[scarletv]

A countdown clock with seconds especially one where the colour changes when a player is behind the time might help players to identify a time problem before there is nothing left to adapt. That might be a nice improvement for the future.

It is great to have different areas at BBO where you can play slow or fast. Players should respect there are different ways to play Bridge as they themselves prefer to. Someone signing up speedball has to play fast, someone signing up a tourney with 7 minutes per board should not complain when he has to wait at the end of the round. Each one has to find the adequate place to play. Players are sometimes extraordinary rude to enforce what they think is convenient.

Who never played on a slow device or with bad internet or a husband in background needing care or any other handicap making you slow at typing and clicking will not understand what might slow down players.

[bluff10]

barmar, on 2016-February-05, 14:08, said:

A big difference between robot bridge and human bridge is that there's only one human at the table, which should speed things up significantly. In a f2f tournament, you need to allow time for the players to sort their hands, all of them to think about their bids and plays, agree on the result, and there will also often be some post mortem discussion. In robot games, none of that happens except for one player thinking (although instead of a post mortem discussion, I'll sometimes look at the results at the other tables). f2f tournaments generally allow 7 minutes per board; with all those time savings, 5 minutes/board seems like it should be more than enough even for a slow player.

And the 8-board non-ACBL robot duplicates allow more than 7 minutes/board -- practically glacial for online bridge.

I'm playing Board #9518 right now, there are still 5 minutes on the Clock and only one player remaining ('lenk'), and he/she is still on Board #1. It seems silly for everyone else to have to wait 5 minutes for someone who has no intention or ability to complete the 8 Boards. Can anything be done about that, or maybe my assumptions that BBO can 'see' what is going on is incorrect?

On the subject of 'averaging', I was NOT advocating for 'averaging' and know it doesn't work on BBO for the reason mentioned above. I was using it to point out that bridge players generally are civilized people, at least those who don't like like playing 'speed' games are civilized (lol), and we should be willing to give a modest grace period to anyone who is already playing the last Board in a set. Heck if we can wait 5 minutes for 'lenz' , then we should be willing to wait 1 minutes for someone who is trying their best to finish. When the Clock strikes zero, just have it flash/pulse 'zero' for 60 seconds (like a count-down warning), or until everyone is finished, whichever occurs first.

Finally you seem to be dismissing the fact there are sometimes delays caused by Robots. You have not commented on whether the software can track these 'delays' and add back time accordingly if its necessary.

p.s. I calculate 30 minutes divided by 8 boards as 3.75 minutes/board, where am i going wrong. Most of the time 3.75 minutes/board is more than sufficient, glacial or not. However, occasionally it would be civilized to have few more seconds as I said in my very first post. [ACBL allows 7 minutes/board to allow for the differences you mentioned.]

[barmar]

Bbradley62, on 2016-February-05, 20:05, said:

It appears to me, and clearly to OP, that 8-board robot dupes get 30 minutes (3.75 minutes per board), not 60 minutes (7.5 per). What are we missing?

Nothing. I clicked on the wrong tourney when I was checking the lengths.

[barmar]

bluff10, on 2016-February-06, 11:32, said:

I'm playing Board #9518 right now, there are still 5 minutes on the Clock and only one player remaining ('lenk'), and he/she is still on Board #1. It seems silly for everyone else to have to wait 5 minutes for someone who has no intention or ability to complete the 8 Boards. Can anything be done about that, or maybe my assumptions that BBO can 'see' what is going on is incorrect?

We used to have it programmed so that the tourney would end if none of the remaining players did anything for a minute or two (I don't remember the actual length), so that someone who starts a tourney and then wanders off like this wouldn't keep everyone waiting. There were complaints, because sometimes people would get interrupted for 5-10 minutes. Their argument was that the people who are impatient for their results should just chill.

So we removed that. Now it only ends the tourney if all the remaining players are disconnected.

Quote

Finally you seem to be dismissing the fact there are sometimes delays caused by Robots. You have not commented on whether the software can track these 'delays' and add back time accordingly if its necessary.

I said that the delays caused by the robots are never more than a second or two, and those are infrequent. I can't recall any hands where there were more than 2 slow bids, and maybe there will be at most 5 slow plays. So if the robots delay 10 seconds per board, that's only 2 minutes in a 12-board tourney.

It generally takes me about 25 minutes to play an ACBL robot duplicate. Am I just a real speed demon, who can't appreciate that some people really need the full hour?

[Bbradley62]

Here is a thread that began a few years ago. http://www.bridgebas...__1#entry771918

Originally, Robot North played hands when he was declarer, rather than having Human South play them. When this change was made, the time limit was raised from 25 to 30. (And as I allude to in that thread, there originally was no "Claim" button.)

It would be interesting to see current data on how many players run out of time on 8-board, 30 minute Robot Dupes. I suspect it's very few. It might be hard to separate those who were actually playing from those who left the same without withdrawing, as OP describes above.

However, I do agree with Phil's suggestion that OP should try Instant Tournaments to be relieved of time pressure.

[bluff10]

Bbradley62, on 2016-February-05, 20:05, said:

It appears to me, and clearly to OP, that 8-board robot dupes get 30 minutes (3.75 minutes per board), not 60 minutes (7.5 per). What are we missing?

barmar, what does 'Clocked Barometer" mean in the description of the tournament?

[barmar]

When a tournament is "clocked", it means that the round clock is enforced strictly -- if the clock runs out while you're in the middle of a board, it's cancelled, averages are assigned to both pairs, and they move to the next round (but if there's a TD, they'll usually adjust to the result that looks likely). In an unclocked tourney, players can take as long as they like, and they move to the next round when all the boards are finished (they're paired up with other pairs that finished around the same time).

In the case of robot tournaments, the entire game is considered a single round.

Barometer means that you can see your running score during the tournament. In human tournaments this just includes the boards from previous rounds, in robot tournaments it includes all boards you've finished.

[bluff10]

Bbradley62, on 2016-February-05, 20:05, said:

It appears to me, and clearly to OP, that 8-board robot dupes get 30 minutes (3.75 minutes per board), not 60 minutes (7.5 per). What are we missing?

barmar, what does 'Clocked Barometer' mean?

I just got timed out again %$#%&@ on #1555 just as I was pushing the Claim button on the last hand. Very annoying, especially because the robots 'thinking' causes me delays. The sooner you get a 'seconds' counter the better. I assume you can't 'see' that people are almost finished, so if that is the case you should automatically give a least 5 seconds grace period.

Would help (others) if the standard instructions about playing when the robot is declarer also mentioned the Clock and the Claim button. I know it has helped me a lot to know the clock is there, just wish it had seconds.

[bluff10]

Bbradley62, on 2016-February-05, 20:05, said:

It appears to me, and clearly to OP, that 8-board robot dupes get 30 minutes (3.75 minutes per board), not 60 minutes (7.5 per). What are we missing?

[barmar]

bluff10, did you forget to type something in reply to the message that you quoted?

I already answered BBradley62 earlier, saying that I made a mistake.