Author Topic: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC  (Read 30819 times)

sallyally

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Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« on: April 29, 2017, 07:24:50 PM »
In response to Pam's request regarding membership in IAC - First of all let me say that I have thoroughly enjoyed being an IAC member.  My favourite thing to do on BBO is play in tourneys.  Unfortunately the majority of them on IAC are in the daytime and since bridge is recreational for me I preferr to play evenings.  Not only that I like 8 pm eastern but could manage 7 or 9.  What a pain in the neck a member like me can be!
Team games are also high on my list.  Arranging team members is difficult but easier now that there is a set time for games.
My regular partner and I do play in the club one night a week.  This however, is a set game and we normally don't need anyone to spare.  Trying to find a pickup game when there is no guarantee you will find one or if you do that it will last without people going in and out and waiting for someone else to sit is frustrating.
Teaching sessions are something I will try to fit in - if they fit me.  Sorry Oliver, but at this point in my life I don't want to learn precision.  It's struggle enough to try to get 2/1 right.  Weak nt is not on for the partnership I have.  Also daytime teaching is beyond me on a regular basis.
I am not trying to be negative in my comments.  I do hope other members chime in with their thoughts if only to help Pam get a feel for what is happening.  I have met many people through IAC.  In particular the team games foster making friends.  It is my sincere hope that the club will continue.  I am sorry I don't have solutions.  Perhaps an even larger membership would help.

OliverC

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2017, 11:21:22 PM »
Hi All,


Understand and appreciate your comments. Louise, thanks.


It doesn't matter to me that most of IAC have no interest in Precision. Precision is NOT for everyone. I say myself during the course I run that you really need to have a thorough grounding in any one of the "natural" bidding systems (eg: 2/1, Std American, Acol, SEF, Forum D etc etc etc) before you can hope to tackle precision with any degree of confidence. "Classic" Wei Precision is a fairly natural system, but it is a fundamental shift in bidding philosophy. OCP, which is what I teach, is a million miles away from Std systems like the above or Wei Precision, and it's definitely NOT for the faint-hearted, LOL. That's why I try to tell people in the announcements that I do whether a given teaching session is Precision-specific or one with a more general application.
Oliver (OliverC)
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Curls77

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2017, 06:51:59 PM »
Very nice to hear your opinion Sally. If more players were interested in USA evening time, I am sure we would be able get a TD to run trnys. If they only would speak up and ask what is their prefference.
Many more also enjoy teams, and for sure soon new series will start.

As for teaching, lesson's subjects and time of sessions are chosen by the teacher, not much we can do but accept their good will give us free lessons at whatever hour is most appropriate for them.

onoway

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #3 on: May 01, 2017, 07:04:59 PM »
Thanks for your post! You and Joy have been faithful supporters since the beginning, and your involvement has been very much appreciated. We might try another evening tourney midweek, but even Dulci's tourney on Sunday evening is struggling, as is the one on Saturday morning.  Both of those were doing well until a few months ago when participation started to drop off, for no obvious reason.

The business of getting tables going in the club is something I wonder if best left until the fall now? Summer is short and people tend to be out and about or so it seems, having hosted tables might well be worth another try, but the question is when.

One thing I should make clear is that we don't expect members to be involved with everything we do..it would be nice but isn't realistic, but if even 90% of the members were involved  even just once a week with SOMETHING... playing in the club or a tourney or going to a class, we would have a phenomenally successful club.  Perhaps we should implement something like that, as a requirement for continuing membership, with allowances made for people who are moving or ill or on holidays or whatever and negotiate that with us.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2017, 07:18:29 PM by onoway »

onoway

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2017, 07:11:42 PM »
one thing that I do think has had an impact is the changeover. The web version is definitely more complicated to move through, and not being able to see who is kibbing at the table without searching out buttons to click  and refreshing all the time is a problem. I certainly find the web version just much less fun to play on, and wondering if that is true of a number of our longtime membership.  Quite a lot of the time members don't seem to be playing anywhere, just kibbing.

There's nothing more  I can think of  we can do to help with that.   

infidel

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2017, 03:21:35 PM »
I guess that's enough responses that I don't have to feel like I'm the only one paying any attention, so...

I was one of the first few members of what was originally the 2/1 club, in the dear old days of ChinaMike, DocHelm, ChasP and others...the intent was to screen out beginners and Goren players, so we could find a game with relatively high standard, with a definite emphasis on 2/1. I objected to the name change, especially since there was already an "IAC" in the Public area, but stayed with it throughout. My goal is still the same, though: for the club to be a place to peek into, find a game with at least intermediate level players; NOT to sign up for tournaments and/or team matches. I used to rail against those folks intruding on a nice game to seduce some of our players into some meaningless (to me) team match, sometimes breaking up a game to do so.  More recently, there is almost never a game forming in IAC...either it is used as a staging area for team/tourney matches, or there is a pre-arranged game at which casual entry is unwelcome. That, plus the pernicious invasion of Precision (Sorry, Oliver...just my opinion: I won't play it, nor against it unless P and I have discussed a defense) has made it all but impossible to find a game in the club. I still make the club my first destination when I log in, and continue to look for a casual game there, but failing that I just wander off into other rooms.

OliverC

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2017, 05:06:24 PM »
"The pernicious invasion of Precision" - what a wonderful phrase. You make it sound like Precision is some Johnny-come-lately.


Precision Club has been around since the late 1960's, some years prior to 2/1, which wasn't even mooted (by Soloway, Swanson and the Walshes) until some time in the 1970's, and not fully described until later still (separately) by Max Hardy and Mike Lawrence. 2/1 is popular in North America, but much less widely used elsewhere in the World, whereas Precision has had worldwide adherents ever since its introduction and has spawned countless variations and developments (of which OCP is just one).


Trying to promote a Club where you only want to play against people who play the same system as you do is a somewhat insular and not a little pathetic, don't you think? It's a bit like having a Golf Club where women aren't welcome or where you're only allowed to use one particular make of Clubs and shots where you fade the ball to the right are banned! :)


I like to play OCP because I developed it from standard Super-Precision and have lived with it since the early 1980's, but I'll also happily play 2/1, Standard American, Acol etc. I don't care what system Opps are playing and find it really refreshing to come up against anything that's new. Quite apart from anything else, I'm always receptive to ideas different from my own, because (a) Their ideas may well be better than my own, (b) Variety is the spice of life, and (c) Coming up against new stuff is how people generally learn. I've been playing this game for well over 50 years now, much of it at a pretty high level of competition, but I still learn things about the game all the time.

I feel it's a shame if people cocoon themselves within their own comfort zone and resist anything new or different, because that really does tend to stifle new ideas and may well ultimately kill what they're trying to preserve (typical ACBL and ECU mentality, unfortunately). Thankfully most of the world is not like that.
Oliver (OliverC)
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infidel

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2017, 07:00:30 PM »
In a vacuum, I agree...I'm the guy who nearly got kicked out of an NABC for trying to play a universal transfer system with a pet partner; who constantly rails against certain tourney hosts who post things like "no Multi" and "no psyches" in the tourney rules; and enjoys pushing the envelope of whatever rules get imposed by the PTB.  I just have a "thing" about big club systems. FWIW, I would welcome EEHA, forcing pass systems, the Little Major, Paleo-goren, or whatever...but only when I have a chance to discuss defenses against them with partner. When big clubbers land in the middle of a tourney, or even a casual game, when we mostly play with pickup partners, groping with counters is impossible. Of course, that applies to any regular partnership, especially those who have a full convention card. With a couple of pet partners, I greatly enjoy playing against big club systems; but not when we have to freelance against it. Too often (IMHO), the gains of playing  a big club are entirely the result of opponents who pass in a daze because they don't understand how to make things work against it

As to the insular nature of an all-2/1 club, yeah, I guess...I believe the intent, originally, was at least partially to provide a place for players making the transition from sayc to 2/1, and playing against the same system doubles the learning opportunities. I fully recognize that is no longer a goal of the club

bAbsG

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2017, 07:46:49 PM »
Maybe the question to address is "What is the purpose/goal of the IAC?" 

On the home page it states 'This is the website for the BBO Intermediate / Advanced Club, a private Teaching club on Bridgebase Online.' 

Mike's take "the intent was to screen out beginners and Goren players, so we could find a game with relatively high standard, with a definite emphasis on 2/1."  "My goal is still the same, though: for the club to be a place to peek into, find a game with at least intermediate level players; NOT to sign up for tournaments and/or team matches."

Personally, I joined for the teaching sessions.  I knew I could not play at more than a beginner level at the time, but I hoped to learn and advance through the offerings of the club. 

I liked the idea of having hosted tables at a specific day and time.  A calendar was put up on the website showing scheduled sessions.  I offered to host a session on Saturday mornings.  Most mornings I closed it down after 10-15 minutes as nobody showed up. (Though maybe at the time I was recognized as a weak player which scared everyone off.) 

So not sure what to suggest.

OliverC

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #9 on: May 15, 2017, 09:58:33 AM »
It's a problem, Babs and there is no easy answer to it. As I said near the top of this thread, I think one of the major issues is a lack of teaching sessions. We simply do not have enough teachers delivering the variety of teaching sessions we used to have. When I started teaching in IAC the teaching sessions were thick on the ground and you had to "book a slot" with Charles so that he could make sure your slot didn't overlap or encroach on someone else's.


That's no longer an issue, remotely, but things have been looking up recently and we do now have 5 teaching sessions being delivered over the course of each week. It would be interesting to know how the numbers are holding up for those. Mine stay fairly steady, not normally less than 15-20, and that's a viable and encouraging number. Maybe some of the teachers who have downed tools were discouraged by falling numbers - I don't know.


The other alternative is that they decided teaching Bridge for free was not as attractive as giving private lessons for payment. I can't fault anyone who takes that stance, although my own view has always been that Bridge has given me a lifetime of enjoyment and I really don't mind putting something back into the game
Oliver (OliverC)
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OliverC

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #10 on: May 15, 2017, 10:40:15 AM »
As to the insular nature of an all-2/1 club, yeah, I guess...I believe the intent, originally, was at least partially to provide a place for players making the transition from sayc to 2/1, and playing against the same system doubles the learning opportunities. I fully recognize that is no longer a goal of the club

The thing is this: If you go and play in a duplicate at a local Bridge Club or head off to a Pairs Congress, you are generally going to be playing against a number of different systems, pairs playing conventions you're not familiar with, etc. That's part of the game. If everyone in in your "world" is doing the same thing in the same way, life gets very boring and nothing ever changes or develops. Progress doesn't happen. We'd all still be playing Culbertson.


In my view the aim of the Club ought to be to give people the opportunity to improve and develop their Bridge skills in a friendly and supportive environment and to encourage them to learn new stuff, new skills, new techniques and new approaches to the game. All the Tourneys, Teams Matches, Ladders etc help to keep people involved with the Club and obviously the more you play the more you learn, especially if you're coming up against unfamiliar systems and conventions, but it's the teaching sessions which primarily address that aim, in my view.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2017, 10:51:27 AM by OliverC »
Oliver (OliverC)
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onoway

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #11 on: May 15, 2017, 06:47:20 PM »
Originally teaching sessions were regarded as a bonus and an important adjunct in the goal of providing a pleasant place for members to play and advance their skills.  It was actually originally called a 2/1 club but we had some fairly major issues with problem people who were removed from the club for consistently obnoxious behaviour but who kept slithering back in until we finally figured out how to ban them permanently. At that time, to mark a new start, so to speak, the club was renamed. This happened probably only about 2  months or so after the initial start, and the new name was a hopeful reflection of who the club was focussed toward serving.

 It was intended to be a place for  both more advanced players as well as strong intermediate players to escape the problems of Main  as well as a place for intermediates to continue to improve their game after they had mastered what BIL had to offer. Unlike BIL though, we never had an upper level "cap" on skill level, so we could offer the advanced opportunity to improve their game as well.

The goal was never to limit the club to one system, but by default the focus rested on the system that most advanced players were using,  arbitrarilly determined to be 2/1. Both Rona and Charles at that time played 2/1, Charles has since switched to Oliver's Precision system  I believe.  But the goal was always to try to make the club a place where people could log into and find a decent game.  We've had spasms of success with this but the efforts were indeed short circuited by people trolling in the club for random team matches or being called to do in BIL what they had been doing for us, when BIL adopted our "hosted table" system. Both hurt us badly.

What happens now, too often, is that people may set up a table and shout for players, possibly not realizing that such shouts don't actually get beyond the room unless made by the IAC ID. When players  don't show up almost instantly, the hosts leave.  We need more people to BRING people to play in the club, friends who will at least start out a table, and for players to invite other friends to come play. If someone is playing and knows they are going to be leaving, it's helpful if they look to find friends who aren't playing and ask them to come replace them, this will often keep a table going very successfully.

 It's bewildering to think that members have no friends online so immediately shout for players and almost as quickly leave the table if nobody shows up. Especially since the enforced web version, it often takes people a while to get anywhere, and it is EXTREMELY frustrating to answer a call and find the table has vanished. If I call for a player and the host  closes the table without waiting a reasonable time for someone to answer, I won't ask for players for that person again.

It's a bit frustrating to see 7 kibs at a table and another table with two players pleading for people to join and none of the kibs respond. This also happens fairly frequently.

We get a number of people who show up to teaching sessions but it is almost always a struggle to get them to participate, to do more than kib. Often there can be around 30 kibs and there aren't enough players to fill the table three times, often even twice is a struggle; players who do volunteer often have to be reseated. This is another example of  how passive/ uninvolved members are now.

One thing that HAS happened over the past year is that the level of play has gone up and often more advanced players are protective of their status and unwilling to "make mistakes" or be subject to correction in "public". When we had more weak intermediates playing, getting participants was easier.   Also, a number of  "advanced" players..which is a highly relative term,  react with scorn and hostility  to anything suggesting they may not have all the nuances of the game entirely under control. Of course,  none of these people will risk the courage of their convictions at the table themselves, but privately mutter resentful epithets about the teacher not following the rules as they understand them, one such recently  gifting me with the information that the internationally successful teacher was " an idiot" .

Neither passivity nor  a defensive aggression is  encouraging in terms of looking for more teachers.

 If a teacher is only ever going to offer 1+1=2 then we may as well defer to BIL.

The above comments  don't apply to Precision sessions  because I really have no idea what goes on there. Besides that, it is still relatively new to most of us  and it is also much more complex  to learn than 2/1 or Sayc, if only because of the heavy emphasis on artificial bids. So strongly emphasizing the basics would be extremely important.  For those members playing 2/1 or Sayc, they are supposed to know the basics before they join IAC.

However, none of this explains the sudden and fairly dramatic drop in tourney involvement, certainly the enforced switch to the web version had a marked impact but it isn't recovering and surely by now it should have been.  And I am truly at a loss to explain the 600 or so people who complained about not being able to access the club and asked for reinstatement but are never seen anywhere near either the club or any club events. Nor have they responded to requests as to why they want to belong, what they want the club to offer, or how it could fit their bridge time better.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2017, 07:05:38 PM by onoway »

onoway

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #12 on: May 15, 2017, 07:53:19 PM »
I have had a few  suggestions offered, one being that we limit the tourneys to 5 hands, which I am totally against doing for any number of reasons, and the second being that we open the tourneys to non members and invite them all to join the club.

It may seem as though I am being uncooperative but we DID open the tourneys for about 3 months when the numbers dropped so unexpectedly and suddenly. and we DID get several requests for membership, which were accepted. What these people want, though, is the sort of membership I have with a public club running tourneys,  something to do when nothing else is available, and in which I participate maybe 4 or 5 times a year. This is not helpful, and really, what it the point of being a private club and running open tourneys? I also got some complaints about it at the time from members, because when running an open tourney there is often going to be the odd abusive player showing up and those people upset everyone else at the table, not just the victim, even when they are immediately booted.  There is also the issue of trying to cope with multiple runners, even with the completion rate set very high, since most tourneys were run with a single director. Finding 5 subs at a time is NOT fun.

The hosted tables I think might be worth pursuing again but unsure if going into the summer is the right time to try this. If people want to give it a go, we can certainly try it again. 

One suggestion was that anyone who didn't have at least one MP or isn't known to participate somehow be dropped from the membership.  This is appealing but the problem I can't see a solution for is the tracking of people playing in the club. We can certainly track people who attend teaching sessions or play in tourneys or team matches,  but what about those who just play? We are absolutely NOT dropping the people who play in the club but don't attend teaching sessions etc.  and how do we know who they are unless we are there at the time?

But if we could limit the membership to people who ARE involved somehow, then we could serve those people better with a whole lot less frustration all around.  I would rather have a club of 100 members who are involved than 3000 members who aren't.  THEN we could focus on only adding members who are sponsored by active members, and we could also have an interim membership requiring a minimum amount of participation for some period of time.   I tried this about 2 years ago with little success, unfortunately often the applicant would fulfill the obligations for the month and then disappear. And it took a whole lot of time to monitor.

Part of the problem was because at the time we had some very weak players who lurked in the club and pounced when the new member opened a table, so it was often pretty sad bridge, understandably not appealing to a strong advanced player.

OliverC

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #13 on: May 15, 2017, 11:54:53 PM »
Hi All,

Yes, Pam, I'm not addressing what the Club was originally set up to be, but simply how it was when I started teaching here (at the same time when I was also teaching in BIL). Back then there were significantly more teaching sessions being delivered than is the case now.

I don't have an answer. Indeed I don't think there is a simple answer. Teachers need to volunteer their services - they can't be press-ganged into it. We've tried the Teams Series and the Teams and Pairs Ladders (and can set them going again any time we like). You've tried the hosted tables, tourneys, ad hoc Teams games and other ideas, but over a period of time, the activity in the Club has simply declined. As you point out, the onset of summer is always going to be a quiet period for Bridge activity, so now may not be the best time for new ventures.


Lastly, it's interesting that less than 30 of our members have bothered to even register on this Forum, and that 90% of the messages on here have been posted by just 4 of us (ie: most of those 27 are just lurking).
« Last Edit: May 16, 2017, 12:05:16 AM by OliverC »
Oliver (OliverC)
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Curls77

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Re: Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC
« Reply #14 on: May 16, 2017, 06:15:01 PM »
The other alternative is that they decided teaching Bridge for free was not as attractive as giving private lessons for payment. I can't fault anyone who takes that stance, although my own view has always been that Bridge has given me a lifetime of enjoyment and I really don't mind putting something back into the game
How nice words, Oliver ! TY and thanks all other teachers   !H

I am one of those that came in for lessons - I would never had learned bridge if it wasn't for IAC.
When a friend challenged me to learn the game, he showed me bbo and suggested I join IAC and BIL. BBO learning software was the beginning and then I started reading all I could find on net, and imagine how lost i was to choose WHAT to learn, and whom to "trust". Finally when I could understand what 1NT was, I joined the 2 clubs, BIL on trial period of 3 months. At that time there was only 1 lesson running at hours I am normally in, in both BIL and IAC. In Bil teacher was SO slow, and spoke SO bad english, I couldn't understand 1/5 of what they said. My trial there was finished and I had no wish to become its member.
But in IAC, I found Shep. She opened whole new world to me. I'd sit there, quiet as mice and just swallow with eyes all she wrote. I couldn't follow Hondo's lessons as they were in odd hours, but thanks to Kia I religiously watched and saved movies of his lessons.
   Now at Oliver's class I am having such wonderful time. It's fantastic mental exercise, combined with great humor, place where to meet good players and even better persons. And what ultimate joy it is when u finally make a correct bid LOL!

I will likely never be a great player, but I now adore this game, and want to give back little what IAC gave to me. So, do count on me to help in any way I can :)

« Last Edit: May 16, 2017, 06:50:52 PM by Curls77 »