[lcsmw]

I have been playing in these recently. I do well in IMP and MP, but really suck at TP. I am very curious about all those 5000 pt scores.

[smerriman]

It's pure luck. Not everyone plays the same hands, so to win you need to be dealt a couple of slams and go from there.

[johnu]

At total points, the cards speak. You can't get one of the high scores if you don't get a ton of points and bid lots of slams. You can improve your odds to be on the leaderboard if you start off with a slam instead of a negative score/partscore/game at board 1. Instead of slogging through a bunch of part score hands or potential negative scores which take up a lot of time, just exit the hand and start a new game and eventually you'll get a set of hands where you can card rack your GIB opponents into submission.

[lcsmw]

I believe in starting a tournament and finishing, but it makes sense regarding the scoring.

[uday]

It's true that the use of deal pools results in a different volatility for each player.

However, this is more pronounced in IMP/TP, i think, than at MP.

I might experiment with longer T. Right now they're 8 boards each. I hear mixed feedback - some want longer, some don't ( 8 is a nice sized chunk for me ).

But it feels like an occasional 24+ board T might be fun, and more formful.

[strings11]

It is a bit distressing to find that (if true) it is necessary to 'game' the system to get high scoring hands. I was silly enough to believe that everyone was exposed to 8 identical hands.

It seems a bit less like bridge if I must know to bid a slam at board 1 and pray it makes... So, now that I/we know this... Doesn't this knowledge - particularly when it is differentially distributed in the population - skew the value of any performance metric?

If I must score a large number of "points" early in the TP event, does a similar metric apply in the MP and IMP events? In other words, if I score a lot of MPs or IMPs on the respective first hands, do I get similar advantages 'in potential' in the remaining hands?

Also, it seems absurd to me that one's TCR is adversely affected for the distress caused to the Robots, when one withdraws from a robots-only situation. TCR is supposed to be a measure of a partner's reliability when one expects him or her to finish an event. Applying it as a punishment for offending the sensibilities of robots, causes it to lose any sense of relevance.

Now that we introduce the 'strategy' of withdrawing quickly from the "dailies" if one wants to score well, the TCR marches in lock-step with the order of finish, toward the irrelevant.

On the issue of event length: I like the idea of 24 boards, particularly as only one of each type of event can be had per day. If the same set of boards were presented to every player in the same order, then the leader-board could be culled to reflect the number of boards played by the player. In other words, all persons playing 8 boards could be ranked against one another, while those playing 12, 16, 18, or any other combination, could be ranked against one another as well. [The ranking for 8 boards could, of course, remain for a person playing a greater number of boards.]

Ranking players when only some of them know how to receive hands beneficial to their potential ranking, is misguided!

[diana_eva]

In Daylong Tourneys you can't just exit the hand and start over to get better hands. Even if you leave the tourney and resume later you still get the same set of boards as if you'd have played all 8 boards directly.

[geoffff]

I agree with some of the comments. If in doubt, go for the slam. I don't leave tournaments as I try to protect my TCR. 24 boards would be a nightmare if you get off to a bad start - sometimes the cards seem racked against you, aces on the wrong side of kings, all finesses failing. I prefer random hands. I don't know exactly how it works, but a pool of hands taken at random sounds good to me.
The hands aren't all the same for obvious reasons, but I am sure a program could be written that equalises the relative opportunities of the 8 hands in terms of opponents making a contract or the player getting the cards to make a part-score, a game or a slam.
I still have issues about how robots play no trumps - very badly in my view!

[diana_eva]

Daylongs do not affect TCR. Doesn;t matter if you complete or not, your TCR won;t change.

[m1cha]

 uday, on 2016-October-19, 10:13, said:

It's true that the use of deal pools results in a different volatility for each player.

However, this is more pronounced in IMP/TP, i think, than at MP.

Yes.

At TPs, if you have a slam and some full games, you will get a good score no matter how you play. If you have part-score hands only, even a very good player cannot get such a good score. If you have a very bad set of hands, you may end up with a negative score and there is nothing you can do about it.

At MPs, average play ends up near 50 % no matter what the cards are. If you play well / badly, you will end up at > 60 % / < 40 % no matter what the cards are - or almost no matter.

IMPs are in between. Average play ends up at 0 score no matter what the cards are. If you play well / badly, you will end up at a positive / negative score. But with "bad" hands you will not score strongly; whereas with "good" hands successful players can reach a high positive score while unsuccessful players can reach a high negative score.

For my part, I stopped playing TPs. I am surprised to see that more people play TPs than MPs or IMPs but I guess it's just because they are on top of the list. It would be interesting to see what happens if the list were reversed and IMPs on top. I predict in the long run most people would be playing IMPs.

 uday, on 2016-October-19, 10:13, said:

I might experiment with longer T. Right now they're 8 boards each. I hear mixed feedback - some want longer, some don't ( 8 is a nice sized chunk for me ).

But it feels like an occasional 24+ board T might be fun, and more formful.

You can add up TPs or IMPs or average MPs over 3 consecutive days ending up in something like a 24 board tournament. You can even add up / average over 125 days ending up in a 1000 board tournament . Okay, players would be varying and you cannot "win" this, but is it really important? I have never won any of the BBO Dailys anyway.

[m1cha]

 diana_eva, on 2016-October-19, 12:37, said:

In Daylong Tourneys you can't just exit the hand and start over to get better hands. Even if you leave the tourney and resume later you still get the same set of boards as if you'd have played all 8 boards directly.

Hi!
By the way, is this also true for the challenges? That is, if I interrupted a challenge for any reason, perhaps even left BBO, could I resume it later? (Within the valid period, of course.)

[smerriman]

 m1cha, on 2016-October-19, 18:50, said:

Hi!
By the way, is this also true for the challenges? That is, if I interrupted a challenge for any reason, perhaps even left BBO, could I resume it later? (Within the valid period, of course.)

Yes, you don't have to finish a challenge in one go, you can come and go as you please.