[helene_t]

 barmar, on 2012-January-20, 16:12, said:

And the 5-10 seconds per board it will save will not help with pairs that are habitually 2-3 minutes behind. The problem is that they take 10-20 seconds for most of their bids and plays.

Yes but a trick that can reduce the delay more substantially is to avoid post-mortems. If the TD (or the clock) announces "you should be playing the last board now" or maybe even "you should be playing the n'th board now" it could help slow tables realize that they are behind so now is a good time stopping time-waste, in particular post-mortems.

[Trinidad]

 helene_t, on 2012-January-25, 09:50, said:

Yes but a trick that can reduce the delay more substantially is to avoid post-mortems. If the TD (or the clock) announces "you should be playing the last board now" or maybe even "you should be playing the n'th board now" it could help slow tables realize that they are behind so now is a good time stopping time-waste, in particular post-mortems.

I have been timing the post mortems at my table at the club for a while. I never start a post mortem myself and rarely participate, which should only shorten them. Nevertheless, on average they still take more than a minute per board.

Rik

[pran]

 gordontd, on 2012-January-25, 09:11, said:

I can't argue with someone who has 30 years experience working with Bridgemates.

Don't be silly.

Doesn't it occur to you that my 30 years experience neccessarily must include both pre-Bridgemate and with-Bridgemate periods in order for a comparison to be possible? (I began using Bridgemate in 2007 and was soon astonished how my life as TD became easier)

[gordontd]

 pran, on 2012-January-25, 16:56, said:

Don't be silly.

Doesn't it occur to you that my 30 years experience neccessarily must include both pre-Bridgemate and with-Bridgemate periods in order for a comparison to be possible? (I began using Bridgemate in 2007 and was soon astonished how my life as TD became easier)

Then I have rather more experience with Bridgemates than do you, and my impression does not accord with yours.

[aguahombre]

So, you agree to disagree whether the Bridgemates speed up and/or simplify your directing job. Could the difference possibly be in how effeciently they are being used and how each of you has educated the players on its use?

Out here in the West, they are used a lot...Some Bridgemates, some BridgePads. Even lifelong party bridge players seem to pick up the idea quickly and accept their use, with very little need for the TD to unscrew things himself after the first few rounds.

Directors' disabling the comparision function of the remote units certainly reduces post mortim time waste between hands; and this is understood by the players.

[Xiaolongnu]

Location: Singapore, subset of Zone 6, the PABF or APBF region.
Rank: Club Director.
Objective: Give my views and asking for opinions.
Conditions: Any views whether compliments or criticisms are welcome, most of you are more experienced than I am and I am happy to take pointers. I could take strong views so there is no need to be politically correct with me (:

Views about the OP: I would rule that a pair who failed to stay for the late board, if without a valid reason, will get A-, if with a valid reason "bigger than bridge" (someone here said this but I forgot who ), he gets A+. An A might be given if the reason is somewhere between acceptable and not, I can't think of one offhand, at the discretion of the Director. A slow play penalty might be imposed to anyone whose slow play caused this situation. For example EW could not stay without a good reason. Under neutral conditions, 60/40 NS, ok, I mean A6040. If NS was guilty of slow play, (in the opinion of the Director), I rule 50/40. Note that the second variation does not really involve a PP, it is more of acknowledging NS as partly at fault, and the result could have been diff from a PP, for example if NS session average is more than 60%. The rationale, logic and intuition behind it is that the Director had "already managed to salvage the situation, but it is the player who failed to cooperate with the Director's plan" so the refusal is sort of an infraction making the refuser an offending side and therefore at least partly at fault.

Views about late boards in general: I believe that late boards and the AWOL of them should be solely the discretion of the Director, who will take into account all the situational and operational implications instead of stereotyping it as a standard operating procedure. Yes this assumes that the Director could be trusted, but isn't that an unwritten underlying assumption of our code of conduct? That we have full control of the field at all times.

Views about slow play and tactics to prevent them: Is it justifiable to assign the sitting pairs to the faster players and delegate to them the task of maintaining the tempo, ready to rule 40/60 against them in the event of any slow play? I would like to know some views about this. There is a lot of dispute here about sitting pairs, who "should" be the sitting pairs, who "deserves" them, to what extent does this "privilege" comes with "responsibility" and what type. There is no hard and fast rule, and justifications by the laws are trivial, not only are sitting pairs primarily responsible (in other words, offending = A-) for maintaining the conditions of play, but the Director could always bring in 81 and "delegate his duties to assistants" while supervising them. I just would like to know what is a more efficient way of approaching this.

I came across a similar case recently. North went toilet because he had a stomachache or something along that line, only returned half a round later. While North was away, East on her own accord went to find a substitute player for North, without the permission of North nor the Director. (This is of course illegal in bridge, but socially acceptable in Singapore, we try to keep things informal.) South stated that he does not wish to play with the substitute, as he was preparing and training for a serious game with his partner. When the round was called, the Director ruled a late board. At the end of the session, East refused to play the late board, claiming that South's refusal to play with the substitute was being rude to him, and she wanted to teach him a lesson, so she purposely don't want to play the late board. It occurs to me that this is an extreme case of the OP. I was not on duty then, but had I been, it seemed a clear cut 60/40 to NS, probably with a disciplinary penalty to East. What do you all think?

[gordontd]

 aguahombre, on 2012-January-25, 17:36, said:

So, you agree to disagree whether the Bridgemates speed up and/or simplify your directing job.

No. I'm a fan of Bridgemates, and was a director at the first club in this country to use them regularly, initially as an experiment. I've directed over a thousand events with them since 2005 (if I remember correctly).

I'm simply disputing Pran's rather wild assertion that "Bridgemate typically reduce scoring errors with a factor of at least ten". Even allowing for the fact that things are always done better in Norway than anywhere else, this seems most unlikely to me - unless Norway previously had a terrible record of poorly entered travellers?

[barmar]

 gordontd, on 2012-January-26, 03:03, said:

I'm simply disputing Pran's rather wild assertion that "Bridgemate typically reduce scoring errors with a factor of at least ten". Even allowing for the fact that things are always done better in Norway than anywhere else, this seems most unlikely to me - unless Norway previously had a terrible record of poorly entered travellers?

Are you disputing that they reduce scoring errors, or just arguing over the factor?

Around here, scoring errors with travelers aren't all that common to begin with -- maybe a board or two every few games. The most common type of error, I think, is people writing on the wrong line of the traveler. And once one table does this, it often messes up the whole rest of that board (with a normal Mitchell movement, you just get in the habit of writing on the line above the last one filled in, without checking the row numbers). This type of error is almost impossible with BridgeMates.

Errors transcribing from the traveler to the computer happen sometimes, but not as much as these.

One advantage travelers do have, though, is that if a score is entered wrong (e.g. an EW score is put in the NS column), a later table will often notice it and bring it to the director's attention (we've finally trained our club members not to just put a "?" next to the score).

[gordontd]

 barmar, on 2012-January-26, 22:54, said:

Are you disputing that they reduce scoring errors, or just arguing over the factor?

I said earlier that "In my experience about as many errors are introduced by scores being entered with the wrong declarer as those that are avoided by incorrect arithmetic or illegible handwriting", but I wouldn't have bothered quibbling with Pran had it not been such an extreme difference in perception.

 barmar, on 2012-January-26, 22:54, said:

Around here, scoring errors with travelers aren't all that common to begin with -- maybe a board or two every few games.

There are probably more that aren't noticed - one thing we've discovered is that the amount of information available on the web after events means that more errors are discovered that might well have been overlooked in the past.

 barmar, on 2012-January-26, 22:54, said:

One advantage travelers do have, though, is that if a score is entered wrong (e.g. an EW score is put in the NS column), a later table will often notice it and bring it to the director's attention (we've finally trained our club members not to just put a "?" next to the score).

With Bridgemates, later players also often notice surprising scores and bring them to the attention of the dirctor, and most software also flags up potential errors of this sort.

[Vampyr]

 barmar, on 2012-January-26, 22:54, said:

The most common type of error, I think, is people writing on the wrong line of the traveler. And once one table does this, it often messes up the whole rest of that board (with a normal Mitchell movement, you just get in the habit of writing on the line above the last one filled in, without checking the row numbers).

Wouldn't it be easier to use the sort of travellers where you write on the first line in the first round, the second line in the second round, and so on?

[Zelandakh]

 Xiaolongnu, on 2012-January-26, 00:57, said:

Views about the OP: I would rule that a pair who failed to stay for the late board, if without a valid reason, will get A-, if with a valid reason "bigger than bridge" (someone here said this but I forgot who ), he gets A+.

Are you seriously suggesting that a pair who played too slowly to complete their boards but had a "bigger than bridge" reason for not staying should receive an Ave+? This strikes me as ridiculous - under what Law are you making this ruling? If I play so slowly that I only complete half of the boards but have such a reason for not staying, can I get Ave+ on all of the remaining boards?

On the subject of BridgeMates, I am amazed how many errors I have seen in the online results at the club where I am now playing (which uses them). I find it very difficult to believe there were ever so many errors with pen and paper travellers.

[blackshoe]

The clubs around here don't use travellers, they use pickup slips. You see the following: score on the wrong side, score reflects the wrong vulnerability, pair number(s) missing, board number(s) missing, score "verified" by an east or west who clearly didn't actually verify anything, but just initialed the slip, slip not initialed at all, wrong pair number(s), wrong board number(s), score for a NT contract not including the "extra" ten points for the first trick (e.g, 3NT making 6: +480), score for a suit contract including that extra ten points, score incorrectly calculated. That's off the top of my head. I could come up with more.

Some time ago, I directed a two section club game (7 and 9 tables, iirc) and made the mistake of playing in the smaller section to make up a table. The pickup slips in that section were fine. It took me more than two hours to sort out the slips in the other section enough to post a reasonable result, and the club owner later went over them and decided I'd made two or three mistakes doing that. At least nine of the errors mentioned above appeared on those slips, sometimes multiple errors on one slip. I think there was one table that had only one error in their slips. All of the rest were a mess. Bottom line, if there's a way to screw it up, club players will find it. This will be as true of Bridgemates as it is of pencil and paper.

[mjj29]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-January-27, 09:03, said:

Are you seriously suggesting that a pair who played too slowly to complete their boards but had a "bigger than bridge" reason for not staying should receive an Ave+? This strikes me as ridiculous - under what Law are you making this ruling? If I play so slowly that I only complete half of the boards but have such a reason for not staying, can I get Ave+ on all of the remaining boards?

I assume that whether you would get Av+, Av= or Av- would depend on whether you were at fault for the original delay. I'm certainly of the opinion that if I'm delayed by a clearly slower other pair such that I'm no way at fault I should be able to have my Av+ if I can't stay past the otherwise end of the event. In club bridge, of course, it's rarely clear that one pair or the other is 'clearly at fault' and hence the most likely assigned result is Av= both ways.

[blackshoe]

In club bridge in North America, my guess is the most likely assigned result is "not played", and it doesn't matter who was at fault or who couldn't stay for a late play.

[bluejak]

In my view there were certain types of mistakes when BridgeMates were not used, and there are certain different types of mistakes with BridgeMates being used. To suggest either group is ten times as frequent as the other I find completely and literally incredible - I really doubt twice as much.

To suggest that people who like non-Barometer methods of play should play Barometer because people in other countries like it I find fairly ridiculous. One might just as well suggest that because people in England like Mitchell pairs that people in Norway and Iceland should follow the English example - surely you can see that is ridiculous? A little tolerance for different methods of playing would be nice.

My experience of late plays is that they are unheard-of in some places and normal in others. I think that clubs should work on the basis of custom & practice as to whether they follow the practice of allowing them, requiring them, making them an option, or not at all.

It is important that a club that uses Late Plays should adopt a proper policy on the subject, as to whether they are optional, what happens if a pair has two late plays, and so on.

[pran]

 bluejak, on 2012-February-05, 20:23, said:

In my view there were certain types of mistakes when BridgeMates were not used, and there are certain different types of mistakes with BridgeMates being used. To suggest either group is ten times as frequent as the other I find completely and literally incredible - I really doubt twice as much.

To suggest that people who like non-Barometer methods of play should play Barometer because people in other countries like it I find fairly ridiculous. One might just as well suggest that because people in England like Mitchell pairs that people in Norway and Iceland should follow the English example - surely you can see that is ridiculous? A little tolerance for different methods of playing would be nice.

My experience of late plays is that they are unheard-of in some places and normal in others. I think that clubs should work on the basis of custom & practice as to whether they follow the practice of allowing them, requiring them, making them an option, or not at all.

It is important that a club that uses Late Plays should adopt a proper policy on the subject, as to whether they are optional, what happens if a pair has two late plays, and so on.

I have referred to my own experiences and find it ridiculous that other people declare my experiences ridiculous just because they have different experiences (or maybe even just from theoretical considerations?).

I do not suggest that other players should change their accustomed methods of playing, but I mentioned barometer because somebody might find our experience with this interesting.

Curiously the first reference in Norway to barometer seems to be in a TD Guide of 1945: "Our neighbours, the Swedes run some strange series event with up to 80 pairs in a group. These events are not to be recommended for several reasons and it is very odd that they have not come up with anything better." The author continues giving all his reasons why barometer should not be deployed.

Well, as we know time has changed. According to a TD Guide from 1959 barometer appears to having become "the" standard for pairs events, and today one can hardly expect any response to an invitation for a non-barometer events for pairs.

[gordontd]

I ran a monthly barometer pairs at my club for about a year, but we've had to stop it because the numbers it attracted were so low.

We also have a few national events that are barometer in the final stages. These are well-received but not without problems, the greatest of which is that information is overheard from other tables due to boards being played at the same time.

[pran]

 gordontd, on 2012-February-06, 01:59, said:

[...]
We also have a few national events that are barometer in the final stages. These are well-received but not without problems, the greatest of which is that information is overheard from other tables due to boards being played at the same time.

Yes, that is a problem (of course also with Howell or Mitchell, but more immediately with bareometer).
Or I should rather say was a problem until players learned to keep quiet: The automatic PP when players' "loud" comments destroy normal play at another table has demonstrable effects, and such problems are now extrememly scarce.