[saycska]

Suggest when there is a clock event the time for a board to be divided 50:50% between the two pairs (like in the chess). So for example if there are 8 min/board both pairs will have 4 min/board for their play.
May be it will spoil some hands when some player has bad connection, but think both pairs must have the same time.

[Cascade]

I don't think this will work.

Its fairly normal to have a hand that one side doesn't have to spend much time thinking and the other side does.

Its just a feature of our game that on any one particular hand one side might have more problems than the other side.

[csdenmark]

saycska, on Dec 26 2006, 10:47 AM, said:

like in the chess

This is your mistake here. In chess both are offensive and therefore the game is very much the same features to be used. Until some certain step of course then it might be more tricky.

In bridge it is so from beginning - you have the offensive and the defensive party. Their options in the game are very different. Mostly it is the offensive part which needs to think about how to defend their features best possible. In 25% of the boards the defensive part bids nothing much but PASS.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

this will only work, if a given round is long enough,
say you are playing a team match and one half
has 16 boards.

In this case the hard boards will even out,
assuming both sides are familar with the method
of the oppoenents.

If you have time problems call the TD, he will take
a note, in case a pair is consistent slow, he will award
a time penalty.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: Most of the time it helps, to take your time,
a statement which is true for chess and bridge as
well, just claim in case it is clear cut, ... accepting
that you made mistakes, if the claim was wrong.

[saycska]

May be the example with the chess was not good. Of course that bridge and chess are different games.
But some people just use to think more than other (so they take the time of their opps). And sometimes (rarely ) there are conflicts who had played slow. It's not easy for the TDs to decide who was playing slower.
Now if the time finishes both pairs take Ave--. If the time is divided at least the pair that has no fault will take Ave+ or Ave=.

[mycroft]

This is a problem in real life as well.

Part of the problem is the following:

I play a complicated and non-standard Precision variant. I have an auction like:

1C-1H; 1S-2C; 2S-2NT; 3D-3NT; 4H-5D; 6S.

Every bid save 6S is alerted.

Currently, I self-alert and write the explanation in the bid. This takes time. It also takes time (but this is bridge time) to decide what call to make.

But with the chess clock, I would be penalized for being proactive, so maybe I choose not to. Now, I self-alert everything (because that's the rules), but wait for the request to explain - on the opponents' clock!

So, what's the solution - make explanation requests the opponents' time? If it's all "my time", then there's a distinct advantage for me to be chintzy with the explanation (min pos lotsa abbrs, leading to the "wk 2 w aM" Multi problem from a while back), especially if I don't type well. And there's a distinct advantage for my opponents to ask for detailed explanations of everything every time, even when they know (or can't care) about the response.

And I have the "right" to do the same to "standard" bidders in their 1H-2C; 2H-3D!; 3S-3NT auctions - after all, I don't know the upper bound on 2H, or how strong 2C is, or any of those other things I would know if I played Standard (of course, I know, but I could pretend. And there are Taiwanese and Poles who wouldn't!)

As I said elsewhere today, you can't make an ungameable system. And there are those who will game it. The meta-game is to find a system that is basically acceptable to most, and where the gaming doesn't break the system too badly.

Michael.

[mrdct]

I agree that a "Chess Clock" would not be appropriate for bridge if it were a straight 50/50 allocation of available time to the two sides; particularly for short matches.

I do, however, believe that some form of automated time monitoring in online games and vugraphed matches would be useful for tournament directors in assessing slow play penalties and putting presure on players to play faster. Slow play is often, but not always, highly questionable ethically and is a scourge on our game. I'm in favour of any sensible measure that helps keep the game moving along.

If automated time monitoring was introduced, you would want to have some variations in time allocation. The sorts of thing I believe would need to be factored in are:

- When a new board is dealt, both sides get charged 50% of the time for the first 30 seconds of the auction to recognise some communal time for hand sorting and evaluation.

- When the auction is over, the defence only get charged for opening lead thinking time greater than 15 seconds to recognise some time necessary for explanations of the auction.

- When the opening lead is made, both sides get charged 50% of the time for the first 30 seconds or the duration of the first trick (whichever is shorter) to recognise communal planning time for both the defence and declarer.

- If technically feasible with GIB or some other analysis tool, 100% of the time gets charged to declarer from the point of the hand where a claim was possible to the point where the claim was actually made. This would discourage declarers from needlessly (and often unethically) playing out hands where they should claim to consume the mental energy of the opponents.

- If a claim gets rejected and later transpires to be accurate, 100% of the time from when the claim was made until the hand was over gets charged to the side that falsely rejected the claim. I know there will be situations where a claim is made when a guess still needs to be made, but unless there a technical way of identifying such situations, on balance I generally want to punish people who incorrectly reject claims.

- I'm not sure what the formula should be, but I would be amenable to some discount for the declaring side during the play of the hand. Perhaps something simple like 10% of delcarer's time gets charged to the defence.

I was actually under the impression that Fred had done some development work on this priot to the USBF Championships where it was going to be used to assess slow play fines, but I don't think it was deployed.

[saycska]

Today I played at pairs tournament (clocked). Last round opps were declarers both boards, difficult boards and the time finished just were 3 cards left . The contract was 6Hxx-3.

TD was at the table. He saw our time wouldn't be enough to finish, but did not add time (as I asked). Asked for adjustment after (the TD was adjusting all previous rounds), but he said he'll not do that cause the tour is already finished.

So instead of having some (good ) score, we had Ave-

Pls write your opinion about that.

[csdenmark]

saycska, on Dec 27 2006, 11:32 AM, said:

May be the example with the chess was not good. Of course that bridge and chess are different games.
  But some people just use to think more than other (so they take the time of their opps). And sometimes (rarely  ) there are conflicts who had played slow. It's not easy for the TDs to decide who was playing slower.
  Now if the time finishes both pairs take Ave--.  If the time is divided at least the pair that has no fault will take Ave+ or Ave=.

I don't know exactly how it works but for your possible further explorations about how to handle such I will inform you that I have seen a tool for clocking has been added on JBridge.

[Tola18]

P_Marlowe, on Dec 26 2006, 05:13 AM, said:

If you have time problems call the TD, he will take
a note, in case a pair is consistent slow, he will award
a time penalty.

The reform would probably be really useful against these consistently slow pairs. Not all are calling for TD if the others are slow. Not all TD will take suitable measures against constistenly slow players.

Here we do have an excellent solution, for the tournament as a whole.



But taken to an individual board it wouldnt be necessary fair no.