.

[barmar]

You're correct, that doesn't happen. Boards are skipped if there's less than N minutes left in the round when you're about to start them (I think N is 1 or 2, I'm not sure), and the software assigns Average to both sides. If a board is in play when the round is called, it's initially assigned Average, but the TD usually adjusts it to the likely result, which is usually pretty easy if it was almost done. Currently, nothing is done to penalize the slower pair.

The question in my mind is how big a problem is this? As I said above, I've rarely not made it at least 3/4 the way through the last board. Once in a long while I'll have an entire board thrown out, pretty much always because a player got disconnected and we waited too long before requesting a sub. I estimate about 90% of rounds are completed with a minute or more to spare.

But I can understand that if there are habitually slow players, we would like to do something about them, as they degrade the game for everyone they encounter.

[qwery_hi]

You're right in that it is rare that slow play rarely results in a board being thrown out. The way these tournaments are run, there's no protection for the faster side. And the software already keeps track of how much time a player takes in the express tournaments. This code can be adapted to work for speedball also, so why not do it? One other point is that although boards get rarely thrown out, my guess is about 10 percent of the boards are adjusted by the director since they are not completed on time.

barmar, on 2011-June-30, 14:28, said:

You're correct, that doesn't happen. Boards are skipped if there's less than N minutes left in the round when you're about to start them (I think N is 1 or 2, I'm not sure), and the software assigns Average to both sides. If a board is in play when the round is called, it's initially assigned Average, but the TD usually adjusts it to the likely result, which is usually pretty easy if it was almost done. Currently, nothing is done to penalize the slower pair.

The question in my mind is how big a problem is this? As I said above, I've rarely not made it at least 3/4 the way through the last board. Once in a long while I'll have an entire board thrown out, pretty much always because a player got disconnected and we waited too long before requesting a sub. I estimate about 90% of rounds are completed with a minute or more to spare.

But I can understand that if there are habitually slow players, we would like to do something about them, as they degrade the game for everyone they encounter.

[Geoduck2]

barmar, on 2011-June-26, 20:20, said:

The point of playing speedball is to finish the tourney in under an hour.

In a f2f game, slow players delay the game, and can delay several tables if they can't make up the time. But in online speedballs, everyone moves when the round is called, even if they haven't finished the hand. So slow players don't delay the game, and there's less need to penalize them.

I don't think I've ever encountered anyone so slow that we had more than about 4 tricks to go when the round has changed. The likely result is almost always obvious to the TD, and the adjusted score always seems fair.

Maybe the question you should be asking is WHY are they so slow?

[ggwhiz]

There is a flip side too.

The other day our antsy opps called the Director 3 times to complain about our slow play in a round we finished with just under 3 minutes on the clock.

If there was a way to automate the monitoring function, it would sure save the Directors a lot of grief.