[ckirko]

I believe that speedball caters to rushed,poor quality bridge and the loss of many boards to time.4.5 minutes is not enough time to plan bidding and play strategy. No top pro players would play under such conditions. However,it has taken over the acbl matches - the most and the strongest play it,even though many are not happy with it.
Can BBO experiment with some new formats,in order to get players back to the superior bridge of "normalball"? I have suggested an 18 bd. match with 6"/bd. This could nicely finish in under 2 hours. Perhaps $2 could be charged and somewhat higher MP's awarded.
Save the pairs. ckirko

[TylerE]

To be honest, the average quality of bridge in the slowball's pretty much sucks too. Sad but true. Also, in speedballs the vast majority of times I've had rounds not finished with time left over, it's because of people disconnecting multiple times, going AFK, etc.

[barmar]

In ACBL f2f "Fast Pair" tournaments, as well as midnight speedball KOs, the pace is 5 minutes per board.

There's a common falacy that online bridge should be faster than f2f, since you don't have to sort your hand, wait for people to move from table to table, get confused about how many tricks were taken, etc. However, there are often other factors that cause delays (distractions at home, network problems, etc.) that I think cancel these out.

[jtfanclub]

We have 5 minute/board and 7 minutes/board, Once they add 6 minutes per board, will there be a clamor for 6 1/2?

I suspect that a 6 minute would be enormous work for the directors. People who now stay away from the speedball because of connection issues would play the 6. There would be a very large number of adjustments.