[Gerardo]

there is none. Punishment for leaving kicks in after all players bid once.

[Tola18]

sceptic, on Aug 9 2006, 09:34 PM, said:

what about for stability of players staying at a table, if someone leaves 3 tables in 20 minutes he is auto barred from sitting at a table for two hours or even an hour

this may help keep people at a table, one problem solved

Yes, something like this. It must be easy to achieve for the programmer, and would stop the most apparent abusers.

I second this proposal.

[brianshark]

Regarding finding good matches, I find myself rarely playing in the MBC these days. I do sometimes when I want a relaxed game. And I don't expect much of my opps and p (though occasionally I play with fairly good players there).

If I want a serious game, I'll almost always:
-Find/Start a Teams Match (the standard in them is usually higher than the MBC average standard)
-Find a paid tourney (hit and miss - but I have a few favourites)
-Enter some of the BBO teams leagues (great games there)
-Play with GIB (good practice, very solid and doesn't make much mistakes)
-Consult my friends list


Regarding stability of players, I don't think that as long as a player is willing to finish a hand, that leaving after 1 board and going elsewhere is necessarily that bad. The pull of the MBC is primarily that it's convenient and you aren't tied down. If you don't like your opps, or your regular p comes online, you can leave. I think if you want stable games, join teams games and tourneys. I don't like people leaving in the middle of a hand in the MBC either, but it's not that a big deal, doesn't happen often, and regulating against it is unnecessary imo.


Regarding players ranking their peers, this is a bad idea imo for the simple reason that I would only trust very good experts (probably the top 5-10% of BBO populace), to actually be good enough to read the deal, see your perspective, and evaluate how optimal or sub-optimal, how lucky or unlucky, etc, your play actually was. The rest would be too temperamental, too focused on the outcome, or simply not good enough to see who made what mistake, to evaluate properly how good or bad a player is.

[Trysalot]

I couldn't help LOL as I read all the posts in this thread because not one person came up with this simple and very effective solution for players leaving social tables in the middle of the hand that would be easy for BBO to implement.

My guess is that none of the previous posters play money bridge games. But I do and so here is my suggestion for Fred and Uday to consider.

Have the setup of the social tables in the main bridge club and, if the ones running them like the idea, the tables in the public and private social bridge clubs include the money bridge table feature that the "back" (leave) button is disabled and at the end of each hand the system puts up the selection box "play another hand?". Click on "yes" to stay or "no" to leave.

The difference of course would be in the "no" answer. In money bridge games, if one human player says "no" the table closes. If one human player waits too long to make a selection, the table closes. For the social tables the "no" click or the no action within the allotted number of seconds would have to result in only that player being removed from the table by the system so that the table remains open with the other players remaining in place and waiting for a replacement player to join the game. With this alteration to the setup the problem is solved. Nobody can leave the table while a hand is in the process of being bid and played.**

**The one exception would of course be the present arrangement that a player who has pre-registered (for an individual or with a partner for a pairs game) and paid for a tournament with an entry fee is automatically taken by the system from the social table and dropped into that tournament just before start time. It has not happened to me in a long time so I don't remember if the system puts a message to the table explaining why the player has left. If it doesn't, then that should be added to the new social table setup because many times at a social table the players don't join and say on chat line "just a couple, system will soon be moving me to tourney".

[1eyedjack]

sceptic, on Oct 25 2006, 09:49 AM, said:

Hm, I wonder why no one thought of that great idea

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?

If you want to leave mid hand there is nothing to stop you just closing application, then reboot application if you want to continue elsewhere.

Personally I do not find bailers to be much of a problem, so mostly I just watch these discussions from the sidelines.

[jillybean]

cardsharp, on Aug 4 2006, 09:04 AM, said:

My 9-year-old nephew, a true novice, finds it very difficult to find games in the MBC. The 'Help find me a game' button just appears to drop him into a game with advanced and private rated players, which is no good for anyone.

On the upside, he does like playing Minibridge (which is more suitable at this point) and enjoys telling all the advanced players that they do not have to bid, just tell him how many points they have . And he is building a list of friendly players who do not abandon the table as soon as they realise what Minibridge is.

P

Has he tried filtering the table view to show only tables with Novice, Beginner players? If you use this feature along with unchecking 'show full tables' it should make it a lot easier to find a suitable game.

jb

[Trumpace]

I am not sure if someone suggested this before, but colour coding the skill level of people in the table list would be a great help.

For instance we can go with the karate belt colouring.

Black would be reserved for World Class.

Also, off topic question: What is the difference between a Novice and a Beginner?

[bid_em_up]

A novice might know that there are 4 suits, a beginner might know there are 13 cards in each suit!!

[keylime]

I'd treat the difference of novice and beginner this way: the novice is brand new to bridge, and the beginner has a limited familiarity with bridge.

[Al_U_Card]

Trumpace, on Oct 26 2006, 02:14 PM, said:

Also, off topic question: What is the difference between a Novice and a Beginner?

Uhhh...a novice belongs to a religious order and a beginner has never played before?

[Elianna]

keylime, on Oct 26 2006, 12:15 PM, said:

I'd treat the difference of novice and beginner this way: the novice is brand new to bridge, and the beginner has a limited familiarity with bridge.

Hmm, I thought that I remembered reading that it was the other way:

A beginner is someone is brand new to bridge, and a novice is someone who is familiar with how the game is played, but not knowledgeable about most of the intricacies.

[jillybean]

Straight from the horses mouth (rules of the site)

Novice:Someone who recently learned to play bridge
Beginner: Someone who has played bridge less than one year
Intermediate: Someone who is comparable in skill to most other members of BBO

jb