Author Topic: Managing incompleted hands  (Read 3267 times)

ian84

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Managing incompleted hands
« on: January 21, 2020, 05:00:16 AM »
There are various reasons why a player may not complete a hand

1. Connectivity issues
2. Substitutions
3. Unexpected distractions
4. Difficult hands
5. Naturally slow play
6. Inattention to the clock
7. Deliberate tactic intended to prevent opps getting a good score

As TDs we have a number of tools available to manage these issues
A. Add time to clock
B. Adjust hand using GIB result or manual judgement
C. Choose to allow the default 'Average' score to stand
D. Punish players by adjusting against them
E. Verbal warning at table when play is too slow

I try to use all of the above to achieve a fair, free flowing tourney where no-one is waiting too long. However, it may be that we need to work up a document which formalises our expectations and likely actions. I think there also needs to be a formalised procedure for when a player disagrees with a TD decision.

Over to you


 
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kenberg

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Re: Managing incompleted hands
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2020, 01:52:29 PM »
I'll make a try at saying something useful. I can only speak for myself.

A: I prefer playing just as a foursome. Hopefully we then all four agree on how much time is right. When I play in something that is timed I just accept that sometimes I won't like how it goes.

B: In f2f games at the club I am not seen as a slow player. If anything, I sometimes help an opposing pair at a table catch up if they have fallen behind in starting the round.

C: I suppose that the round changes are at least somewhat automatic but they sometimes seems odd. I played in  the crazy slam session on Sunday with one board rounds. After we completed the first round we waited a while to be moved. Then, for the second hand, I was declarer and I claimed after four tricks Opponents accepted. Almost immediately we were whisked to board 3. Looking at the time stamp for the hands (I assume the time is for the time the hand started), it says I took 7 minutes to play board 2. That seems unlikely.

D: Another thing about the time stamps. Board 1 gives 14:08 and board 8 gives 15:07. So 59 minutes from the start of board 1 to the start of board 8, so 7 boards in 59 minutes. That's 8+, almost 8 and a half, minutes per board. I played board 6 and, by the time stamp, I started at 14:50 and was moved and given an average at 14:57. So yes, after 7 minutes I was not yet finished but I was almost finished and the time I had spent was about a minute and a half less than the average length of a round.

E: I am putting in these details because you say "over to you". I can understand why you are asking for feedback. My thought on Sunday was to just let it be. I assume you guys have a lot of work to do, you are doing your best. I knew I was going to make the hand, I had the play planned out, that's enough for me. There were alternative ways that would not work and so I was fine with not getting credit for it. To repeat, I am responding because you asked, this is not a complaint.


Just a comment on hand 6, only tangentially relevant. Most of the time was probably on the bidding. In a normal game we probably would have stopped in 3NT or possibly 5 !D. There is a lot to be said for playing in 5 !D. But this was called the crazy slam session so after some thought I decided I would pull 3 NT to 4 !D and then we went on to 6 !D.  I had to think about whether I just wanted to bit as I normally would or go with the crazy slam idea. For the slam, both black kings were a problem but my Rho had bid spades so I figured that one was located. Assuming the !S K to be on my right, the slam makes if the !C K is on my left and fails if it isn't. So staying out of slam is hardly crazy. I could have played it faster, really it was just a matter of where the black kings were, but I was playing a few rounds to see if any other option arose.

Good luck on figuring out a formalized procedure. I can see why you want it but I would hope everyone would just relax a bit.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2020, 03:43:44 AM by kenberg »
Ken

Curls77

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Re: Managing incompleted hands
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2020, 02:52:59 PM »
I meant open this subject to discuss in admin / TD section, but I am glad Ian now brought it here, so we can hear what players, non-TDs think. I do not think any of us current IAC TDs are certified, specially not ACBL approved. But among our members we have quite few that are, or were official f2f TDs and they can help us with their opinions.
I only lately figured AVERAGE, and I dislike very much how it is handled in BBO, also unsure if it is same in f2f. I foolishly assumed that I can use AVE- to "punish" a pair in Survivor trny, for refusing to alert or for speaking in language other then english, even after warning. We, as TDs, never know what result table will have until round is over. In BBO MP, AVE+ gives 60% and AVE- gives 40%. We need be extra careful to not gift pair that we wanted punished by handing them 40% if their actual score was say 28%, we will make serious prejudice to opping pair that was not guilty at all. But when board is not finished, we have no clue what they could be really getting, and 40/60 seems very unfair to me.
Other day in IMP IAC trny, with 5 tables one table run out of time. EW were red against white and in slam contract. 3 tables made and 1 failed. TD decided leave AVE for that board, and guess what happened? Pairs that made got 5,33 IMPs, one that failed went down -16 IMPs. Both pairs that stayed AVE received then 0 IMPs. Is it fair ? Specialy coz declarer was just 2 tricks short of finishing the board. I am not sure how many IMPs it would be given for Ave+ and Ave-.

This happens very rarely, if ever, in team matches that are not clocked; but it's quite common in trnys. Those that use premade hands, usually give plenty of time to finish the board, even to the slowest players. But normal 7min board often is not enough with connection issues, need for subs etc.

As TDs we have a number of tools available to manage these issues
A. Add time to clock
B. Adjust hand using GIB result or manual judgement
C. Choose to allow the default 'Average' score to stand
D. Punish players by adjusting against them
E. Verbal warning at table when play is too slow
Having in mind that timely play is responsibility of every player at the table, and when they realize they are slow, it's their duty to call TD timely. Not wait for last 2 mins while they are still bidding and call us, coz by then we won't have many possibilities to fix it.
And I think Ian's list should be:
a) Verbal warning at table when play is too slow
b) Add time to clock - if possible, we do not want annoy whole trny coz of one slow pair
c) Adjust hand using GIB result or manual judgement, when possible, can't do it when only 1 or 2 tricks were played unless it's super obvious how game will go, which is super rare
d) Choose to allow the default 'Average' score to stand, only when no other alternative.
e) Punish players by adjusting against them

Thanks Ken for bringing up the time stamp, I never bothered look close into it. Fact is that longer the round bigger the wait. From time stamps i see that first pair finished 4boards round at 19:32, and last at 19:46. That's 14 mins wait for many tables, and it is way too much imho. We risk people wander away and will need subs for next round.


jcreech

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Re: Managing incompleted hands
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2020, 03:23:49 PM »
For the sake of full disclosure, I was Ken's partner.  In f2f games I tend to be one of the faster players.  I will claim early unless I see an interesting line to gain an extra trick.

As a club director, I learned early that the fewer the boards in a round, the more likely you were to have time difficulties.  For three or more boards, I have found 7  minutes to work for 90+% of the players, for two boards, 15 minutes will work well for about 75-80% of the players.  I've never used a one board movement, but I would think that 8 minutes would work well with 60-70% in f2f games.  The reason is that some boards are easy and others are hard and require more time.  The more boards in play, the more likely it is that you will have easy boards to give you extra time to effectively play the hard ones. 

When you have only challenging hands and/or small numbers of boards per round, the players need more time.  Then as you add in other factors, such as connection speed, computer responsiveness and outside distractions that online players often seem to have, picking a reasonable amount of time can be challenging.  God forbid that someone crashes.  So I would add time compared to f2f
- for random deals 8 minutes per board for a 2 or 3 board round, and 9 minutes for a 1 board round;
- for selected problem hands (e.g., DARE), 8 minutes per board for a 3 board round, 9 minutes for a 2 board round, and 10 minutes for a 1 board round.  These are guesses; those who are experienced TDs for such events would have a better idea.

A stairway to nowhere is better than no stairway at all.  -Kehlog Albran

kenberg

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Re: Managing incompleted hands
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2020, 06:33:24 PM »
Fact is that longer the round bigger the wait. From time stamps i see that first pair finished 4boards round at 19:32, and last at 19:46. That's 14 mins wait for many tables, and it is way too much imho. We risk people wander away and will need subs for next round.

I hope for some caution here. A reasonable pace should be expected, but this does not mean that when one pair plays really fast everyone else should be expected to keep pace. Even if the fast pair can play really well at this fast pace, it would not be suitable for everyone.

As with most things, balance is desirable. Let's say Jim's suggestion is reasonable, 8 minutes a  board. So 32 minutes for a four board round. Call it 30 if you like, a nice round number. Suppose one pair finishes in 20 minutes. That should not obligate the rest of us to rush through our play.

Crazy eights is a fun game, or so I recall from childhood, and it is played really fast. Bridge is different.  A decent pace is expected, but it is not a race.
Ken

ian84

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Re: Managing incompleted hands
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2020, 11:29:37 AM »
As a general rule we set random board IAC tourneys to be 7 mins per board and I have found this to work well for most of the time.  We are blessed with a supportive membership who regularly and promptly respond to calls for subs via the BBO_IAC club broadcasts.

To my mind, the major problems leading to incompletion are players experiencing connection problems, or being distracted at home. My particular bugbear is people who blithely return after a period of non-responsiveness with 'Sorry, phone'. You wouldn't take a phone call when playing f2f, so why do it playing online? Isnt that what voicemail is for?

In the case of connection issues, it seems to me that the other players are very reticent to call out slow play or non-responsivenes until its too late. As noted by Jim, this is a particular problem when its 2 boards per round - I can usually check progress and warn people of slow play in good time on my 4-bd per round Sunday tourney.

So I think that engaging the membership further on these issues may be helpful.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2020, 11:31:49 AM by ian84 »
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kenberg

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Re: Managing incompleted hands
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2020, 01:07:00 PM »
Just a note in support of the above. Yesterday's tourney started at 2 est, I was expecting a call that could not be missed a bit after 3, I thought about it and decided no. In fact the "bit after 3" became 3:45 so I could have played but it was essential that I take it and so I skipped the session. Other times, with less essential calls, Becky (my wife) can deal with them or, as suggested, I can just let it roll over to voice mail. Or I might pick it up and say that I will call them back in, say, half an hour.

The unexpected sometimes happens and I am fine with being understanding about the unexpected. But, with the occasional exception,  we do need to keep pace in a timed game.

Some hands are just difficult.  On these, we can hope everyone can reach some sort of accommodation.  When Arik runs the Dare hands he regularly urges people to slow down and think through the hands. Of course lesson hands are different, or sort of different, from random hands. I say sort of different because often the lesson hands are taken from actual play and because whatever the particular lesson for the hand was, another part of the lesson was to think before playing.  There is a limit on the thinking time, but if the idea is to get people to think through the hand before playing, then this thinking will take some time. More time for some hands than for others.

Maybe the purpose of lesson hands could be summed up as: There is more to bridge than just taking every finesse in sight. We need time to appreciate complexity, but not unlimited time. We should clear our desks so that the time really is on the hands, and sometimes we will have a complicated hand that we just have to play as best we can for now and come back to later for more thought. We can't take forever, but this is a thinking game.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2020, 02:07:47 AM by kenberg »
Ken

Curls77

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Re: Managing incompleted hands
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2020, 09:08:48 PM »
I agree with all you said :)
In Dare, and Poco Problems, I follow Arik's, a round has just 1 board (not because of time, but to be able remind them of next contract timely), and is set to 10 mins, which i always increase if it is needed, bottom line in such trnys is not rush - take ur time and think. Very few complained about it.
7 mins per board in trny with random hands usually works just fine.
So my only problem is when in normal, random trny, 14 mins per round they call TD in 12th minute coz 2nd board is just being bid and wont be able to finish. Tough luck! They gotta call us earlier, whatever the reason of delay is, or we will be forced leave AVE, which is not always fair, and should be avoided if possible.

My particular bugbear is people who blithely return after a period of non-responsiveness with 'Sorry, phone'. You wouldn't take a phone call when playing f2f, so why do it playing online? Isnt that what voicemail is for?
Mine too! It's disrespectful to pard, opps, td and all in trny.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2020, 09:10:31 PM by Curls77 »