[mike777]

Uday sent me a very nice reply to my inquiry regarding the status of online acbl teamgames. The Acbl has given BBO all the approval. Uday told me they have not started on the software and have no plans to start on it in the near future.

If any posters have an interest in ACBL online teamgames I hope you can post here and/or send an email/PM to Fred and Uday and let them know there is some demand.

[inquiry]

I would be delighted to play in such an event if three other people would have me....

[kenberg]

I hope that it can be done. A lot of my online play is spur of the moment but I think I could get myself together enough to plan a little.

Build it and they will come. Or at least I will.

[keylime]

Count me in too. See many positive benefits that can come from this.

[MomoTheDog]

This is an extremely fabulous idea and it's success may result in another boom in the popularity of BBO.

Weekly Swiss teams event, 6 boards a match, 6 matches, would be an extremely fantastic idea. Put in some cash prizes. I'm salivating at the thought.

In fact, this is the most important feature that is currently lacking.

[matmat]

i'd worry about cheating in this format a little bit more than in a pair game.

[TylerE]

With both teams palying the boards in the same order that should be minimized.

[jonottawa]

It wouldn't be cheatproof, so no cash prizes. But over time cheaters will get caught and banned and life will go on. I love the idea.

[jtfanclub]

I'd love to play in them, or direct them as needed.

[runewell]

Sign me up

[bassaidai]

Count me in.

[tbr]

I would really enjoy trying an online team game. Need practice to get to next level which is win another regional knockout. Thanks.

[A2003]

I will enjoy this team game option.
What is the best format for 60 to 70 teams signing up? Knockout or swiss?
Is the award points established for online-ACBL team games?

This may kill the current ACBL speedball games.

[TylerE]

A reasonable format would probably be 4 team KO brackets, a tourney starting as soon as at fills, perhaps flighted.

Have 2 rounds of, say, 8 or 10 boards a piece. Random draw in the first round, then in the 2nd segment the two winners play for 1st, and the two losers play for 3rd.

[jtfanclub]

A2003, on Jan 8 2008, 07:36 PM, said:

I will enjoy this team game option.
What is the best format for 60 to 70 teams signing up? Knockout or swiss?
Is the award points established for online-ACBL team games?

This may kill the current ACBL speedball games.

Knockout or modified KO.

The problem with Swiss is, if I lose the first two rounds, and then I play against my buddies, I might be tempted to lose by several hundred. Well, I wouldn't be, but some people might. There's also cases where the 2nd best table can only catch up to the leaders if they blitz, so after the first few hands the teams compare results, and the team currently behind mysteriously starts playing poorly.

Swiss with a 1 point victory scale would work in theory, but starting halfway through people would start dropping out like flies. People are willing to hang around for the end of a 12 board tournament, but 24? And replacing entire teams would be a pain.

Modified KO would work (say, 25% kickout rate after the first round, with W/L being the primary determinant and margin of victory 2nd), but then the number of boards becomes an issue.

If the ACBL did, say, up to 16 teams, 6 boards per round, single elimination (4 rounds), I don't think it would kill Speedball because....

1) It has a maximum of 32 pairs, while Speedball often has twice the number.

2) It requires a two-hour time schedule instead of 1 hour, and

3) It might only be 6 boards. A lot of people want to play a strict time frame.

Admins? Any plans for this stuff?

[hrothgar]

A little more than a year ago I had some talks with both Uday and Rick Beye about the feasibility of introducing ACBL sanctioned team matches on BBO.

My primary interest was running some experiments. If you're doing this as a business, the main expense is hiring competent Tournament Directors. I wanted to establish a relationship between the number of TDs required to support different numbers of tables.

My plan was to run a very simple format:

Run a 16 team KO over 4 nights. Each round would have 24 boards.
At the end of the week, a winning team gets crowned. Next week, the whole shebang would start up again.

After a month or so, I figured that I would have a reasonable amount of information and could start think about modifying the format. (Maybe adding a Swiss or some such). After roughly 6 months, I figured that I'd be in a good position scale up the system and (potentially) start asking about real feature enhancements for movements, billing, and the like.

Unfortunately, the talks didn't go anywhere. It's very difficult to get the ACBL to sanction team games for Club level events. Moreover, the ACBL seems to want to do something in this area, but isn't willing to devote any time or resources.

As a result, we're stuck in limbo...

[jtfanclub]

hrothgar, on Jan 9 2008, 01:49 PM, said:

Unfortunately, the talks didn't go anywhere.  It's very difficult to get the ACBL to sanction team games for Club level events.

I thought if a club wanted to run a weekly Swiss game, it could. I was unaware it required special permission.

http://web2.acbl.org...k/mpchart15.pdf
http://web2.acbl.org...k/mpchart08.pdf

KOs would require special permission, but we could run Swiss until they came to their senses. Maybe if we did 5 board rounds and didn't have it barometer it would work.

Ya know, I see scoring for BAM in there as well. How about 5 rounds, 5 boards per round BAM with no barometer? That would make it tough to tell if you were winning or not, and make it very tough to play 'kingmaker'.

[mike777]

I understand bbo acbl online has ACBL approval for any and all club level approved teamgame formats.

I assume this means any and all formats can be tried out to see where the demand is online.

Very worst case I would hope to see one acbl online teamgame per day, every day.

I may not understand Richard's post fully.

Can other non bbo employed/paid people run acbl games on BBO? Can anyone run a club level acbl approved game on bbo and use bbo bucks to pay td's and themselves?

If so I assume BBO gets paid rent but someone else owns and runs the acbl club level games?

BBO only acts as a landlord owning the building, not the game?