[trefl44]

Last month I joined a few private bridge clubs on BBO. In general I am very happy I play tournaments there, the game level, the atmosphere are more than expected . But I have encountered a major problem with one of them, and it is strictly related to the personality and manners of the TD. I know - you can say: "leave it, go somewhere else". But I like everything: the time of the day, the partners/opponents, the level of the game, you name it... The only thing is the actions of a person in charge that I have problems with.

These are some of the issues:
1. you cannot challenge his decisions, if you do - you are expelled for life,
2. you cannot argue with him, if you do - see #1,
3. whenever there is a discussion in the tournament chat, he is either patronizing or rude,
4. you cannot be late at a start of the tournament, if you do - you are expelled for a week, at least,
5. you cannot have any connectivity problems, if you do - the same as #4,
6. TD arbitrarily sets the number of players participating on a given day (there are over 1200 members, the maximum number of lucky players allowed = 120, sometimes 100)
7. One day, TD did not show up, and there was a bunch of players on a reservation list ready to start so I started chatting with two of them. Apparently, there was a problem with in the past, he was suspended or something 3 years ago.
I understand, TDs are volunteers, they spend their private time allowing others to have a good time. But this man evidently strives to exercise his power while directing.

So my question is this. Do we need something like an appeal/review committee that monitors and assists TDs to do the best possible job and the BBO members to have the chance to continue playing with a group of friends even if there were some (minor) problems in the past?

[Bbradley62]

 trefl44, on 2014-February-24, 16:44, said:

I understand, TDs are volunteers, they spend their private time allowing others to have a good time. But this man evidently strives to exercise his power while directing.

So my question is this. Do we need something like an appeal/review committee that monitors and assists TDs to do the best possible job and the BBO members to have the chance to continue playing with a group of friends even if there were some (minor) problems in the past?

Presuming that the TD is also the tournament organizer, your "group of friends" would not even exist unless he had created this club. If you don't like the way he runs things, create your own club and invite your 1200 friends to join.

I applaud TD for Issue #4! I hope the penalty is one week for the first offense, one month for the second, etc.

As for Issue #6, TD appears to be limiting the game to a size that he thinks he can reasonably handle. If there are consistently more players wanting to play, maybe some of you should volunteer to be co-directors on some sort of rotating basis to allow more people to play. Alternatively, the club manager should limit club membership.

[barmar]

Are these free or pay tournaments? BBO mostly has a hands-off approach to free tourneys -- it takes really eggregious behavior for someone to lose this privilege.

[trefl44]

These are free tournaments - for one East European language speaking players, basically.

[helene_t]

It is really stressful to be TD. When I was TDing alone I always limited the number of tables to 25-30 which is much less than most tourneys, and I tried to simplify things by saying "this is an indy so you have no agreements to alert - please don't expect opps to alert anything either". This reduced the number of cheating allegations and other ethical issues. Still, I found that I was so overloaded with routine things like finding substitutes that there wasn't time for handling adjustments and ethical issues in a professional way.

If you want to run a tourney in a reasonably professional way while having a table/TD ratio at 50 or even 100 as many tourneys have, you have to show absolutely zero tolerance for for people who get stuck, make multiple TD calls, keep chatting you privately about things you know already etc.

Conversely, if you want the TD to tolerate things like that you have the choice between
A: absolute chaos. You can spend minutes waiting for slow players to come back or be subbed, or for the TD to arrive. Don't be surprises to get "Ave" because of boards that can't be played because the TD doesn't have time to decide when to sub.
B: a much lower number of tables. I wouldn't take more than 10 tables, maybe even less, if I was expected to be nice to everyone while serious at the same time
C: a much higher number of TDs. It might be necessary to charge for the tourney so that you can pay the TDs.

[barmar]

Thanks for the perspective from the other side, Helene. I don't think players always appreciate what things are like at the receiving end of the "Director" button.

[trefl44]

I have no problem with your and Helene's replies. Don't take me wrong, as a "brick and mortar" bridge club director I understand all efforts the BBO TD's put into efficiently running tournaments days in days out and I appreciate it very much! But my main frustration comes from the fact that a TD has the power and, to my mind, exercises it freely to ban an individual for life for mostly minor and sometimes innocent actions! Thank you!

[barmar]

If you feel that a particular tournament organizer is abusing their privilege, send mail to abuse@bridgebase.com. I'm not guaranteeing that anything will be done, but we certainly can't take action if we don't know about it.

But you get what you pay for. In ACBL tourneys, the TDs are certified ACBL tournament directors who are under our direct supervision. Similarly, EBU tournaments use certified EBU TDs (one of whom is a foremost expert on the Laws of Duplicate Bridge).

[trefl44]

Yes, we play online (BBO) because is free, thank BBO, thank you Fred. For me and for all my friends here in Canada and North America playing bridge on BBO is the one of the most fantastic things that happened to the bridge community at large, worldwide.
What I am concerned with is the fact I have discovered lately that the free tournaments organizers/managers/directors have and in some cases exercise absolute and totally non-democratic power on the tournament members. And that I cannot accept, not just me - many, if not majority of the group(s) in question. Would it be possible to have a few members named and registered with BBO and within a specific tournament to act as an appeal/review committee? These are very well established groups (one of them I am referring to has over 1200 players registered). The problems I described before are not new. People do not complain because they either don't know how to or they are afraid of possible negative consequences.

This is nothing to do with the TD's certification (maybe it is, but not necessarily related to the Laws), more - in my mind - with maintaining and promote an open, democratic and friendly culture of BridgeBase online !

[barmar]

 trefl44, on 2014-February-26, 19:17, said:

What I am concerned with is the fact I have discovered lately that the free tournaments organizers/managers/directors have and in some cases exercise absolute and totally non-democratic power on the tournament members. And that I cannot accept, not just me - many, if not majority of the group(s) in question. Would it be possible to have a few members named and registered with BBO and within a specific tournament to act as an appeal/review committee?

It's their club, they set the rules, we don't. Vote with your feet -- if you don't like the way they run their club, don't play there.

P.S. Why do you keep posting messages with just a quote and no reply, and then the reply in the next message? We used to have a confusing "Add Reply" button that was blamed, but I fixed it a couple of months ago.