[pescetom]

My club is interested in the idea of running a timed MP pairs tournament on BBO.
I went through the sticky material here but didn't find answers to all their questions, specifically:
- can tournament entry be restricted to a list of club members?
- can subs be selected by nationality or language or systems?
- can robots be used to handle sitouts instead?
- who if anyone has to pay BB$: the Director for creating the tournament or for using robots, the players for taking part?
Thanks.

[diana_eva]

 pescetom, on 2020-March-07, 11:23, said:

My club is interested in the idea of running a timed MP pairs tournament on BBO.
I went through the sticky material here but didn't find answers to all their questions, specifically:
- can tournament entry be restricted to a list of club members?
- can subs be selected by nationality or language or systems?
- can robots be used to handle sitouts instead?
- who if anyone has to pay BB$: the Director for creating the tournament or for using robots, the players for taking part?
Thanks.

You can restrict your tourney to a list of usernames.

You cannot choose subs based on country in an automated way. But you will have a list of available substitutes and you can browse through it to pick the Italian ones if you need.

You cannot use robots to replace the sitouts.

You cannot create these games with a BB$ entry fee unless BBO creates a new pay organization code for your club, a contract is signed and a bunch of legaleze is discussed first. If your club wants to charge the players, this needs to be discussed with BBO.

The tournament can have an option to register with a robot as a partner active. In this case, each player pays for its own bot-partner (0.25 BB$). But this only works when you want to register, you cannot place a robot in the tournament after it has started.

If a new private org is created, the tournament will issue BBO points by default. If you will want it to issue other types of points, you will need to get your bridge federation to agree to that. There are no official FIGB point tournaments on BBO at the moment, and even if there were, we'd still need to discuss with the FIGB whether they can be awarded by a new organization.

I suggest that, at the moment, the most practical solution to get your players online and playing is to ask permission to host free tournaments on BBO, either for you, or for your club TDs.

Train your players on how to create a BBO username and login.

Collect their usernames and create a tournament restricted to this list of usernames.

You can try to handle the fees, points, results reporting on the club side, just like you would normally do with a live game. On our side this will be just another free private game, on yours, it would be just like a normal live club game, except everyone's playing it from home. If the club does this, let BBO know though. Normally there is some agreements to pay BBO some fee on pay games, but the details need to be discussed with each club.

I would hope that since this is a crisis situation BBO will focus on getting you back to your games first, and worry about the financial details later.

[pescetom]

Sincere thanks for the timely, detailed and thoughtful response.
I think there is no interest in collecting fees or earning points, people just want some sembrance of normality in difficult times.
I'll get back to you via email after discussing with the others.

[diana_eva]

 pescetom, on 2020-March-07, 14:19, said:

Sincere thanks for the timely, detailed and thoughtful response.
I think there is no interest in collecting fees or earning points, people just want some sembrance of normality in difficult times.
I'll get back to you via email after discussing with the others.

Right, for a short term solution a free private game seems the simplest.

If things get complicated though, you'll have to pay rent and maintain the club so we'll need to find some agreement to allow it to collect fees and award points too. Both can be done and we'll do our best to help out.

[0 carbon]

 pescetom, on 2020-March-07, 11:23, said:

My club is interested in the idea of running a timed MP pairs tournament on BBO.
I went through the sticky material here but didn't find answers to all their questions, specifically:
- can tournament entry be restricted to a list of club members?
- can subs be selected by nationality or language or systems?
- can robots be used to handle sitouts instead?
- who if anyone has to pay BB$: the Director for creating the tournament or for using robots, the players for taking part?
Thanks.

Practically speaking,

• No language field to choose;
• country is self-described;
• easiest way to manage is to have a Club "ID" (like GlobalClub) to create ("Host") tourneys and just admit club ID "Followeds"s, as other lists are a pain to administer
• Includes are first filter, Excludes are 2nd filter

-- tom

[pescetom]

 0 carbon, on 2020-March-09, 14:39, said:

Practically speaking,

• No language field to choose;
• country is self-described;
• easiest way to manage is to have a Club "ID" (like GlobalClub) to create ("Host") tourneys and just admit club ID "Followeds"s, as other lists are a pain to administer
• Includes are first filter, Excludes are 2nd filter

-- tom

Thanks.
For now some are playing in the BBO Italia tournaments, which offer a suitable environment but of course they miss direct encounters with known pairs.
The ideal thing would be guarantee entry to anyone with the club ID but at the same time allow unknown pairs to enter up to the limit, as it's not a big club and online presence might be quite low some days - not sure if that is possible and how.

[pottsca]

We are more or less succeeding using the include list, although maintaining it between multiple directors is a pain. Our real problem is when people who are in the tournament leave, usually involuntarily. If we could only put in a robot, everything would be grand. We could sub the player back in if they did make it back.

I had to put in substitutes from the general list. One substitute got mad when his partner failed to guess he was playing a short club and left after making rude remarks. A robot would not have done that.

Any chance of robot subs?

[barmar]

Allowing TDs to subsitute robots is something we've got on our roadmap. We have part of it implemented, but have had to move it to the back burner for more pressing issues.

[bucmar]

You can email support@bridgebase.com or me directly if you prefer at diana@bridgebase.com (I will answer the Support tickets on the matter too, so either way these request land in my queue) to explain in more detail what you need.
I suggest that, at the moment, the most practical solution to get your players online and playing is to ask permission to host free tournaments on BBO, either for you, or for your club TDs -- this can be granted immediately.

I guess you're getting a lot of requests these days. I sent mine on march 15 and it's still unanswered. I hope this will happen shortly.
Thanks to those of you who are working to allow us to have fun and cultivate our passion even in these difficult days.
Good Job

[barmar]

Unfortunately, the load on BBO has been increasing faster than we can keep up with increasing capacity. We're taking extreme measures to try to keep it running for our major partners: ACBL and EBU. We're not granting any of these requests and will probably be revoking the permissions we've already given.

[julp]

Hi all,
I am new as TD, so please excuse my ignorance.
BBO gave me the privilege to run a pairs tournament designed to substitute our small club life play during this difficult times.
We are a small group and we would like to keep the tournament "private" and the list is working perfectly.
I would like to understand the rules used by the system in creating the pairs movement depending on the number of boards and pairs defined in the tournament.
What I am thinking about is full Howell or section based Mitchell movements and the rules the system uses in order to decide what to use.
Thank you!

[ognyantn]

 0 carbon, on 2020-March-09, 14:39, said:

Practically speaking,

• No language field to choose;
• country is self-described;
• easiest way to manage is to have a Club "ID" (like GlobalClub) to create ("Host") tourneys and just admit club ID "Followeds"s, as other lists are a pain to administer
• Includes are first filter, Excludes are 2nd filter

-- tom

Hi Tom,
Would you tell me how can I have a Club ID? Managing include lists for different tournaments is a tough task and I am looking for a peactical solution. Unfortunately BBO doesn't give an opportunity to upload or download include/exclude lists.

BR,
Ognyan

[barmar]

 ognyantn, on 2020-March-23, 16:50, said:

Hi Tom,
Would you tell me how can I have a Club ID? Managing include lists for different tournaments is a tough task and I am looking for a peactical solution. Unfortunately BBO doesn't give an opportunity to upload or download include/exclude lists.

If it's an ACBL club, we're working on a new solution to enable clubs to run games for their members. You should hear from ACBL in a few days when we start to roll it out.

[TopSpiker]

 barmar, on 2020-March-18, 07:16, said:

Allowing TDs to subsitute robots is something we've got on our roadmap. We have part of it implemented, but have had to move it to the back burner for more pressing issues.

Regarding include lists, if I add a member to the list 10 minutes before the start of the tournament, will it be considered, or is the include list loaded when the tournament is created?

[pescetom]

 TopSpiker, on 2020-April-07, 09:36, said:

Regarding include lists, if I add a member to the list 10 minutes before the start of the tournament, will it be considered, or is the include list loaded when the tournament is created?

My understanding is that it will be considered only if you update the tournament after editing the list... add a space in the name (or whatever). This works, at any rate.

[paulg]

 TopSpiker, on 2020-April-07, 09:36, said:

Regarding include lists, if I add a member to the list 10 minutes before the start of the tournament, will it be considered, or is the include list loaded when the tournament is created?

 pescetom, on 2020-April-07, 15:24, said:

My understanding is that it will be considered only if you update the tournament after editing the list... add a space in the name (or whatever). This works, at any rate.

I found that just hitting the Modify Tournament was sufficient.

[ltsui10]

 julp, on 2020-March-23, 15:53, said:

Hi all,
I am new as TD, so please excuse my ignorance.
BBO gave me the privilege to run a pairs tournament designed to substitute our small club life play during this difficult times.
We are a small group and we would like to keep the tournament "private" and the list is working perfectly.
I would like to understand the rules used by the system in creating the pairs movement depending on the number of boards and pairs defined in the tournament.
What I am thinking about is full Howell or section based Mitchell movements and the rules the system uses in order to decide what to use.
Thank you!

I was told that BBO uses the modified Howell movement for a small pairs tournament but I don't how it works exactly.

[0 carbon]

 ognyantn, on 2020-March-23, 16:50, said:

Would you tell me how can I have a Club ID? Managing include lists for different tournaments is a tough task and I am looking for a peactical solution. Unfortunately BBO doesn't give an opportunity to upload or download include/exclude lists.

I mean, create an ID and name it with your club name, like HogwartsClub that will act as Host, creating all the club tournaments. One or two club people should know the password and create the tourneys. Use the Ignored of HogwartsClub as your exclusion list. You could also use Followeds as the Inclusion list (adding/deleting from these lists is much easier than other lists). BTW, the host is always a TD of the tourney even if deleted from the TD list.
Second, create a backup ID, like HogwartsTD which is added to all tourneys and distribute the password to all your TDs. This can be used to rescue orphan tourneys, correct ID misspellings, or to TD while you play with your personal ID. (An orphan tourney is a tourney lacking any online TD/host)
This is what we have done with GlobalClub.

[0 carbon]

Learn to TD on BBO with V3: https://doc.bridgeba...for_BBO_TDs.pdf

[0 carbon]

More advice....

• Use V2(flash in browser, at https://www.bridgebase.com/client/currelease4/bbo.php ) and you can use categories to ID & colour classes of players you wish to identify
• Set start times a minute or two before or after other tourneys to avoid slowness in starting.