[hrothgar]

A couple people are toying with the idea of trying to create a Challenge the Champs type feature. I think that the suggestion is problematic on a number of levels. Most notably, it can be difficult finding hands. In theory, we could grab old Bridge World hands or some such. In practice, I think that bidding contests full of "problem" hands significantly distort the bidding. Plus there's the entire issue of scoring and whether or not people agree with the scores, yada, yada, yada.

I'd like to propose the following alternative:

I think that it would be amusing to have a series of advanced/expert partnerships bid hands using their favorite system. Throughout the process, players would explain why they chose specific bids. The goal isn't to score the highest, but rather to offer rational explanations regarding why a specific bid was chosen.

Ideally, we'll be able to develop a mechanism by which all four partnerships are able to bid the same set of hands as to contrast different philosophies about the bidding. Does anyone know if there is a way to load hands into the partnership bidding room? Alternatively is it possible to make sure different partnerships are using the same seed?

[inquiry]

You can load hands into the partnership bidding room..... The way isn't elegant, but it involves opening the movie, opening a file from the movie, select hand you want to send, press "send". You have to do this one hand at a time. You can play them in order. Of course, for bidding contest, the table host MUST NOT be one of the players.

Maybe someone knows a better way... or maybe fred can modify the software to load predealt hands (might be nice for other reasons).

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Nov 8 2005, 11:35 PM, said:

You can load hands into the partnership bidding room.....

That simplifies things:

From my perspective, I'd love to see the following systems represented

In order of preference

1. "Vanilla" Standard American
2. 2/1 Game force
3. Polish Club
4. Precision
5. Acol
6. MOSCITO

Potentially the most interesting way to work things would be to have three separate tables doing competitive bidding over 12 or so boards.

Thoughts?
Comments?
Volunteers?

[han]

That's a great idea Richard, and I think it is certainly doable using current technology. I think we can start this process somewhat informally, and maybe it can grow into something.

I suggest some of us start saving interesting hands that come up somewhat randomly in the partnership bidding area. I'm often out there bidding hands, so I should be able to select a large enough number of hands within c couple of weeks. Then I can ask Free-hrothgar using Moscito versus awm-Elianna using Standard American to bid 8 or 10 of the hands, and post the auctions plus explanations of the bids here on the forum. Afterwards people can comment on the methods and choice of bids.

By doing it informally we can share being moderator , which shouldn't be too much work to do only once or twice. If this this ever starts running then perhaps Ben could set up a separate forum for "challenge the adequate".

[luke warm]

i think it's a great idea also, but very tough to do... someone would have to 'moderate', if for no other reason than to set the parameters and assign scores.. for example "west deals, south bids 3h if given the chance"

i also wish there's a way to include other partnership systems

[cherdano]

I also think this would be truly fun. I think finding referees shouldn't be a problem -- as soon as a partnership has completed a set, they can volunteer to referee others.

The tough part would be finding good hands. I think making up hands is very bad. What might work well, however, is to just grab those hands from tournaments that resulted in a wide variety of contracts (but having almost unconstested bidding).

Arend

[hrothgar]

Why do we need referees? We aren't having any scores.
There aren't any winners. There aren't any losers.
The entire point is to have an interesting thought/learning exercise.

The main work will be done by the bidders who have to explain their thoughts...
In theory, if we want multiple pairs playing the same hands we'll need to load these from a file, but even this isn't essential to the process.

One quick question:

Assume for the moment that we had four pairs participating:

1 SAYC
1 2/1 GF
1 Precision
1 MOSCITO

How should the pairs work? Would people prefer to have the two strong clubs pairs bidding the sames hands (thereby comparing strong club systems). Alternatively, should the strong club pairs bid different hands allowing the maximum contrast between approaches?

[tysen2k]

luke warm, on Nov 8 2005, 04:44 PM, said:

"west deals, south bids 3h if given the chance"

That's the thing I've always hated about these contests. If you preempt, your opponents never judge wrong and go too high. If your auction goes 1M-2M, they never make the wrong balancing decision. If you open a strong club, your opponents never jump in with nothing...

[luke warm]

yeah, i understand what you mean... the problem is, a strong club pair will (or should) do very well in a competition with no interference... granted, all pairs should do better

[cherdano]

hrothgar, on Nov 9 2005, 03:16 AM, said:

Why do we need referees? We aren't having any scores.
There aren't any winners. There aren't any losers.
The entire point is to have an interesting thought/learning exercise.

By "referee" I just meant the dude that hosts the table and loads up the hands.

Arend

[EricK]

To truly test the systems you really need people to play all 4 hands. This guarantees that the competitive auctions are also system dependant (eg there are hands which might overcall a strong club but not a natural club and this needs to be factored in).

So if you really want to concentrate on the bidding, organise team matches in which the hands don't get played out!

Eric

[Fluffy]

Hey Richard, you forgot french standard, wich would beat all of those .

[Rebound]

This is only a suggestion: what if you were to conduct it as a play-by-email type of thing where the hands are emailed to the participants? They could email each other their bids and cc the moderator, whomever that may be, providing the mod with the opportunity to interject opponent calls as required.

This may be unworkable depending on the desired timeframe from start to finish, but otherwise, wouldn't it just make more sense to organize matches using the competing systems, analyze the bidding and play, and offer them up for discussion?

[Echognome]

I'd be happy to volunteer as a "referee/moderator" for some of it. I also can get my hands on some decent hands from previous contests with "expert" commentary. (In particular commentary on how to bid the hands in Acol, which might be another useful comparison. The commentary is not done by me, but by one of our national or international players.)

I quite like Richard's idea of not scoring the hand, but rather posting commentary and thought process. People can judge themselves the effect of the bidding. I am unsure of whether I should 'select' the boards or just take a set of them and go with it. Anyone interested in being a pair can message me or contact me when i'm on BBO (which is fairly often). In the meantime, I will look through some hands.

[jillybean]

I can upload deals if you need extra bods to do that.

[Echognome]

I've given this some more thought and found what I think to be some good hands. Not british as it turns out. I am open to suggestions for whether there should be any competitive deals or not. I have this grand vision of having a teaching table and being able to give the same "type" of intervention to every pair. I even have the recommended intervention on the deals. So if Jilly wants to co-referee with me, I can send her the files and instructions.

Awaiting feedback on whether people want contested or uncontested auctions.

[hrothgar]

My own thought is that it would be best to have contested auctions.
I think that the easiest way to achieve this end is to have a "realistic" system with two pairs bidding each set of hands "live".

Ideally each pair should be willing to devote some time and effort to ensure that they're prepared for whatever oddities the other side might bring up.

For what its worth, I think hat players often behave very differently in bidding contensts that real life. They know that there is a trick to the hands and they shape their bidding accordingly. Personally, I'd prefer unconstrained/random hands. However, I can understand if people want "interesting" deals.

[mr1303]

I'd like some sort of competition if the competition is realistic.

I.e. we won't have someone bidding 1H showing 0-3 H on

xxx
xxx
xxx
xxxx

since one thing I discovered when attempting to put some interference in for the partnership bidding was that we just made a whole load of penalty doubles and took some telephone numbers.

[Robert]

hello Echognome

Just my two cents worth.

I like both competititive and non competitive auctions. With such a large group of members on this forum, you might want to use one pair to provide their systems' countermeasures. If might be very interesting to see the 'thrust and parry' in the bidding.

Bridge Worlds' Challenge the Champs is a long time favorite of mine.

As far as 'trick' hands in bidding contests, I seem to recall that many strange actions have been taken in some contests and the pair doing them suffered.

I also remember a set of 'rules' that was supposed to help solve some Bridge World problems(25-29HCP balanced hands without a 8 card major fit should either bid slam or stop in a part score was one of the rules 'if' I remember correctly)

I am currently exchanging notes with a WOS type relay player, seeing his methods or various other methods 'in action' would be of major interest to me.

The ACBL bars many systems and some conventions, however, on the net we might be able to loosen up the bidding 'if everyone(most everyone?) agrees.

I have heard a suggestion that a possible solution might be to have an 'unlimited,
no holds barred contest and another with strict limits. I would follow both, however, I strongly suspect that I would read the 'no restrictions' section first.

As long as full disclosure is followed. We could post or e mail the system bids ahead of time to the other pair.

Looking forward to a new bidding addition to the forum 'in any form.'

Regards,
Robert