[silvr bull]

I am not trying to flog a dead horse here, but I continue to have great frustrations with the current tournaments on BBO. The Survivor series too frequently rewards Wild A$$ Guesses with totally undeserved tops, and robots do weird things when there is a small change in the bidding or play. Those robot strange changes create an undesirable luck factor for, or against, the players. Decision Point scripts in which all players would work with exactly the same bid and play information would eliminate random guesses or robot quirks, so player skill would determine the player's score. Also, the Decision Point tournaments would be played simultaneously with identical hands and scripts for all players. That would enable players to compare their results directly with their friends (which is not possible now because different players play different hands). Another frustration I have is that some players will slowly and painstakingly play each card to the end, even though they may have had all winners after the first few tricks. In a Decision Point tournament, a player's score would be reduced when they have an easy claim but fail to do so. In addition to claims speeding the game, the players choices for bid and play would be time limited, with more time for difficult decisions and less time for easy ones. Decision Point tournaments would be speedy and painless!

I thought about displaying some of the worst examples, and even annotating sample Decision Point scripts, but I have seen that too many readers want to chop down specific trees rather than consider the forest of gains that Decision Point would produce. Instead of offering examples (which many see as targets of opportunity), I propose that BBO develop the software needed to run a Decision Point script and track the successes (or failures) of each player. In return, I will do the scripts and the Decision Point scores for the sets of hands to run a few Decision Point tournaments, with a Silvr Bull byline for credit (or disgrace). I will also take the heat for the thousands of micro complaints about my specific choices. Despite those complaints, I am convinced that Decision Point would be a very popular format. Better players than me would be happy to create the scripts and Decision Point scores for tournaments they would get credit for. Decision Point tournaments could be created by knowledgeable players in just about any bidding system and language, so players would not be limited to SAYC robot rules or English language. My guess is that within a few months, player demand would cause BBO to transition from the current Daylong and Survivor types to Decision Point tournament formats. How about it, BBO? When can we get started on Decision Point tournaments?

[barmar]

silvr bull, on 2017-March-07, 03:47, said:

I am not trying to flog a dead horse here, but I continue to have great frustrations with the current tournaments on BBO. The Survivor series too frequently rewards Wild A$$ Guesses with totally undeserved tops, and robots do weird things when there is a small change in the bidding or play. Those robot strange changes create an undesirable luck factor for, or against, the players.

Real human opponents and partners also do weird things. There's luck in f2f bridge, depending on which opponents you happen to encounter for different hands.

It sounds like what you want is something like the old "par contests". Those went out of favor decades ago.