[thepossum]

Hi

I don't know if it's my imagination but many of the hands in daylongs have become over simplified or seemingly setup like bridge master puzzles, and basic ones at that. The interest level, for me at least, has plummeted

They have become so tedious and plodding I can't even keep enough interest to put in any thought at all. It's a case of hoping for the end to come

Maybe I have a strange brain but the performance of my brain increases with difficulty of the problem and the speed of play. Slow and boring leads to a kind of meh result

Give me one of those quick fire head to head duplicates with a few tables etc

Maybe I'm just projecting but I don't think so

What's also interesting is a bit of variety from repeptive 3NT contracts too

Maybe I have too much of a sleepy marsupial brain which is hard to get stimulated into anything unless its really eciting but has the whole world gone to sleep and become boring in addition to bridge hands. Where's the danger, the fun, the risk of bidding something unusual and God forbid actually not making a contract

Yesterday I played a fun duplicate against a few tables - quick fire 8 hands (about 10 minutes etc). Today 12 rather uninteresting slowly plaid hands. The auctions were essentially predictable as anything. Same hand after same hand either a NT or minor opening bid followed by the few boring rounds of dancing to the inevitable 3NT etc

It reminds me a bit of English classes at school where children took it in turns to read a section from a novel. When it came to me I was usually a chapter or two ahead (and got into trouble for lack of attention) because it was so boring listening to the plodding reading and lack of expression and emotion etc

Maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions from a few tedious monotonous sequences of hands amongst the unlimited randomness and variability - but I'm not so sure

Maybe infinity is boring with just the occasional interesting bit along the way

P

[hrothgar]

This is almost certainly just luck of the draw...

With the exception of best, deal, some Ghoulash tournaments and the like, BBO does not bias hands.

[pilowsky]

My understanding is that from time to time the dealer works out which usernames are doing particularly well. It seems that users with the letters 'pos' in their names are in that category at the moment.
This means that for the next week or so all users with the letters pos in any combination in their username will only get 11-14 HCP and a 4432 distribution in the Free tournaments.
I suppose it's tough but I guess we'll just have to take one for the team this time.
Enjoy it while you can WYSIWYG!

[barmar]

Pilowsky, could you please cut it out with the sarcastic responses when people ask serious technical questions?

There have been no changes to the BBO dealing code lately.

A few months ago we did fix a tiny bug in the dealer used for daylongs and challenges. I don't remember the exact consequences of the bug, but I don't think it would have biased the hands in a way that would be noticeable, it probably only biased things by a fraction of a percent.

[pilowsky]

No. It's called humour - feedback is that people enjoy it.

[mycroft]

And there is a person - whose opinion possibly matters here more than your average person - who doesn't enjoy it, causes more work for him, and is asking you to save the humour for the threads where it isn't likely to be taken as truth.