[0Delgado]

Players asking to sit at a new table and that are accepted are often faced with a very unpleasant or embarrassing choice when a hand is currently being played and they don’t know which cards had been played before their arrival or when they do not endorse the bid (s) of the person who’s left the seat they’re now occupying. Due to the awkwardness of the situation they will often ask for a redeal as their thinking might be: “This is a free game so the host can’t reject my legitimate request”.

As usual they are both right and wrong and a fair amount of times their request will be accommodated as soon as the host is made aware of the inacceptable unorthodoxy or inadequacy of whatever happened resulting from the action of a player at the table.

However these same players could understand that though they may not like the bidding or the play,there will often be times when nobody is necessarily at fault (as there might be as many resons to leave are there are players connected) and that there is no reason to demand a redeal and they should just go with the flow because the other pair was having a really nice defense or had a fantastic sequence to reach that slam that no other pair was able to reproduce at other tables. Disrupting the hand by asking a redeal deprives the pair of the fun and pleasure they’re looking for when playing on BBO and understand that that simple pleasure is (from what I understand) BBO's ultimate goal. BBO which offers that great and nicely practical redeal feature.

Maybe a middle of the road solution could be brushed though: on asking to sit the player would/should know (some sign would tell him) that he’s arriving while a hand is being played and he would choose to sit or not to sit knowingly and if he decides to sit could not ask for a redeal before the current hand would have been completed.

However, after the hand his recourse can still be to ask for a reset of the score which most (this world can’t be perfect) hosts will go along with.

[TylerE]

Honestly this sounds silly. Fake internet points that aren't even tallied (scores at normal tables) don't matter.

[Vampyr]

I know that I wouldn't want to join a table in the middle of a hand, and I think that most people would agree with me.

And what if I had played it before?

[1eyedjack]

I have not tried it out but I thought that the latest implementation of the software temporarily auto-injected a robot to complete the play of a partially completed hand when a player leaves?? Precisely to address the OP concerns

[diana_eva]

Robots to finish hand midway are only seated at table with open seats - those tables where people hop in and out using Help me find a game. If the host has the seats locked, or is playing in another club than Main or Relaxed, there will be no auto-robots.

Still seems silly for anyone to want to force a new player to finish a deal in progress without knowing what has passed or after some bidding sequence he doesn't agree to. I would also ask for a redeal and expect for it to be accepted. If you want to complete the deal no matter what, you might consider renting robots to place them in the runners' seats.

[diana_eva]

0Delgado, on 2014-March-08, 18:57, said:

...

Maybe a middle of the road solution could be brushed though: on asking to sit the player would/should know (some sign would tell him) that he's arriving while a hand is being played and he would choose to sit or not to sit knowingly and if he decides to sit could not ask for a redeal before the current hand would have been completed.
...

Let's say a player prefers to see whether there is an unfinished deal at the table before deciding to sit. He can join the table as a kibitzer first, and see all the cards. Would you still want to let him finish the deal with all cards in view? If so, he probably won't mind. But the software automatically redeals when a kib sits down during the bidding. This would only work during the play of hand.