[paulhar]

A thread was recently started by someone who was concerned that her ability to watch good bridge in tournaments would be taken away. This thread degenerated to a discussion apparently had many times on BBO about kibitzing tournaments and the cheating that ensues by allowing it. One player pointed out that kibitzing a topflight player in a tournament is to watch better bridge than watching him in the Main Bridge Club where the topflight player might not have a regular partner, and where he might be screwing around.

So, I'd like to start a discussion on the following topic:
How can someone who wants to watch good bridge be allowed to?

I would like this topic to include NO references to cheating in tournaments (except links if someone feels it's necessary.)

First, I'll in my two cents. I'm hoping that many others of you come up with diverse ideas unrelated to mine, and improvements for mine.

While I could be convinced that watching somebody in a tournament with their regular partner might produce a better standard of bridge than the Main Bridge Club, I would be surprised if the level in a tournament was better than that in a good team match. People start team matches all the time, some of them have high caliber competition and others have the hoi palloi. However, the incidence of regular partnerships rates to be very high, higher even than in a tournament where there is a Partnership Desk.

But, here's the rub. Although there are usually several of these team matches going on at one time, how does the kibitzer looking for good bridge know where the best bridge is being played?

I'm sure that eight superstars don't just log on to BBO and say 'I'm looking for seven other superstars to play a good team match." No, these things have to be planned ahead.

The obvious solution would be to put all these impromptu team matches on Vugraph. I would guess that there would be great bridge to watch any time of the day or night. I'm not sure how difficult this would be though.

Let's assume that this is an impossible solution. We could have a forum here where a good match to watch could be listed. The downside? We have 1908 registered members of the forum and probably most of the best players are not in that group. They don't even know that there are players out there just itching to watch them. They would probably be quite flattered that there are. I presume you can make kibitzers silent in a team match (except to each other), so the good player should have no problem whatsoever being kibitzed. If all the decent players were asked to post somewhere when they planend to play a high-level match, some would disregard it as a pain in the butt, but others wuold give back to the game by taking a few seconds to post it. (Posting the systems played would be helpful too as each studious kibitzer would love to kibitz a pair playing the same general approach that he does.)

OK, another idea. That 'bridge news' could have today's planned good matches. That way, the wannabe kibitzers would know just where to go and when.

When eight topflight players get together for a team match, it's almost certainly for practice and the chances of cheating are almost zero because there's no reason. OK, so I broke my own rule! But enough of that. We have serious students of the game on BBO that want to watch bridge at its highest level. I think we have the capability to let them do that and we need only find the best way to do it.

By the way, I've frequently seen kibitzers in my room. Clearly there has to be better bridge going on somewhere! What this tells me is there are a lot of people that like to kibitz. Most of the time I've seen kibitzers, my partner and opponents were fine players. This was probably the best table they could find at the time. I would guess that most of these kibitzers would have rather watched two regular partnerships competing.

Another idea is to mark the topflight tables in the Main Bridge Club that are intending to play seriously. This probably won't work as people will overrate themselves. But if you put serious constraints on it, such as:
(a) Both pairs must be at least semi-regular partnerships. Regular is better.
( Everybody must intend to play serious bridge. (One of the complaints about not being allowed to kibitz tourneys was that the top players screw around in the Main Bridge Club because it doesn't matter.)
© Everybody must be at least a certain competency level. This would be set high on purpose to shut out people who think others might enjoy kibitzing them when in fact the kibitzers will just shake their head and ask "Why am I watching him?" This might be something like having won a match in international competition, so that someone from a country where you can be a top player and still not be any good won't qualify because your team never beat anybody.
If you don't have enough tables playing that meet all these constraints, maybe you have to lower the requirements for © becuase there just aren't enough of them around. But it should be high enough to expect that your above average kibitzer isn't going to frequently say "This player is just terrible!".

Kibitzing a table with four starred players sitting at it could fall down due to (a) and ( above. And maybe © too.

[inquiry]

here is what works for me

1) Start looking for tables with gold stars... 3 or more is usually at least very watchable

2) look for team game or regular tables with a lot of kibitizers (not a teaching table of course). Generally if 6 or more kibitzer are at a table it greatly increases the chances that is a good game, with a few notable exceptions

3) When you find a good player (gold star or not), mark them as a friend... then look for tables where you see "friends" and stars playing togehter.

Eventually, you will end up with a lot of friends (add comment if you like like "good player" "great player" etc) of strong playing ability. Then it is easier to find a good place to kibitz.

Ben

[Chamaco]

The idea of first class players playing for an audience is a great idea, although not new.

Especially having the player "think aloud" telling the kibitzers his thought process is great, there has been a few initiatives like that.

I wish there were more but of course all depends on the goodwill of some good players

[paulhar]

Chamaco, on Jul 18 2004, 06:05 PM, said:

Especially having the player "think aloud" telling the kibitzers his thought process is great, there has been a few initiatives like that.

The reason you don't see that too often is that it would greatly slow down the game while each player explained his bids/plays to the audience. Most players like a fast game. Now, if you could get some slow pairs together, you might have a shot...

I could just see someone saying "I'm going to dummy to lead a club since if I can sneak past RHO's ace I have nine tricks", and then realizing that he said this to the room instead of the kibitzers

By the way, as a plug for Fred's software sales, it appears that Larry Cohen's "Play Bridge with Me" CD's might be just what you're looking for. You're essentially kibitzing him in a Life Master Pairs (or something) and he talks through all his decisions with you, giving you a chance to make the decisions before he tells you, but essentially bidding and playing the hands as they did at his table with his explanations.

[Chamaco]

paulhar, on Jul 18 2004, 11:16 PM, said:

The reason you don't see that too often is that it would greatly slow down the game while each player explained his bids/plays to the audience.  

That's (once more! ) stating the obvious

These sessions could not be viewed as playing session but only as mentoring session.
In the past there has been a thread on this(Thinking with Fred), with luis and Rado among others (forgive me if I forgot other people's names) offering their availability for that.

Of course, as any mentoring session, it requires the availability of players to play -for a give time frame- not for the sake of playing but for the sake of teaching, basically.
I know that many players do have a life and log on BBO to relax and not for additional work, so it is completely understandable that this does not happen frequently.

[rona_]

[QUOTE]
By the way, as a plug for Fred's software sales, it appears that Larry Cohen's "Play Bridge with Me" CD's might be just what you're looking for. You're essentially kibitzing him in a Life Master Pairs (or something) and he talks through all his decisions with you, giving you a chance to make the decisions before he tells you, but essentially bidding and playing the hands as they did at his table with his explanations. [QUOTE]

Online content in shop bridge,gives you the option to download 26 hands at a time, where he goes through every hand with you, asks questions, gives you the right answers etc. Fun and very helpful. I suggest turning down the volume though. Every time I hear glass breaking, I jump right out of my skin.

[EarlPurple]

You could organise a team game and ask star players to join. I don't know how many takers you would have.

I don't think it should be pushed onto vugraph though (thus shutting up all but the elite few).

[sceptic]

anyone wishing to kibitz me I can give a running commentry on what my p calls me after one of many mistakes, you may learn how not to play that way

[inquiry]

Welll.. i would be glad to comment on what I THINK is going on... sometimes I am right, but often so wrong it should be funny to hear the gears running....

ben

[paulhar]

While channel flipping on TV last night I ran across a poker tournament where you could see the participants' cards but it was delayed 5 minutes so that nobody could radio the information to the players. While this would be a nightmare for the software writers, if someone watched their favorite stars in tourneys 5 or 10 minutes delayed there would be no possibility for cheating via a kibitzer and everybody would be happy.

A side benefit would be (especially in clocked tourneys) that you could get subs from the kibitzers of the same tourney, since they're seeing the hands delayed, they would be quite unlikely to play any hands they've seen.

Quote

anyone wishing to kibitz me I can give a running commentry on what my p calls me after one of many mistakes, you may learn how not to play that way 

I almost made this offer myself but I realized that I would be laughed outta the place. I might acutally be a good kibitzee because I frequently make a running commentary of my mistakes after the hand. (This can take awhile ) However, you'd have to catch me one of the eight times a year I'm acually logged on to BBO

[McBruce]

Let me say here again, even after taking the brunt of the heat for defending my decision to disallow kibitzers on the other thread, that I would change my tune IN A FLASH if I had the option to delay the broadcast for kibitzers for five or ten minutes. I would even move from unclocked to clocked, something I also have avoided, in order to welcome kibitzers back.

Is a five or ten minute delay acceptable to those who enjoy kibitzing?

[uday]

You think anyone would be interested in watching a time-delayed tourney?

[inquiry]

McBruce, on Jul 19 2004, 05:33 PM, said:

Is a five or ten minute delay acceptable to those who enjoy kibitzing?

Since kibitizers usually can't talk to the players.. a five minute or ten minute delay is super fine. We can still chat amoung ourselves and have a grand old time. So I see no problem with a delay from a kibitizer standpoint.

[uday]

Interesting. If we made the delays long enough, you could spec yourself, with a single computer. We could smooth out long breaks in tempo. Interesting.

[1eyedjack]

Uday, you could grant the tournament host the power to set the delay.
Then as software engineer you escape all blame for the consequences.

[jtfanclub]

I'd love delayed kibbitzing in tourneys. It would also mean that people who were watching could also sub without having to throw out a hand or two.

[Chamaco]

This seems a brilliant idea, useful both for avoiding cheating without restricting kibitzing.

[paulhar]

Great! It sounds workable.

Chamaco: I'm going to once again state the obvious, using you as an example, for the beneift of the forum newbies in your position.

You have your favorite stars you like to watch. They probably play a system simliar to yours and watching other stars wouldn't be as enlightening. If you mark these as friends, they will show up early on the list in BBO. If two of your favorite stars are playing in a team game together, this will IMHO be more instructive and better bridge than watching them in a tournament where they have to partake in bunny-killing in order to win, where there might be delays between the rounds, and where their opponents change after every couple of rounds.

You might even leave them BBO mail asking them to let you know when they're going to play one of these high-level team matches. I'm tempted to do yet another poll to test this theory - something like, 'if someone sent you such mail, would you be annoyed or helpful or somewhere inbetween?' Clearly if most would be annoyed, this isn't a good idea.

By the way, can you mark somebody a favorite when they're not online?

[1eyedjack]

paulhar, on Jul 20 2004, 10:25 AM, said:

By the way, can you mark somebody a favorite when they're not online?

Yes.
In your profile settings there is a button near the bottom called "Friends/Enemies".
Click on that and you can add o remove names to either list

[mink]

about "tape-delaying" the tourney play for kibitzers:

I doubt it would be a good idea to implement it in the server - the server is probably busy enough already.

If it was implemented in the client, the client could not display anything when you enter a table but collect what happens for the 5 or 10 minute delay and start displaying it after that delay. I doubt that most people would like to wait that long when kibbing. And if you change tables the same thing would happen again.

Only solution would be a client that can look into the future and guess correctly what table you are going to kibitz in 5 minutes, like the elevator in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" that knew that the building was going to be severely damaged within the next 15 minutes and therefore refused to go anywhere but to the cellar.

Karl