[pigpenz]

how about a masters solver forum topic
with the polling option would be really easy since peopledo like to discuss different bidding with hands.

[whereagles]

That seems nice. We can replace the "hand of the week" forum with this.

[pclayton]

Yes this is a great idea. I nominate Ben to be the moderator - he picks the panel (more than 10 - 15 is difficult), selects the problems and gets to score them.

Oh - maybe we'll even give him some latitude in picking out the standard bidding system. But maybe we start with BBO - adv

Ben, you up for this?

[inquiry]

Hmmm..

Well this idea keeps surfacing. I guess BBO-advanced as written would be a good idea. I can rename hand of the week thing (was thinking of deleting that forum after moving the post there to interesting hand forum anyway). But participation is the key. Anyone really think we can get large enough participation? I have my doubts.

[hrothgar]

Sounds like fun...

I agree with previous posters that its important to have a clearly defined system to reference... While BBO Advanced mught be a reasonable choice, I'm worried that the available system description isn't sufficiently detailed.

I'm looking over Fred's articles on improving 2/1 Game Force. Even with these (escellent) supplemental articles, I'm unclear about some elements of the system.

BWS might be a better choice of system...

[shoeless]

Are you suggesting something similar to Richard Pavlicek's (sorry unsure of spelling) monthly bidding or play contest? Wherein he posts 6 deals and offers options for bid or play that participants select based on a posted system (for bidding). He alone (I believe) awards points for the responses (max 10) at the end of month he processes all reponses and provides analysis and scores for participants. Its pretty cool and fun and using BBO-adv for this would be alright.

Ben, I think participation in anything like that would be extremely high.

[whereagles]

I believe participation will be high. The point is people would never agree with the scores, especially if it's one of us to set them.. lol.

[Double !]

Suggest that there be at least 3 or 4 different scorers including one from the Western Hemisphere, one from Europe, one from Asia, and one from Australia. (Not intended to omit middle east and africa). Have people submit answers according to a selected standard system such as BBO-adv. and their preferred systems, too. Suspect there might be some differences between the two answers that people give, based on system, and people won't feel like BBO-adv 2/1 approach (apparently an "inferior system" to some, judging from many previous comments) is being forced on them.

[mike777]

The purpose of the BW Master Solver club is to improve our bidding judgement, not to get the highest score. If your "pet" system has an obvious bid for the situation than you have wasted your time.

The problems, by definition, need to have no one obvious answer. The Master players try to solve the bidding puzzle while thinking aloud so we can follow their thinking process and learn to improve our thinking process. As others have pointed out you need a generally accepted Master level bidding system that allows us to transfer the thinking process to our pet systems while being able to compare the different approaches the Masters take to solving a "like" problem.

To repeat, the club is about process not the end result on the hand. In fact in BW you almost never know the end result and you will often disagree with the highest scoring answer.

BTW, in BW, the highest scoring answer without looking at question is often cuebid or double esp. if Kokish is director that month.

[luke warm]

agree with double and mike... it would be interesting to read what different parts of world say about same hands... and the "rightness" of an answer isn't the important thing, to me... it's the logic used to reach whatever bid is reached... that's why i've started posting things from some really good books

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on Apr 29 2005, 01:52 AM, said:

agree with double and mike... it would be interesting to read what different parts of world say about same hands... and the "rightness" of an answer isn't the important thing, to me... it's the logic used to reach whatever bid is reached... that's why i've started posting things from some really good books

Slight problem here...

The Master Solver's Club STARTS with an auction in progress...

If some of the players are assuming Polish Club, another group is using BWS, and a third Acol, then the start of the uaciton means something completely different

[luke warm]

true, but i'm not talking about different systems but the different ways people evaluate hands/bids from within one system

[pigpenz]

what I was thinking about when posting the idea, is we could post the auction and a hand and use the set up a poll function and see what %'s of the users of this forum vote on.....granted who sets up the problem would have to have some general idea of what the possible bids maybe....really dont need a an actual panel since it would be open to users of this forum....what we would need to decide is what is the Bridge Base Forum Standard.....Which I would assume would not be SAYC or BBO Basic.

[inquiry]

Well, I would say we need to come up with list of panelist who would get the hands a week in advance. They would send by PM their answers to me, and the majority vote would get the top score, and snippets of their votes would be pasted.

I would guess we would accept any input Fred wanted to give on the hands, but he is a busy man. So I think we need to put together a list of people with interesting views and/or recongnized excellence. So we need to be nominating people.

We probably need around 7 panelist. We need a voluteer to whom people could send their votes to be tabulated, and whoever comes in with the highest score would be invited to participate on the next panel.

I would say the gold stars that post here, Luis, roland, jlall, ritong, Walddk, Rado (where has he been?), and maybe either some ringers from BBO who don't post here or, a couple of forum regulars who in the opinion of the moderator have useful things to say. So, hands posted here and the panelist submit their answers to me, while others send their reply to whoever is going to create a spreadsheet to track the replies. After a few days/week, I will post the panel's view assigning scores based upon the panels BIDS, as well as the relative remarks made by the panelist. Will also annoucne who had the highest score sent in from non-panelist. T

Does that sound like what you guys have in mind?

Ben

[Elianna]

Hi Ben. You wanted a volunteer to tabulate votes from the audience at large. I'd be willing to do so (unless someone else really wants to). I've had experience doing this for running oscar (Academy Award) pools.

Also, may I suggest, that after the moderator (you, I'm assuming) posts the questions, the thread gets locked (and maybe "stuck" to the top) for a certain time, so as to make sure that everyone gets to answer without seeing other's answers? And then, if it's possible, when you open the thread, you unstick it (so that there's only one set of questions ever "stuck".

[inquiry]

Elianna, on Apr 28 2005, 10:29 PM, said:

Hi Ben. You wanted a volunteer to tabulate votes from the audience at large. I'd be willing to do so (unless someone else really wants to). I've had experience doing this for running oscar (Academy Award) pools.

Also, may I suggest, that after the moderator (you, I'm assuming) posts the questions, the thread gets locked (and maybe "stuck" to the top) for a certain time, so as to make sure that everyone gets to answer without seeing other's answers? And then, if it's possible, when you open the thread, you unstick it (so that there's only one set of questions ever "stuck".

Ok.. if this is go, you will be the contact person for all the non-panel votes. Yes, the thread will be locked..for some period of time.

[Walddk]

inquiry, on Apr 28 2005, 09:09 PM, said:

I would say the gold stars that post here, Luis, roland, jlall, ritong, Walddk, Rado

I like the idea of being able to contradict myself. It wouldn't be the first time

Roland

[luis]

I'm ok with being a panelist this can be a lot of fun.

[Echognome]

As an idea of what might make this poll unique is to allow for problems from any type of system. I notice that on a lot of polls that our pet systems can solve any given problem without issue. However, you often find that your pet system might lead to yet an entirely different type of problem. The basic idea should be one of bridge judgment. So as long as the poster of the problem laid out what we know about the hands thus far and what options are available, then it should be interesting to a wider bridge public. Furthermore, since these problems will then be taken from actual hands, then people can see what the result was.

Alternatively, the moderator can collect problems from various systems and then have a week of say SAYC, one of 2/1, one of polish club, one of precision, one of moscito, etc...

Also hearing experts give opinions on systems that are not their own will be interesting for everyone and also hearing about different systems in the context of their problems will help people think about the tradeoffs of different systems.

Just my two cents.