[0 carbon]

It Would Be Nice If --
Slow players were tracked, ie, keep a running average of the time they spend considering their bids and plays.

Then when a tourney goes to the next round, you can match slow teams/partners players with fast players.

This would make tourneys end faster.

Instead of just keeping an overall average time, it would probably be best to keep the last 10 days of averages, and use a weighted total of the 10 as a measure, weighting older days less.

tOM

[matmat]

this sounds like a terrible idea. it would frustrate the fast players that their partners or opps are playing at snails pace and it would frustrate the slow players who would keep getting asked to play faster.

[Mbodell]

Any pairing by speed is also subject to manipulation if it turns out most of the good players are either fast or slow. People can slow down/speed up to avoid being paired against the "good" pairs.

I do think it would be interesting to track speed though. Both so you could see in a tournament how much of the time you were using. You could compare to the "average" time amongst all 4 players, or just the average amount of time your compass position spent on the hand.

The "chess clocks" for bridge players doesn't work in real life because of the mechanics, but online it is quite doable. Just the act of measuring and publishing it (even if just in hand records and .lin files) might be enough to help change speed some up.

[barmar]

Back when I used to play in OKbridge tourneys, there was speculation that some players were doing what Mbodell suggested. On OKbridge, the round wouldn't change until at least 70% of pairs had finished; the pairs that finished on time would be paired in Swiss fashion, and then the late pairs would be paired up based on time.

The tournament records included the time taken for each round. I once checked the record of a few tournaments, and noticed that a pair that frequently did well also often went over time, and most of their opponents from that point on were near the bottom of the rankings.

I never did enough analysis to file any formal charge, but I was surprised at how easy it was to find some data that supported the theory.

[onoway]

Not sure about the tracking of slow players BUT it would be really nice to have some way to have nonactive players who are sitting at a table somehow flagged.

I tried to use the "take me to a game" feature and 3 tables in a row one player was apparently not there. So you sit for a while in case they come back, and they don't. Other people are coming and going...which happens too much in main ANYWAY..it's sorta discouraging, esp if you have only a limited time to play.
It's a great feature when it works...today at least for me, it wasn't much help.

Maybe if someone is inactive for a while but still sitting at a table they could turn purple or something so people would know right away they aren't really there. Then when they came back and actually bid or played the normal colour would be restored...sort of an early warning system like the "BBO thinks you are away" is only a bit quicker to kick in and for the benefit of other players.

[peachy]

It would be awful for fast players to make them face slow players even MORE frequently than they have to suffer from that already. I know you are trying to find a solution to make slow players play faster but there just isn't a solution. But it would be nice if tempo is tracked, then slow players were denied access to Speedball tournaments, at least once, to extract from them a promise to play faster:)
.

[csdenmark]

0 carbon, on Oct 18 2009, 06:31 AM, said:

It Would Be Nice If --
Slow players were tracked, ie, keep a running average of the time they spend considering their bids and plays.

Then when a tourney goes to the next round, you can match slow teams/partners players with fast players.

This would make tourneys end faster.

Instead of just keeping an overall average time, it would probably be best to keep the last 10 days of averages, and use a weighted total of the 10 as a measure, weighting older days less.

tOM

If you need to catch a train you have just been running wild.

[Old York]

We need more Survivor Tournaments

The Tourney host can then decide what percentage of low scoring players will be removed. TDs waste most of their time chasing slow tables and replacing unresponsive players
Unclocked tournaments are also undervalued, they move tables as needed - so faster players will be seated with fast opponents, and slow players will not be allowed to play all the boards. The title "unclocked" is actually a misnomer, timing is critical in an Unclocked Tourney

Tony