[IamTiger]

I would like to bring up a classic problem of unauthorised information (UI) passed when there is a noticable delay in bidding. Couple of years ago it was difficult to tell whether delay was software or human generated. Nowadays this is 99% human. Delay usually gives valuable side-information for even average player.

Not using UI is difficult, even for proffessionals. 99% of players do not even notice foul play. Tournaments are way too short and quick to summon a referee.

Proffessional tournaments use screens to separate players, so esp in competitive bidding (when many difficult decisions have to be made), it is more difficult to tell who was thinking - opponent or partner.

I propose to emulate via software enchanced screens.. Software should give you bidding of all 3 hands only after RHO has bid.

[paulg]

This has been discussed before, but certainly delaying all the bids until it is your turn will definitely slow the game down. It is unclear that the majority of players will believe that this is a price worth paying for a problem that they rarely see.

[matmat]

IamTiger, on 2011-June-11, 14:17, said:

Nowadays this is 99% human.

Do you have any data to back this up? I am very skeptical of people tossing around numbers like this; it would be very surprising to me if bad connections were not to blame for a large chunk of the delays. Not to mention that most of the human delays are related to getting distracted by things not related to the game, such as phones, doors, friends, pets, babies, email, game on tv, spilled coffee on keyboard, etc. etc. etc.

[mtvesuvius]

1. There is one "f" in the word "professional"
2. Most high level players tend to be as ethical as possible in these situations, and tend to err on the side of caution.
3. I don't think that this is a common problem in random BBO tables. Perhaps for special tournaments it would be reasonable, however for everyday purposes I think it causes a lot more problems than it solves.
4. Most of the time the delay is connection... There are plenty of areas throughout the world that are renowned for their painfully slow internet.

[Blackened]

paulg, on 2011-June-11, 15:23, said:

This has been discussed before, but certainly delaying all the bids until it is your turn will definitely slow the game down. It is unclear that the majority of players will believe that this is a price worth paying for a problem that they rarely see.

Yes, I remember bringing up this topic (along with some other similar suggestions) some years ago. Majority of the players wouldn't fancy this feature, but it would nice if we had it optionally; though I'm not sure how much extra work would that mean to Uday.