[Old York]

Premier Members would be able to join special free tournaments, and have a private club where they could play with other Premier Members
It would probably involve an annual fee, but maybe not... dunno
Perhaps a discount could be arranged for ACBL Tournaments etc?

Tony

Edit: It may help if you read Fred's comments on the other thread "Couple Things"
and before you ask, no... do not send your cheques to me LOL

[babalu1997]

york, exactly what is your point?
it is obvious that the founders of bbo intended to create a product that would be free to emphasize education and promote the game.

many people cannot afford to join paid sites, and the problems existing in bbo, including tournaments, continue there.

i think your idea is evil and is meant to restrict bridge to those who can afford it.

let those who have money go on cruises and spend thousands of dollars travelling if they wish

if you dont like the people losing connection, just stop tding

[Old York]

babalu1997, on Dec 15 2009, 08:11 PM, said:

york, exactly what is your point?
it is obvious that the founders of bbo intended to create a product that would be free to emphasize education and promote the game.....i think your idea is evil and is meant to restrict bridge to those who can afford it

Free membership would not be affected in any way. Premier Membership could be offered to those free members who wish to "upgrade"

You, of course, are entitled to your own opinions... however bizarre they may be... and I will defend your right to express them

Tony

[TimG]

Old York, on Dec 15 2009, 02:21 PM, said:

babalu1997, on Dec 15 2009, 08:11 PM, said:

york, exactly what is your point?
it is obvious that the founders of bbo intended to create a product that would be free to emphasize education and promote the game.....i think your idea is evil and is meant to restrict bridge to those who can afford it

Free membership would not be affected in any way. Premier Membership could be offered to those free members who wish to "upgrade"

You will be removing a segment of the BBO population from the free sections. That does affect free membership.

[Old York]

TimG, on Dec 15 2009, 08:23 PM, said:

Old York, on Dec 15 2009, 02:21 PM, said:

babalu1997, on Dec 15 2009, 08:11 PM, said:

york, exactly what is your point?
it is obvious that the founders of bbo intended to create a product that would be free to emphasize education and promote the game.....i think your idea is evil and is meant to restrict bridge to those who can afford it

Free membership would not be affected in any way. Premier Membership could be offered to those free members who wish to "upgrade"

You will be removing a segment of the BBO population from the free sections. That does affect free membership.

Private Clubs and Restricted Tournaments are already doing that, many players believe that this is a good thing, very few players believe that private clubs and restricted tournaments are evil
Are BBO ACBL Tournaments evil?

Tony

Edit: added...
To quote Fred out of context is unfair, but .....

"....it would create value for BBO user IDs thereby giving people incentive not to have their IDs taken away."

[mtvesuvius]

I think this is a horrible idea, why would anyone want to pay money to access a "club" instead of play in the main club? What's the point?

Also, what if I wanted to kibitz people in the "elite" bridge club? Would I have to pay money to do that too?

It doesn't make sense to make any part of BBO a real pay site until they absolutely have to.

[Old York]

mtvesuvius, on Dec 15 2009, 09:12 PM, said:

I think this is a horrible idea, why would anyone want to pay money to access a "club" instead of play in the main club? What's the point?

Also, what if I wanted to kibitz people in the "elite" bridge club? Would I have to pay money to do that too?

It doesn't make sense to make any part of BBO a real pay site until they absolutely have to.

I did suggest that a membership fee may not be needed, but may be difficult to "police" the membership if it is free

I just checked the Main Club, 1409 tables, some invisible and over 25% were padlocked... restricted access

Tony

[HeavyDluxe]

This thread is funny.

[TimG]

Old York, on Dec 15 2009, 02:30 PM, said:

TimG, on Dec 15 2009, 08:23 PM, said:

Old York, on Dec 15 2009, 02:21 PM, said:

babalu1997, on Dec 15 2009, 08:11 PM, said:

york, exactly what is your point?
it is obvious that the founders of bbo intended to create a product that would be free to emphasize education and promote the game.....i think your idea is evil and is meant to restrict bridge to those who can afford it

Free membership would not be affected in any way. Premier Membership could be offered to those free members who wish to "upgrade"

You will be removing a segment of the BBO population from the free sections. That does affect free membership.

Private Clubs and Restricted Tournaments are already doing that, many players believe that this is a good thing, very few players believe that private clubs and restricted tournaments are evil
Are BBO ACBL Tournaments evil?

I did not offer any judgment as to whether private clubs or premier membership is good or evil. I merely said that they do (or would in the case of premier) affect free membership.

[fred]

I am not suggesting we are ever going to do this or even that we are seriously considering doing this, but I think some of you have failed to understand the merit of Tony's suggestion. I will try to explain...

Unfortunately it is far from unlikely that playing against random strangers in the Main Bridge Club or playing in free tournaments will turn out to be an unpleasant experience because significant numbers of BBO members behave badly on a regular basis. This is a problem for which there are no easy or really good solutions.

Now suppose you could pay, say, $10 per year to be able to play in the "Premium Members' Main Bridge Club" and in tournaments that were restricted to "Premium Members" only and for which no addition fee was charged.

"Premium Members" would now have an incentive to behave well - if they did not behave well then their "Premium Member" status would be revoked and they would lose their $10 (or whatever). Now, if they wanted to continue to play in "Premium Areas" they would have to pay another $10. Of course that would only work if we let them and, once credit cards are involved, it becomes a lot harder for people to hide their true identities.

Essentially people would be paying a small fee to improve the chances that they would be able to play online bridge in a civilized environment. Note that many people who play in our pay tournaments are at least partly motivated to do so for the same reasons. Those who choose not to pay this fee would still be able to play in areas that are not restricted to "Premium Members".

We could conceivably sweeten the deal in various ways by offering things like free GIB access to "Premium Members".

We could conceivably start paying good TDs to run regularly-scheduled quality tournaments for "Premium Members".

We could conceivably hire more people and give them the job of paying close attention to "Premium Member" areas and to revoke the memberships of those who behave badly in these areas.

As for those who could not afford to pay the fee but who have a long record of good behavior on BBO, I am sure we could work something out - maybe we would even consider giving all experienced BBO members with no record of bad behavior free "Premium Membership". The bottom line is that we are actually nice guys who care about our fellow bridge players' experiences on our site. We are not going to condemn other nice guys to a life of online bridge hell if they can't afford to escape on their own.

IMO it is not nearly as bad an idea as some of you seem to think.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[dato]

I think it's a great idea. The only area where BBO needs the improvement imho, is a quality of its random games. Lot of users(including myself) don't care since they only play pre-arranged games, but there are plenty who do and i see nothing bad that BBO is entertaining creative ideas addressing the issue.

To me it shows that BBO cares about its regular subscribers, trying to improve their experiences...

[Apollo81]

I think it would be nice to be able to play against random people who don't leave after 1 or 2 hands.

[mtvesuvius]

Something where all members of BBO that are currently behaving well could be entered into would be a nice idea.

It's just a whole new problem of moderating though. Just think of all the possible problems with "banning" from the premier club. Consider the problems with banning people already, I just don't think it's worthwhile.

[hrothgar]

Hi Fred

Quick reply

1. I think that it would be a mistake to conflate "Premium Memberships" with other services. You're using the the example of "High Quality TDs" to illustrate a perk that Premium Members might enjoy. From my perspective, if there is a market demand for "High Quality TDs", you should be providing this as a service regardless of whether you provide premium members. Please note: I'm not saying that you should provide said "High Quality TDs" for free. Charge whatever you need to provide this service. However, I don't see the point not providing this unless you also provide a "Premium Membership"

2. Old York's primary concern seems to be the behavior of players at tournaments. Whatever metric you decide should directly link to behavior (over time) at tournaments. What about a system like the following:

A. When you join BBO, a counter starts up
B. 30 days after joining, you get the right to play in "Premium" tournaments.
C. TDs who run tournaments (Premium and otherwise) can blackball you for whatever reason.
D. The server tracks how times you've been blackballed in the last month.
E. The server calculates who the "worst offenders" are using some metric. (Three sigmas above the norm or some such)
F. If you are in the "worst offender class" AND you get blackballed again, you lose the right to play in premium tournament. Ideally, you'd warn people if they were on probation.

[Aberlour10]

Apollo81, on Dec 15 2009, 07:24 PM, said:

I think it would be nice to be able to play against random people who don't leave after 1 or 2 hands.

I think, it wont be solve by The Premium MBC. I assume you play mostly with well known partners,.... when 2 random choosen opponents join, there will be always fluctuation at the table before there are two who want to play together for a while. No matter, these are Premium or Common member.
I meet it every day and find it OK, if all this happen under "civilized" circumstences, like...finishing the hand..etc etc.

Robert

[Echognome]

I can't imagine anything wrong with offering a premium service for a price. I haven't heard any discussions about removing key functionality to non-premium members, so why should we complain?

What is included in the premium service is a business/personal decision of Fred and his team.

Edit: In order to answer the poll, I'd just have to see what was on the table and at what price. I already give BBO some of my money (albeit not a lot) for services that BBO provides, it's hard to say what more I'd be willing to pay for without seeing a menu of options. I guess my answer is that I'd certainly pay some amount of money for extra features.

[onoway]

Should this thread be in a more commonly visited forum to get a better crossection of replies?

If BBO developed a premium membership then there would have to be enough people using the PM area to make it worth while. This could be a kicker at first unless BBO had some real goodies to offer which were not available now in other areas, at least for free. Seems that many bridge players are a bit tight fisted for whatever reason.

However..part of the offer could be a real level designation for private members eyes only. Abandon false advertising, all ye who enter here! It comes up enough in the forums that alone should get a bunch of people hurrying to sign up. (The fact that nobody has figured out how to do that yet is immaterial at this stage of the game.)

I think the idea of Premium Memberships has potential.

[Codo]

I like the goal, but I am not sure about the way.

Lets say that this idea works perfect and that all regular bbo users with no bad history and all who are willing to spend the money are premium members.

So what is left at the MBC and open tournements, if most of the nice guys are premium members? The bullies and the people who cannot/ will not afford even 10 $ a year.

BBO is still a quick growing site, so when new players arrive, who will they met in the open area?

But mabye this is such a minor issue that the overall benefit is higher.

[babalu1997]

Codo, on Dec 16 2009, 03:56 AM, said:

I like the goal, but I am not sure about the way.

So what is left at the MBC and open tournements, if most of the nice guys are premium members? The bullies and the people who cannot/ will not afford even 10 $ a year.

BBO is still a quick growing site, so when new players arrive, who will they met in the open area?
.

Agree with the open area statement.

There are already private clubs and friends clubs, and people could seek the groups where they would be happy playing.

What we need is some kind of central place where the conditions of admission and description of these groups are listed so new members can choose.

In practice, members can be excluded from these groups for any reason. But if someone pays to join, you need to better your reasons so that osmeone is not booted for false-carding or bidding multi.

If some group owner excludes me for trivial reasons, I just move on(not really, I whine here at the forum first). If a table host removes me, same, that is his prerrogative, there is other tables in the lobby.

But remember, i can do the same too, i can mark folks as enemy for any reason, remove them from my table for any reason, etc...

Rudeness online is a reality, so just live with it. Paid sites are not immune from it. you also get there people who join the table and remains just until they get the first negative score, then they leave.

[Old York]

babalu1997, on Dec 16 2009, 03:02 PM, said:

Rudeness online is a reality, so just live with it.  Paid sites are not immune from it. you also get there people who join the table and remains just until they get the first negative score, then they leave.

I strongly disagree that we should just live with it. To do so would be to condone bad behaviour. All players (and Directors) must be encouraged to observe the rules of the site, as a bare minimum
How we do that is a matter for debate

Tony