BBO Discussion Forums: Why am I being shunned? - BBO Discussion Forums

OldPlayr, on 2016-October-06, 17:12, said:

Bidding systems still have variations, e.g. the OP listed specific preferences with regard to conventions. However, I understand that BBO has stock convention cards. If players could specify the ones they are willing to play without changes (although of course changes could be agreed) this would make it pretty easy to match up people.

Vampyr, on 2016-October-06, 20:45, said:

That is an interesting post in light of what happened when I joined. For the first few days I had "GIB 2/1" in my profile as it would give me a pretty good idea of what we were playing without discussion. What I found is that nobody seemed to understand what GIB 2/1 (a stock BBO convention card) was, and understandings improved when I got rid of it and started listing conventions instead.

I had initially thought that if I put GIB 2/1 on my profile, and put the comment 2/1 partner wanted on my table when creating a table, the partner that showed up would likely have something in common with me. Sadly, now I realize that the partner would have been put there by the random HMFAG function. Quite honestly, a HMFAG function that finds partners that play certain systems, along with setup option that will allow you who to accept as a partner when someone else uses HMFAG would be extremely useful. It would be awesomely useful for people that play less common but not rare systems, such as K-S or Precision. If there was a BBO standard strong club card (there may be, I haven't looked) which included some of the more basic asking bids, strong club players could wait in the Main Bridge Club and wait (probably not that long) for a Precision player to HMFAG. That would be pretty awesome as the Precision players would get to play Precision here frequently instead of almost never (unless they hook up with a known partner.)

Of course, they could use the Find A Partner feature here on the forums, but that isn't nearly as effective, as you have to hope your newly found partner happens to log on at the same time I do. That's not likely (without prior agreement) as the following real life experience from me shows: I sent a message to several of my BBO friends to make a set of agreements that go beyond the convention cards, and have, through several emails, have detailed agreements with two of them. Unfortunately real life made me busier and I log on only sporadically hoping to find one of them available for a few hands. Almost always one of both of them are on but playing in an ACBL tournament (which I would expect.) So without prior time agreements, pre-made partnerships aren't going to work, and they will do very little good for the casual player who wants to log on at a time not knowable in advance. How much better it would be if you could start a table and only have someone fill your seat if they are willing to play one of the prepared BBO convention cards of your choosing (I would assume it would be okay if any friend joined - if you don't want to play with a person, unfriend them.)

I would put such an idea in Suggestions for the Software, but it sounds like it has already been suggested lots of times already.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-07, 13:14, said:

I think most of the people who play with randoms in the MBC are not very advanced players, and they don't play any form of 2/1. The de facto standard bidding system in Internet bridge for many years has been SAYC, and even there most people have imperfect understandings of what it includes.

The only people who are likely to be familiar with the GIB 2/1 CC are those who play lots of robot bridge. And if they're like me, they do that to avoid playing with randoms in the MBC, so you're not likely to run into them when you look for partners there.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-07, 13:14, said:

Sad, but true. Despite many suggestions over the years, BBO has shown no interest in improving the useless "find me a table" function. This prevents many, including myself, from playing in the main room. Unable to get paired with players using the same bidding system, I use BBO now only for playing in robot tournaments. With work to set up a partner matching function based on bidding system, BBO could be a lot more than it is today.

I suspect that there are some who will never be satisfied in this area. Some players have a low tolerance for partners who do not exactly match their system preferences and no amount of software tweaking is going to solve that. The vast majority of advanced players on BBO have a working knowledge of "BBO advanced" modelled on 2/1, without even having read the system notes, and the vast majority of the rest (including the aforementioned subset) have a working knowledge of "BBO basic" modelled on SAYC, likewise.

Within that basic framework there are myriad permutations, most of which you can live without (and you can attempt to agree on them as the hands progress, if you really insist), but if you program the software to auto reject a partner who does not meet your profile at the outset including all your pet tweaks then you will be sitting in the lobby for a long time.

It is ironic if players are migrating to robot tourneys for this reason (which I doubt), if that is indeed happening on a significant scale, given that the robot's system is widely criticised for being neither standard nor optimal nor system of choice for most.

You say that "BBO could be a lot more than it is today". That may be the case, but do not presume to speak for others on the unproven assumption that their preferences must coincide with your own.

1eyedjack, on 2016-October-08, 03:56, said:

For those players, the automatic finding of partners won't work so well, and they will need to find partners. However, many people currently just HMFAG which would be greatly improved if each player will play one or more stock card.

One reason Bridge World Standard was invented is so two decent players could sit down and agree to play it and voila! Many agreements will have been made. In 2017, that beast will have grown so large that few players will know all of BWS2017 so it will lose that functionality. Once, I picked up a partner at a tournament and we agreed to play BWS and had no bidding misunderstandings all day. Agreeing to play a stock card would somehow make that happen here, but my guess is that most of the players don't know the stock cards, and since that is true, there is little incentive for me to learn any of them. Nobody ever agreed to play GIB 2/1 with me when I had it on my profile.

1eyedjack, on 2016-October-08, 06:43, said:

Cool, maybe I should have put that on my profile! I see a BBO Advanced 3 and a BBO Advanced 2/1; I don't see BBO basic but I do see a BBOITA. Maybe that's it? I don't mind playing basic as long as partner and I both know exactly which, if any, conventions we are playing.

1eyedjack, on 2016-October-08, 06:43, said:

I would never suggest putting pet tweaks in a selection process for HMFAG.

1eyedjack, on 2016-October-08, 06:43, said:

I would guess that people migrate to robot tourneys because they are sick of playing with clueless "experts" who are both terrible players and rude, and think they know it all - they at least know what to expect from the robots.

I personally enjoy playing with people more. Eventually I'll weed the rude ones out.

1eyedjack, on 2016-October-08, 06:43, said:

I hope I am not speaking for others; I'll post my own preferences and expect others to post theirs.

However, this discussion is strictly theoretical because it appears that little will be done, perhaps the powers that be determined as you did that it would be too difficult to make enhancements that will satisfy many users.

This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2016-October-13, 03:53
Reason for edit: fixed quotes

1eyedjack, on 2016-October-08, 03:56, said:

You may be a big over-defensive... or reading a lot more into the suggestion.

There are simple improvements to the find a table function that would yield significant improvements. Simply letting one specify a basic bidding system (not including "all your pet tweaks") would be a significant improvement over the current random table selection.

Perfect is the enemy of better.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-08, 10:48, said:

To be frank that does not really surprise me. Those with a penchant for playing GIB 2/1 would probably be gravitating to robot tourneys anyway, not looking for pickup games.

GIB 2/1 is the Salvador Dali of the 2/1 styles

barmar, on 2016-October-07, 17:15, said:

Can't you just print out the card and read it as you play though?

Vampyr, on 2016-October-08, 12:35, said:

I think most people are not interested in putting that much work into it. They want to play what they're familiar with. If they're not 2/1 players, they don't want to play 2/1.

Printing out the CC is not going to help you if you're not used to playing forcing 1NT, for instance.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-07, 13:14, said:

There are at least two stock convention cards for strong club systems. One is Oliver C's version of Jannersten Precision which includes many exotic conventions on top of the traditional greek-letter asking bids. This is very useful for his students and maybe also for other people familiar with advanced Jannersten, but far too advanced for people with a background in Wei/Goren or even Bulgarian, Rigal or Sontag.

Then there is "forum precision" which I made based on a series of forum polls intended to establish the "bbo forum" concensus understanding of (slightly modernized) Wei. I run into opponents (mostly Indonesians, Chinese or Taiwanese) who use it sometimes. It is very primitive (no asking bids) but I think simple enough to be suitable for pick-up partnerships with some kind of Wei-like background while still specific enough to avoid most of the most ridicolous misunderstandings that would inevidably occur if you only agreement was "Precision".

If players (who sometimes make use of take-me-to-the-first-seat, or who are happy for that category of players to join them as partners) could somehow be encouraged to indicate which stock convention cards they play, then maybe it would be useful for SEF, WJ and Acol, although I suppose that many such partnership can be matched already using "compatibility" as they will often both have a French/Polish/British flag. For strong club I think you would have to wait quite a while before finding a match, but maybe not too long if you play during East Asian prime hours.

There is also the risk of disapointment as people will expect players who indicate a particular system to actually know something about that system. Given how people use the self-rating system I can immagine that "BBO 2/1 player" could become a joke similar to "BBO expert". But maybe it wouldn't be that bad. In my experience, people who pretend to play SEF, WJ or Prec usually have some kind of idea what it means although that is not generally true for Acol and SAYC. SO maybe it would be worthwhile giving it a chance. Maybe in first instance for partnership desk and then, if succesful, later for take-me-to-the-first-seat.

By the "partnership desk" do you mean the "find a partner" forum?

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-10, 23:02, said:

No I mean partnership desks for pairs tournaments.

I have a funny story about a partnership desk. I was roped into running one of these. There was this life master who I had played against who was declaring with S-Kxx in hand and S-AQX in dummy, 3nt at trick 11. I was getting antsy with a slow play warning as he thought for I swear it was 2 minutes before placing the SK and then another spade. I asked why he didn't claim and he said "Some of us take longer to see these things."

Not surprisingly, he show up at the partnership desk looking for a partner. Of course if has to be a life master. As he did plenty of work for the unit, I was under some pressure to comply despite knowing if would ruin someone'S day. A few minutes later, a man I didn't know came up looking for a partner. He said "I have 150 masterpoints. Oh no, that's not right, I have 750. Why, I'm a life naster!" I said "Well, I do have a partner for you, but only if you're a life master." He stuck with his story and I can only imagine the results obtained by this partnership made in heaven...

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-08, 10:48, said:

For the record, I never made any of the statements quoted in this post. I don't know how my username got used in the quotes, but I don't see any posts by me in this thread. The thoughts quoted are about something I have neither any interest nor any knowledge.

aguahombre, on 2016-October-12, 22:50, said:

Fixed the quotes in kaitlyn's post.

Can I make an observation of a more general nature?

All this discussion about conventions is way over my head, I play a very basic form of bridge (in the Acol club). There is certainly less disagreement between players at that level! But the issue of 'being shunned' does indeed occasionally come my way: it happened today when I was refused a 'locked' place at a table. I thought at first that this was because someone else had been picked before me, this is the usual reason. But on this occasion the table remained showing on the 'open tables' list for several minutes after my attempt to join it - with the seat I'd chosen still vacant. So I got a bit suspicious...

Well, I looked at the table host's profile, and I did indeed see that I'd written some adverse comment on it, about having a bust-up with this particular player - but I've completely forgotten what it was about, or when it happened. The table host, maybe, had not forgotten. There could be another reason, perhaps.

How long are grudges supposed to last, in BBO? No don't answer that - rhetorical question! I'm always the one to 'forgive and forget' - especially after a decent interval has elapsed....

Anyway - I trust the OP in this thread has got over the 'being shunned' phase...

661_Pete, on 2016-October-15, 16:57, said:

I must admit that there was another motive for this thread. I used to play here some 10 years ago or so with a different non-female username and was almost never refused. As Kaitlyn, still "advanced" and still playing essentially the same conventions, I am more than half the time not allowed at a table that still has a open seat after I am refused. I wondered if anybody would admit to a gender bias, even privately. One person PM'd me and stated that there was a strong bias against women, but in response to a different thread!

I suppose I also wondered if things had changed that much in 10 years.

But I have met some nice people here and am content in the knowledge that if someone doesn't want to play with me, the game probably wouldn't have been that pleasant if they had accepted.

ladydoc, on 2016-October-02, 12:18, said:

Thanks! I haven't been on much in the last couple of weeks but added you as a friend.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-15, 23:56, said:

Normally I am not playing in main hall as I found it to be an unpleasant place when not playing with friends. Not only that you might face many ways of harassment I found it difficult to make players come to take a seat that will stay for more than 5 minutes and it seemed normal to be rejected when trying to take a seat at restricted tables.

Some years ago I created a non female account mainly to avoid sexual harassment when playing but now I wondered if you might be right that gender has more than one impact.

So I just gave it a try with my male account and indeed the main hall atmosphere changed which of course could be just random for this session. When trying to find a seat at one of the restricted tables it needed only 4 tries. I met only one "id iot" playing destructive and running after. When a seat was empty we did not have to wait for ever until someone acceptable came to take it. No derogative behaviour when I made a mistake and surely no sexual comments at all.