[Rain]

We have removed "Tournament Completion Rate" requirement of 75% from the Express and Geo tourneys. The only requirement remaining is that the player uses new BBO to play these tourneys. And of course, be sufficiently fast when registering!

But smart BBFers will, of course, understand that whether players complete or not complete these tourneys will reflect in the player's individual TCR. (Barring bugs!)

With this change, BBO's house tourneys no longer use TCR. This stat is still provided for individual TDs to use as they please.

Please report any bugs or suspected bugs, as usual.

[Rain]

Another change:

Convention card used is no longer SAYC, but 2/1. The robots play 2/1 already, and this change may help alleviate some occasional confusion.
Convention card is now loaded, ACBL style, for everyone as they start the tourney.
In a recent post, someone mentioned FD style CC for GIB 2/1 - maybe...

Please report bugs/issues if you see any.

Thanks!

[Bbradley62]

Rain, on 2011-January-06, 09:50, said:

In a recent post, someone mentioned FD style CC for GIB 2/1 - maybe...

That was my fault. I guess I'm confused as to what a Full Disclosure Convention Card is. I play almost exclusively in MBC and in individual tournaments, so my opponents almost never have a convention card. Express tourneys were the first time I had seen bids explained without my having to ask, outside of GIB tournaments. When I asked about this, I was told "These Ts use a Full Disclosure Convention card". So, I thought FDCC was anything that gave you explanations without having to ask. If that's not the case, what is a FDCC and how is it different from others that give automatic explanations?

[Rain]

The GIB currently does not have a FD card. It just alerts what the bids mean, without having a true FD card. But the alerts look like FD alerts, except with no card.

I think that's what Mgo was trying to explain(?) in that other thread.

The GIB having no FD card, but alerting FD style, makes it confusing.
I think the idea is, we want GIB to have a FD card, like everyone else. But it's harder to generate than it looks, which is why it's still on the list of features to be done.

[mgoetze]

Rain, on 2011-January-06, 16:57, said:

The GIB currently does not have a FD card. It just alerts what the bids mean, without having a true FD card. But the alerts look like FD alerts, except with no card.

Right. Actually they don't really look like FD alerts, but FD alerts don't really look like FD alerts either, in the web client... I am seriously considering not using the FD features beyond description anymore...

[Bbradley62]

I promise this will be the last time I ask this question, but it still doesn't appear to me that anyone has attempted to answer it: What is an FDCC, if it's not simply the GIB-style self-explaining card?

[nigel_k]

Rain, on 2011-January-05, 15:40, said:

We have removed "Tournament Completion Rate" requirement of 75% from the Express and Geo tourneys. The only requirement remaining is that the player uses new BBO to play these tourneys. And of course, be sufficiently fast when registering!

Thanks for doing this. But the problem was not the use of TCR, it was the fact that people can have a low or non-existent TCR despite having entered many tournaments and completed all of them.

[matmat]

Bbradley62, on 2011-January-06, 17:19, said:

I promise this will be the last time I ask this question, but it still doesn't appear to me that anyone has attempted to answer it: What is an FDCC, if it's not simply the GIB-style self-explaining card?

The forums have a neat search feature.

meanwhile : http://www.bridgebas...__1#entry301517

[Rain]

On TCR:
TCR (and Main bridge club one, MCR) may still have some bugs in it that will be solved as we discover them. But what made us decide to implement it was to give TDs and players who are responsible players, a nicer experience. That's why we take a rolling 30 day period, and required 10 minimum tourneys/games. It was meant to be exclusive, and so exclude players who are not active tourney (or MBC) players with a recent history of completion that can be used to predict their likely future behavior.

On the bugs-
Some of the bugs mentioned are not really bugs. Example - withdrawing from robot tourneys. It does not count as an incomplete. But the corollary is, finishing a robot tourney will also not count as a complete. We excluded robot tourneys intentionally, because players are likely to behave differently with robots or humans.

Some of the bugs are bugs. Example - the one where occasionally, finishing an Express tourneys didn't count (it should).

Many reported problems so far have actually been either human error in the part of the reporter, or an unawareness of how these 2 stats work.

The most frequent confusion is in how substitution works.
Complete T as a sub = +1
TD replaces sub = nothing (Yes there is argument that this could be a +1 or maybe +0.5, but let's not go there yet)
Abandon T as a sub = -1
This has been checked recently, and we are pretty sure it works this way.

The other confusion is the rolling 30 day period - We're at the point where some tourneys since we started collecting this data, have started to fall off from the 30 day period. That would account for changes in a TCR even though player appears to be doing "nothing".

----------
FD CC stands for Full Disclosure Convention Card. A few years ago, Fred did this side project to make alerting more complete.
An FD convention card will immediately display it's alert to everyone at the table during the bidding. (Yes, even to the partner of bidder).
The alert it displays is precoded in. This coding part is not trivial, but some BBOers have managed to come up with pretty good convention cards.

(To actually code a unique FD card, you probably need to use old BBO and use the editor there to make it easy on yourself. Also, read the FD thread linked above)

Some of the best FD cards (as opposed to standard looking stagnant convention card) have been preuploaded as stock convention cards for everyone on BBO to use. There's a BBO advanced (2/1 card), BBO Basic (SAYC card), Polish, I think Italian, maybe ACOL one. You can use it at a table by going to your convention card area (MY BBO -> Convention Card) and choosing to use the stock ones.

Some of the cards under "stock convention cards" are NOT FD style convention cards. They are stagnant cards. Example, the most recent GIB 2/1 card is still not a FD style card. It uses the ACBL template instead.

Notice that GIB does not have an actual FD card there, just this ACBL style one. If someone experienced in FD is interested in doing that project, please talk to me.

Does this make more sense?

I guess sometimes we forget about the (relative) newcomers to BBO when we use abbreviations.

[barmar]

Full Disclosure CC is a convention card where you describe the meaning of every bid in a bidding sequence. It has boilerplate for common attributes: lengths of suits; whether the bid is weak, constructive, invitational, or forcing; etc. I think there's also a place for free-text descriptions to supplement this, but I'm not sure. The common boilerplate is what makes these bidding explanations somewhat similar to GIB's.

They're very specific, for instance you have to make separate entries in the card for 1♣-1♠, 1♦-1♠, and 1♥-1♠. And this creates a combinatorial explosion: when filling in the meaning of opener rebidding his suit, you have to enter it in each of those bidding sequences. This level of detail allows the system to match the auction against the CC, and display the meanings of the bid automatically. But the complexity of writing these CC's probably means they rarely get beyond the second round of bidding.

[Bbradley62]

Rain, on 2011-January-05, 15:40, said:

The only requirement remaining is that the player uses new BBO to play these tourneys.

Has the geography requirement been removed as well, or was it always just a suggestion?

[Rain]

Not sure what you mean Bradley.

In Express tourney, there are no geographic restrictions.

But we run 2 special tourneys called Geo tourneys. These are 10 board automated tourneys. One is for USA, one is for Turkiye.
These 2 tourneys have geographic restrictions. We would like to run more of these, but it would have to be for more than 1 country.

Both Express and Geo tourneys require user to be using the new BBO.

Hope that helps.

[Bbradley62]

Rain, on 2011-May-23, 23:14, said:

But we run 2 special tourneys called Geo tourneys... One is for USA, one is for Turkiye. These 2 tourneys have geographic restrictions.

The filters are not working. Yesterday, I played tournament #7259 - Geo USA; at least 6 of the players in the 7-table game were non-USA.

[diana_eva]

The filter works by IP, not on flag. This is to avoid people changing flag just to join a tourney.

Tweak announced here, a while ago:

http://www.bridgebas...om-host-country

[pooltuna]

Does the TCR apply to Express tourneys you register for but you miss the start of the tournament? Or does it count against you if you register for one and you are subbing in another when it starts?

[Bbradley62]

diana_eva, on 2011-May-24, 07:57, said:

The filter works by IP, not on flag. This is to avoid people changing flag just to join a tourney.

Thanks.

[Rain]

TCR is not used in express or geo tourneys anymore, in the sense that these tourneys don't have the filters to keep people with lower TCR out.

Anyway, you start accumulating TCR stats only if you are actually in the tourney. So if you register, but miss the start, it is treated as you not registering, so it neither adds to, nor subtracts from your TCR. So if you register in a tourney A, but were playing another tourney and miss the tourney A, nothing happens to your TCR.

[Bbradley62]

Rain, on 2011-May-24, 12:40, said:

Anyway, you start accumulating TCR stats only if you are actually in the tourney. So if you register, but miss the start, it is treated as you not registering, so it neither adds to, nor subtracts from your TCR. So if you register in a tourney A, but were playing another tourney and miss the tourney A, nothing happens to your TCR.

I think this is bad. If you register for Tourney A then join Tourney B (or go make lunch, etc.) and miss Tourney A, you have inconvenienced the other players in Tourney A and your TCR should be hit to reflect that. This is especially true if Tourney A had reached its maximum enrollment and/or doesn't allow subs, because you have prevented someone else from playing.

[pooltuna]

Bbradley62, on 2011-May-24, 12:57, said:

I think this is bad. If you register for Tourney A then join Tourney B (or go make lunch, etc.) and miss Tourney A, you have inconvenienced the other players in Tourney A and your TCR should be hit to reflect that. This is especially true if Tourney A had reached its maximum enrollment and/or doesn't allow subs, because you have prevented someone else from playing.

When I sub I usually try to refind the tourney thru "My BBO" so I can unregister. But I really hate waiting between 8 and 9 minutes for the Express Tourneys to start so I am either away from my computer or in another window and my speakers are nonfunctional and I am not to wild about wearing a headset consequently I do not always hit the 60 second window you have for your first action.

[Bbradley62]

pooltuna, on 2011-May-24, 13:04, said:

... But I really hate waiting between 8 and 9 minutes for the Express Tourneys to start so I am either away from my computer or in another window and my speakers are nonfunctional and I am not to wild about wearing a headset consequently I do not always hit the 60 second window you have for your first action.

None of which changes the fact that you inconvenience other people (and prevent someone from playing a game he wanted to play) when you fail to be ready to play after registering.