[Al_U_Card]

I have participated in 3 or 4 of the "fake" tourneys. I am not a gambler and do not enjoy losing my money at whatever rate. I guess there must be some thrill attached to this practice but I compare this to my limited experience with slot machines in Reno 10 years ago........BORING!

The bidding and play were annoying and tortuous. There being no interaction with the "bots" limited my enjoyment of the social aspect of the game. Getting good hands and winning made me feel unworthy and getting no hands and poor results left me frustrated.

I am glad for those that enjoy this as it's allure escapes me, other than for those that feel they can make some money from it. Good luck to them.

[Gerben42]

Quote

I have participated in 3 or 4 of the "fake" tourneys. I am not a gambler and do not enjoy losing my money at whatever rate. I guess there must be some thrill attached to this practice but I compare this to my limited experience with slot machines in Reno 10 years ago........BORING!

The bidding and play were annoying and tortuous. There being no interaction with the "bots" limited my enjoyment of the social aspect of the game. Getting good hands and winning made me feel unworthy and getting no hands and poor results left me frustrated.

I am glad for those that enjoy this as it's allure escapes me, other than for those that feel they can make some money from it. Good luck to them.

Well everyone is entitled to their opinion. No one is forcing you to play money bridge, you know. I for one like it. On the other hand I really dislike slot machines.

[barmar]

If you want to compare MBT to a casino game, I think the best analogy would be blackjack or video poker, not slot machines. With craps, slot machines, roulette, lottery, etc. you just pay your money, make a guess in some cases, and someone tells you whether you won or lost -- there's little thinking or strategy involved (the only choice you generally have is whether to bet on something with high or low payout, e.g. a color versus a single number in roulette).

With MBT, as in blackjack and video poker, you actually get to participate throughout the hand. And in the case of MBT, I don't think the odds are artificially stacked against the player like they are in blackjack. BBO doesn't need to do that, since they get their money upfront, you're not playing against the house.

Since everyone is playing with the same robots, the better players SHOULD tend to win. On any given game it depends heavily on the cards, but these should even out over time.

[uday]

I'm waiting for some more machines to come on board. Once they do, i'll try longer mb tourneys ( increases odd that everyone holds same hcp ). This will be an easy thing to try, tho I don't know how long a human will want to play against robots . . 25 mins seemed to be a good balance between time and hands, but we'll try 45 and see what happens.

And when I find some cycles we'll experiment with more duplicate-oriented scoring methods. I'm concerned that Westerners won't understand or appreciate Russian scoring but we'll try it.

(I excised some of the usual rancour from this thread, fwiw)

[ccccwwww]

just play same number of boards like 15-20, everyone (together with bot p) gets same HCPs and ZAR points on each board

[Sigi_BC84]

uday, on May 18 2006, 08:04 PM, said:

I'm concerned that Westerners won't understand or appreciate Russian scoring but we'll try it.

???

Why should "Westerners" not be able to understand Russian Scoring? Because of the name? It's only called "Russian" because it was invented by some Russians (Ukrainians if I'm not mistaken), apart from that it's not Russian at all :-).

The plain explanation most people should be able to understand would be: "you are playing against the average score expected for your combined HCP holding".

--Sigi

[Elianna]

uday, on May 18 2006, 10:04 AM, said:

I'm concerned that Westerners won't understand or appreciate Russian scoring but we'll try it.

Many of the 299ers who play in my game don't understand what matchpoints are, but we still use them.

I don't know what's hard to understand about Russian scoring, but even if people are unfamiliar with it, a short little thing that pops up when people enter Moneybridge events should be sufficient.

-Elianna

[kfgauss]

Given the technology we now have, wouldn't comparing with par be better than Russian scoring? This should be fairly easy to implement.

Or perhaps better, pseudo-par, which is just like par but contracts which are down 1 are not doubled (this better approximates real life).

Andy

[jchiu]

How do you determine whether a grand slam that needs a 3-2 trump break is par? Even if you assign a weighted average to each case, the distortions from an unbiddable contract that happens to make on a lucky lie will outweigh the gain in fairness. I would rather compare duplicate style against four GiBs, although this is really computationally intensive.

[barmar]

How about a team game format? This might work better for the one-on-one money games. Instead of playing at the same table as your opponent (like rubber bridge), each of you plays with 3 GIBs, one human sitting West and the other sitting South. At the end you IMP the scores and the winnings could be decided on a VP scale.

[kfgauss]

jchiu, on May 22 2006, 01:40 AM, said:

How do you determine whether a grand slam that needs a 3-2 trump break is par? Even if you assign a weighted average to each case, the distortions from an unbiddable contract that happens to make on a lucky lie will outweigh the gain in fairness. I would rather compare duplicate style against four GiBs, although this is really computationally intensive.

I mean double-dummy par, so (barring a good sacrifice) the grand slam will be par if the 3-2 split is there, and presumably the small slam will be par if it isn't there. This has the benefit of being rather easy to calculate.

Nothing is perfect, but this sounds better to me than russian scoring (which sounds better to me than total points). I'm not sure whether I'd prefer to be scored against (pseudo-)par or a table of gibs. A table of human experts would surely be best, but I'd feel uneasy taking hands from old sources for money bridge.

Andy

[jchiu]

I would think players would hate to lose 13 IMPs every time they are in 4M+2 when everything is working. For instance, the following hand I watched today in the Cayne vs. Garozzo match

Scoring: IMP

Possibly modified.

---

It takes a 3-2 ♦ break, a 3-2 ♠ break (approximately), and the ♥A onsides to make twelve tricks. I would hate to find this "lucky" position to lose 13 IMPs against some kind of pseudo-par.