[Hanoi5]

jjbrr, on Jul 9 2010, 12:35 PM, said:

jdonn is the best bidder in the entire world.

we're all playing for second place.

He's not gonna be alone and as far as I know no one has cloned himself yet...

[jdonn]

It's true my partner's always screw me.

[inquiry]

Hanoi5, on Jul 9 2010, 11:03 AM, said:

If there'll be N/S and E/W how are pranksters (?) going to be handled? What if I enter EVERY auction the opponents have? I'm not saying psychs HAVE to be prohibited but probably limited. Maybe negative points for pairs who get in the way of others auctions and get doubled in ugly contracts...

Another thing is: MP's or IMP's? Generally speaking most of these contests in magazines are thought of in MP's, is it going to be the same here?

hrothgar mentioned evaluation based not only in results but also in the process. Evaluation terms have to be very clear then. Do all hands have the same value? 10 as in challenge the champs?

Where are the hands coming from? I'd love to participate as a contestant but if you want me to I can help getting some hands from BW's, IPBM's, etc.

Contest will be at a teaching table with the moderator sitting in both North and South seats. On some hands there will be competitive bidding, that will be entered by the moderator at the appropriate time.

For scoring, each hand will be worth 12 points maximum, with six for what would be "average" in a strongish game. The 12 point score will be extremely rare. Hitting the top spot will generally earn 10.

To keep it simple, I think we probably shouldn't switch between imps and matchpoints, as the moderator (whoever that is for each pair) would have to remember to tell them when the switch occurs, so I am thinking matchpoints (the math is easier to figure out odds for matchpoints in calculating score anyway). The scoring will only score result ---not the process to get to the result --- those who want to critique the process can do so when the contest hands are posted in the forum.

Hands will come from real play, as i don't want to have to enter them manually. Obviously not recent vugraph etc, because someone might remember those, but probably from older online games. And of course, any hands submitted in lin or pbn format by forum members can be considered/used as well.

As for format. I initially was thinking about all pairs bidding the same set of hands over about a week, and either declaring a winner or eliminating about half the field, and doing it all over again. But that is less hands in the long run to discuss in the forum. Now I am considering a double elimination event with pairs battling each other -- with sudden death hands in the case of tie -- one hand at a time until a winner is obtained. Double elimination gives someone a chance to come back via the loser bracket. Ideally 8 pairs would give us 14 unique contest. Most other reachable number of contest will involve giving at least one pair a bye. In this situation, we will establish a fair but random way to pick which pair(s) get a first round bye -- or maybe better we could have a three way contest with one winner (or two losers) whichever works out best for the double elimination bracket setup with a difficult to setup bracket.

[Hanoi5]

Why do you want 'real' hands? Why not combine them (real+prepared)? You could get some real hands and some hands from a magazine where they have already been commented upon.

Maybe you want to have real hands so that the score reflects what happened at the table (i.e. results will be the comparison of the contract you arrived at and how it fared in the tournament or actual hand) but you're gonna have to be careful choosing the tourneys then, for a hand played in a tournament in Wonderland might not get the same results as a hand played in Mordor...i.e. you're gonna have to give points to the hands based more on analysis than in conditions when the hand was played...

I offer my help again to gather some hands and maybe even to moderate at a table in case you need/want it.

[matmat]

rather than randomly select hands to be IMPs and Matchpoints, have two segments of bidding (in the same session) so that players don't have to continually switch between the two.

[cherdanno]

About the MP/IMP question: I think there it is much better to use MPs.
You can't really do an IMP bidding contest unless you are willing to give lower weight to partscore hands than to game hands, which need to have lower weight than slam hands.

[TylerE]

Sounds like a pretty cool idea. I'd be interested in participating and I'm fairly sure bid_em_up would be willing also...

[Phil]

jdonn, on Jul 9 2010, 11:40 AM, said:

It's true my partner's always screw me.

Then you can play with yourself.

[hrothgar]

cherdanno, on Jul 9 2010, 08:16 PM, said:

About the MP/IMP question: I think there it is much better to use MPs.
You can't really do an IMP bidding contest unless you are willing to give lower weight to partscore hands than to game hands, which need to have lower weight than slam hands.

Agreed

To me, the salient question is MP v BAM
I favor MP based on familiarity

[FrancesHinden]

hrothgar, on Jul 9 2010, 12:26 PM, said:

Case in point: Playing strong club, we expect competition over our strong club opening and risk a bad score because of it. We accept this, because we think that the costs outweigh the benefits.

I've played systems like that too...

[gnasher]

I think it's an excellent idea, and I think we should be very grateful to Ben for offering to do it. About some specific points:

- About 10-15 hands is about right. The idea of bidding 50 in a row seems a bit daunting.

- I would avoid hands that have been published anywhere. I'd rather not be distracted by wondering whether I've seen a problem before.

- I like hands from real life. Bidding is hard enough as it is; there's no need to make it any harder by introducing trick hands.

- I don't think it's right to have head-to-head matches in a situation where your actions don't affect your opponents' score. Suppose that you wanted two winners from four pairs, who scored 60, 50, 40 and 30. Obviously, the pairs scoring 50 and 60 should survive. Playing it as head-to-head to matches just introduces a 25% chance that the wrong pair will get through.

- I'd slightly prefer IMPs, because I think that constructive bidding is more interesting at IMPs than at matchpoints.

- I think that it's more interesting if everyone has had the same hands. Problems of the form "What's the right action on these two hands?" are usually unsatisfactory because it's hard to be objective. If we've all had to bid the hands already, there will be a greater appreciation of the problems and options each hand faces.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2010-July-10, 04:25

[Fluffy]

50 hands seems like an overbid for sure, you can just fo 10-12 hands many times and get to the same point without boring anyone.

[KittyC]

Sounds interesting but could you lower it to 20 posts? So we can participate? And 10 hands is more than enough.

[bluecalm]

Quote

Sounds interesting but could you lower it to 20 posts? So we can participate? And 10 hands is more than enough.

I don't much care about posts but idea is that people are recognized I guess if someone is willing to provide real name + adress/bridge ID in his/her country that's ok.

I think the more hands the better. 16 sounds like sweet spot but for me it could well be 24.

[H_KARLUK]

I marked "it is not good, who cares" and most probably it would remain single vote.

BBF rife with cynics who hangs around and pretends to be helpful.

Another thing that gets noone anywhere; why i am not surprised to see a usual crowd engaged in useless and profitless activities.

Maybe Bridge Clubs are their only fun, oh I should not expect Tennis or Golf Club members could be there.

Try expensive instead of cheap fun!

[JmBrPotter]

I suggest allowing as many pairs as feasible. Scoring could be similar to the methods described in the July ACBL Bulletin, on pages 26-27. There, Bobby Wolff explains how he scores "The Bidding Box" each month. If you can get enough expert pairs, to function as a panel, their results might provide a foundation for scoring submissions from contestants.

My participation would be tempered by Partner's availability and interest.

Potentially, an effort like this could highlight the potential (or lack thereof) of some avant garde bidding systems. Comments about the successes, failures, and frequencies of unusual methods relative to "standard" methods might be an interesting side show.

[Elianna]

H_KARLUK, on Jul 18 2010, 04:21 AM, said:

BBF rife with cynics who hangs around and pretends to be helpful.

You mean like you?

If you hate it and think that we all have nothing better to do, what are you doing here?

[matmat]

Elianna, on Jul 18 2010, 10:51 AM, said:

H_KARLUK, on Jul 18 2010, 04:21 AM, said:

BBF rife with cynics who hangs around and pretends to be helpful.

You mean like you?

If you hate it and think that we all have nothing better to do, what are you doing here?

Probably they won't even let him into a bridge club, so BBO and BBF are his only sources of fun.