[hrothgar]

Just logged in to BBO in saw the announcement that the ACBL is going to be offering fee based tournaments starting Monday, June 8th.

Looks like the cost is going to be $1.00 for a 12 board tournament, which certainly strikes me as reasonable. I confess to a preference for longer tournments and would prefer $1.25 for 16 board, but that's neither here nor there.

In order to play in the tournaments, you'll need to purchase some BBO Bucks. It took me a couple minutes to figure out how to buy the BBO Bucks, but once I had sorted this out, the process was very smooth.

Start in the main lobby and left click on your username.
You'll see a screen called modify user profile.

There is a new button titled BB$ Account. Clicking on this will move you to a new menu. There is an option in the upper right to purchase BBO Bucks in increments of $10.

[inquiry]

Wow. Richard, I hope this means that you have reconsidered your stance of not playing in ACBL events on line. Seems like you don't like the way they dummy down bridge and not allow you to moscito.

On the plus side, this opens up a revenue stream to help relieve some of what must be an incredible monthy bill for running the sites, and may eventually turn a dime for uday too.... for all his very hard work. So yes, I will play in these too, I guess. Oh, and 12 boards simply isn't enough... I want value for my buck, 20 boards (a nickel a board) sounds about right... :-)

Ben

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on May 28 2004, 11:27 PM, said:

Wow. Richard, I hope this means that you have reconsidered your stance of not playing in ACBL events on line. Seems like you don't like the way they dummy down bridge and not allow you to moscito.

I fully intend to play in fee based tournaments when other providers enter the fray.
I will not play in any that are sponsored by the ACBL.

Until then, there's always Bridge Master deals....

[uday]

BBO is offering the games, not the ACBL, and we have been granted the right to offer ACBL points. We are treated like a "real" club, I think (we have a sanction number or a club number or something, and we pay sanction fees, etc ).

Naturally, the ACBL wants us to do well, for the obvious reasons (sanction fees, good for the game) but these are "our" tourneys.

Gweny is co-ordinating the tourney offerings. I'll list the TDs in a bit.

Don't worry about our dime Play for your own reasons. We'll make out one way or another.

We huddled before coming up with the price/number-of-boards If people really have to have cheaper/longer ones, i'm guessing we'll see them soon enough. How does it go? "Dammit, Jim, I'm a programmer, not a businessman?" or something like that!


The ITAlians will probably offer paid events someday soon, although i don't know if their "FIGB" points are offer via their NBO as ours are.


Other than that ? I don't know if the other NBOs offer something similar ( the right to host online games with points). If anyone thinks they can make a go of it with their particular country/federation, pls contact uday or gweny@ you know where dot com.

[DrTodd13]

Let's say a tourney session costs $8 and you play 27 boards, so about 30 cents per board. Anybody know how much of this goes to:

1) Rent the facility
2) Pay the director
3) Tournament organizer profit
4) ACBL profit

I guess for tourneys 3 and 4 are the same. How about club games? How much does the club owner get versus the ACBL? What is the per session ACBL fee?
Then, take the average number of masterpoints awarded and divide by the per-person per-session ACBL fee. Will this ratio be maintained for on-line games?

[Trpltrbl]

I really hope they will use ACBL or WBF qualified directors. Really hope so....

Mike

[hrothgar]

uday, on May 29 2004, 12:24 AM, said:

BBO is offering the games, not the ACBL, and we have been granted the right to offer ACBL points. We are treated like a "real" club, I think (we have a sanction number or a club number or something, and we pay sanction fees, etc ).

The crucial issue for me is that you are remitting funds to the ACBL...
I doubt that most people share my obsession :-)

[uday]

The ratio may be identical to that of a club game; the acbl sanction fees are the same, i think, as are the point awards. Beyond the sanction fee, the acbl doesnt care what our tourneys cost, or what we charge.

While I think $8 per session is cheap (since most club games in New York are about 15-20 ) i think our online games will run at $1 for 12 boards, maybe somewhat more if we run longer games.

What we're really running is club games; on bbo, we call our club games "tourneys" , dont we? So we're just an online bridge club, offering ACBL points like the offline clubs.

The online acbl points are somewhat different from offline points. They are not pigmented, there is a limit to how many can be earned per year, they can only apply to a third of the requirements for LM ( or something like that )

I don't see any real reason to expose the internals of the breakdown of the dollar, but if anyone is curious and discreet, sure, email me. Perhaps it will suffice to say that we hope that there will be enough to keep the Directors, the Credit Card clearing house, the ACBL happy, with something left over for the mother ship.

[uday]

The TDs have to be certified by the ACBL to be TDs at acbl games

[DrTodd13]

Holy crap! $15-$20 for a CLUB game? I'm used to $8 tourneys and $5 or $6
dollar club games.

I personally don't think that all TD directors need to be ACBL directors. Lots of tourney issues have nothing to do with the laws. All you need is a person/committee to handle MI and UI cases.

[uday]

The NYC games usually serve lunch

The ACBL regulations stipulate that our TDs have to be acbl-cert, so we dont have any option there. I dont know if this applies to co-tds, and probably it doesnt.

[pbleighton]

What Convention Chart will the tournaments be played under?

Peter

[the hog]

Does this mean there will be system restrictions? If so, will these be US restrictions or will they be BBO restrictions?

[uday]

Short answer: GCC until we have enough games to branch out.

Longer answer

http://bridgebase.com/acbl/

[DrTodd13]

Will the ACBL tourneys be stratified?

[keylime]

You folks really need to get it together and come up here to Nanaimo - 6 dollars CANADIAN for lunch AND bridge, with the one of the nicest, most welcoming units in ACBL-land. It's made me want to come out more often and play live bridge.

I am also pleased to hear that the GCC chart will be the one used for the interim. I would hate to have heard of a treatment or an unusual convention causing Law 12 decisions to be rendered.

Will BBO offer a two strata approach like ACBL.com?

1 dollar US for 12 boards - that's a steal.

[uday]

Not initially ( we won't have the volume, and we don't have the software )

[keylime]

Quick question - what would be deemed "adequate disclosure" -- hard to put all the treatments of the status quo for me into the space provided...wonder if I can be use a link to reference the players to a "real, complete, whatever" CC....?

[Gweny]

Hi all :-)
Keylime take moment to visit www.bridgebase.com/acbl

Fred outline this question for you :-)

When in doubt alert!

[keylime]

A good positive answer to the disclosure question - I'm a happy camper now.