slow play slow bidding and general slow playing
#1
Posted 2020-January-06, 10:17
I find this especially true at casual tables and for players who are listed as advanced or expert.
This is now just frustrating, but is also rude and makes me want to find another Bridge On Line venue.
#2
Posted 2020-January-06, 15:55
The bidding goes 1N from North (15-17), passed out. As East, you lead 5♥, dummy playing the K and the remaining cards as shown. Dummy leads 4♣ to your K. You play standard signals, the 3♥ probably attitude and 2♣ probably count. What do you play now?
You figure partner must have 6-8 high card points from the bidding, given declarer has 15-17.
You don't know who has the 2♥ (this is a mandatory falsecard situation for any knowledgeable declarer), so you don't know for sure if partner has Q♥ or not. The only holding consistent with having the Q would be Q32, whereas any holding with 3 or 4 out of J873 is also possible, so chances are partner does not have the Q.
If partner has one high spade, a spade lead isn't helpful and might hurt, though if partner has both high spades, a spade lead looks good.
Partner can't have AT♣; declarer wouldn't have played clubs in that case, but partner could have one of those.
If partner has A♦, a diamond lead won't hurt as declarer has a spade entry (since partner can't have A♦ AND AK♠) and a club entry to lead diamonds through partner twice. If partner has Q♦, with or without the J, you might need the diamond lead to set up diamonds before declarer runs his tricks in a black suit. If partner has only J♦, declarer also has 2 entries to run the finesse twice. You can't lose the K♦ by leading diamonds because partner without a high diamond would have two entries to lead both red suits.
Partner having only 6-8 points, he is more likely to hold one useful diamond card than both useful spade cards, so it's best to lead a small diamond.
If you can run through all that analysis in your head in less than two minutes, you're a much better bridge player than me. Sitting in front of computer waiting for someone else for two minutes is a long time, but if you're trying to play well, you're going to need that kind of time at some point on most hands.
If you're playing fast, chances are high that you're playing a good deal worse than you could be.
#3
Posted 2020-January-06, 18:16
Edit: and as an aside, people complaining at the table that it's slow is more often than not making the problem worse.
#4
Posted 2020-January-07, 09:48
manudude03, on 2020-January-06, 18:16, said:
The OP is clearly talking about BBO, not face-to-face bridge (they mention player levels and "another online venue"), so I've moved the thread to the General BBO Forum.
#5
Posted 2020-January-07, 21:29
barmar, on 2020-January-07, 09:48, said:
I know. The point is that bridge online is almost always faster than 6.5 minutes per board. I don't have any hard data, but tonight, I was getting practice with my partner and taking it very seriously, and we did 36 ish boards in 3 hours, something which would never happen in real life.
#6
Posted 2020-January-08, 08:29
manudude03, on 2020-January-07, 21:29, said:
A six board TCR90 tournament usually seems to take about 31-32 minutes, or slightly longer if that is necessary to make me miss the Goulash tournament
#8
Posted 2020-January-10, 14:07
#9
Posted 2020-January-12, 23:12
Basically, when you're playing online, you're often multitasking. But f2f you're single-minded on the game.
#11
Posted 2020-January-13, 13:49
kenimler, on 2020-January-06, 10:17, said:
Many Scottish experts regularly complain about slow play. I'm a slow player but compared to some of them, I'm greased lightning. The tortoises seem to believe their reveries are justified by difficult problems that require profound analysis. Tanks by other players are just time-wasting
Bridge would be more enjoyable, if every call and play were timed with the equivalent of chess-clocks. This would help the director adjudicate cases that involve breaks-in-tempo. Also, when a table exceeded a time-limit, it would ensure that the correct pair were penalized. A mobile-phone or Bridge-mate could easily be adapted to do this.
Even more drastic: change Bridge-rules so that
- A player must wait before each call or play for a set period (say 5 secs).
- He must complete his call or play within a further short interval (say 5 secs).
- Before the dealer's first call there would be a longer set pause for players to evaluate their hands and plan the auction (say 30 secs).
- Before declarer's first play play from dummy there would be a longer mandatory pause (say 60 secs),
Slower Bridge-players (like me) would learn to adapt by utilizing other players' thinking-time (as chess-players do).
BBO could easily experiment with such a protocol, to establish appropriate timing and to assess player reaction.
#12
Posted 2020-January-13, 14:37
nige1, on 2020-January-13, 13:49, said:
Even more drastic: change Bridge-rules so that
- A player must wait before each call or play for a set period (say 5 secs).
- He must complete his call or play within a further short interval (say 5 secs).
- Before the dealer's first call there would be a longer set pause for players to evaluate their hands and plan the auction (say 30 secs).
- Before declarer's first play play from dummy there would be a longer mandatory pause (say 60 secs),
Slower Bridge-players (like me) would learn to adapt by utilizing other players' thinking-time (as chess-players do).
BBO could easily experiment with such a protocol, to establish appropriate timing and to assess player reaction.
I agree with your basic point but am skeptical about the proposed implementation. I think that online play like BBO could implement better protocols than this, in particular hiding think time from other players by a combination of random delays and context sensitive (not fixed) timeouts (I made a post about this in the discussion topic about online laws).
#13
Posted 2020-January-13, 17:55
pescetom, on 2020-January-13, 14:37, said:
Your proposals are fine. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
BBO is an ideal environment to experiment with promising protocols, automatically collecting reliable statistics.