[smerriman]

Rumour has it that BBO has decided they no longer want to host the bidders challenge next year.

You may not like bidding challenges but I have found it very enlightening reading comments from incredible bridge experts every month, and with 5000+ entries per month, it seems to be quite popular amongst the user base too..

Seems a strange decision? Maybe another cost-saving thing with not wanting to give away BB$ to the winners anymore? That's the only explanation I can think of consistent with past decisions by the management.

[dave251164]

smerriman, on 2023-November-15, 13:31, said:

Rumour has it that BBO has decided they no longer want to host the bidders challenge next year.

You may not like bidding challenges but I have found it very enlightening reading comments from incredible bridge experts every month, and with 5000+ entries per month, it seems to be quite popular amongst the user base too..

Seems a strange decision? Maybe another cost-saving thing with not wanting to give away BB$ to the winners anymore? That's the only explanation I can think of consistent with past decisions by the management.

I look forward to this each month, so I would be gutted if it was dropped.
I love to read The Bidding Panel's comments about why they chose their bid and Marc's enlightening summing up comments.
Some of the problems must be a nightmare to mark with even the Grandmasters, authors and champions on the panel disagreeing wildly at times.
As well as being educational, it is especially fun on the months where I get a better score than Zia or David Bird - especially as I have dozens of his David's books!
It would be a shame if the Bidding Challenge didn't continue, as Marc's hard work has made it so successful with all the thousands of entrants.
Maybe an alternative site/sponsor can be found if BBO does discontinue it?
But why would they want to discontinue it, when it is so succesfull and a great marketing tool that gets thousands of bridge players comparing notes and talking about BBO?

[diana_eva]

As far as I understood, we're putting the bidders challenge on hold and reviewing the format to make it better and faster (so that, for example, players won't need to wait 3 months between submitting their bids and getting their scores).

[smerriman]

Interesting - if that's the case it may be worth communicating that to Marc who runs the challenge, since that doesn't appear to be what he was told and he was looking at shifting to a completely different platform from BBO (and was encouraging everyone involved to complain).

[diana_eva]

smerriman, on 2023-November-18, 12:42, said:

Interesting - if that's the case it may be worth communicating that to Marc who runs the challenge, since that doesn't appear to be what he was told and he was looking at shifting to a completely different platform from BBO (and was encouraging everyone involved to complain).

There have been multiple communications. However, as it often happens on the internet, perception depends on the filters used. Point taken though, we'll reach out to the participants and explain what's happening.