[bobjan]

Is defender's "faster, please" allowed while declarer tries to plan his/her play? Can it be judged as illegal information to his/her partner ? Is it subject to a penalty ?
I am having in mind club tournaments, not BBO ones.
Thanks.

[jillybean]

(unqualified opinion)

Call the TD!
It is bad manners if nothing else and at worst I'd remind the player of Law 74 C2
'Etiquette of word and action'

Its not UI in itself, I guess it is possible that it could carry a message and that would need to be judged at the time.
Does this pair often make comments during play?

[paulg]

bobjan, on Sep 29 2007, 03:51 PM, said:

Is defender's "faster, please" allowed while declarer tries to plan his/her play?

It is against the Laws of Bridge (L74).

It is against the BBO Rules of the Site.

It is just plain rude.

And happens far too often.

BBO Rules of this Site said:

If you are taking a long time to make a bid or play, send a "thinking" chat to let the other players know that you are not having connection problems. Playing slowly is not an offense. If the pace of your table is too slow for you, finish the hand, send a politechat message, and leave.

Quote

Can it be judged as illegal information to his/her partner ?

Generally no. His/her partner probably already knows that he is an impatient and rude creature.

Quote

Is it subject to a penalty ?
I am having in mind club tournaments, not BBO ones.
Thanks.

The Director has the power to assess a penalty.

I suggest that the best course of action is to report the offender to the owner of the club.

Paul

[Trinidad]

As is often the case, the answer depends on the context. If we are talking about face to face bridge (as I understand from the original post) there are certainly circumstances where it is perfectly acceptable to ask declarer to play faster. (However, I would phrase it a little nicer than "faster, please".)

Declarer may not be aware of the fact that you are behind in time or he may not realize that there is still one more board to play after this one. There is nothing against drawing his attention to the round clock, as long as you do that in a polite manner.

If I think we run behind, in a long team match, due to the opponents, I will certainly call the director, when he passes by. But in a two boards a round pairs game, that doesn't make much sense. The director call by itself might take 1-2 minutes. It's much easier to tell the opponents that you think that you are running behind. Some opponents will actually agree and state that they will carry the time penalty.

Rik

[jtfanclub]

bobjan, on Sep 29 2007, 09:51 AM, said:

Is defender's "faster, please" allowed while declarer tries to plan his/her play? Can it be judged as illegal information to his/her partner ? Is it subject to a penalty ?
I am having in mind club tournaments, not BBO ones.
Thanks.

No, you shouldn't ask the opps to play faster. You should instead call the director three times per board to complain about slow opponents. After the 8th or 9th time you call the director, he'll probably sub at least one of you out.

Bridge is a timed sport. If you can't play to time, don't join the tourney, whether it's real life or on BBO. Are some people too impatient? Sure. But when I'm adjusting almost 10% of the boards per round in a tourney, I think people aren't impatient enough.

If we started banning people for playing slow, the way we ban people for quitting, maybe we would stop having this problem. In the meanwhile, I think the occassional 'hurry up' doesn't kill anyone. Online, if it bugs you, move the window so you can't see talk while you think.

[mycroft]

There's a difference, of course, between trick 1 and anything else.

There's a difference, of course, between once in a round and pause, play to the KJ, low, pause, ... every trick.

There's a difference between faster, please when declarer is trying to think and faster, please, when dummy is double-playing the last hand that declarer took time to think on.

Somebody who's saying "faster, please" every time declarer hitches is only delaying more. Someone who really does expect to run out of time because the hitch on every trick is 10 seconds, per hand, has a point. Someone who takes 10 minutes to play 3NT on the first hand saying "faster, please" when his opponent needs to think once or twice on the second board of the set doesn't.

You are allowed to take time when you need it. You need to work out how to play so that you don't need it often enough to be perenially slow. Unless you're good enough to be in the Vanderbilt, I guess (I still remember 8 boards of a 32-board set I watched. Only took 90 minutes).

Michael.

[Codo]

Of course both sides are right:

There are far too many "faster pls" after just 30 seconds of thinking or in situations where you have more then enough time for the board. They are rude and this is forbidden.

And there are the guys who need a lot of time so that you may get time pressure due to their time wasting behaviour. In this case as "faster please" is fine. And whenever I would be in such a situation- no matter on which side of the table- I would prefer ONE "faster please" to a call for the TD.

[helene_t]

Well said, Roland.

[barmar]

I've very rarely encountered this type of behavior in f2f bridge. I'm not a big tanker, but my regular partner occasionally will think for a couple of minutes, and no one has ever given him a hard time about it.

On the other hand, it happens all the time in online bridge, often after only 20-30 seconds. I think there's something about being able to see declarer struggling that inhibits this, and the loss of this visual cue causes players to get impatient more easily (this is probably related to the reasons why people are more likely to "flame" in online forums than in f2f discussions).

[rigour6]

It took me a while, but I finally came up with a cure for this disease. It's a bit counterintuitive, but bear with me, and try it - it works.

1) Have the name "Fast" appear in your tourney name.

2) Specify in your tourney rules or description that the format of the tourney is Fast.

3) Set the tourney up as UNCLOCKED. I know, I know, this sounds counter-intuitive, but trust me, when you see how it works, and unclocked tourney goes FASTER than a clocked one.

4) Maximum Three Rounds. If you have a 12 board tourney, that's three rounds of 4. You can't do 4 rounds, otherwise the system breaks down.

5) Even number of tables. Sometimes you don't get this, but you can try.

6) Even though it's unclocked, set the timer for 6 minutes. You'll see how it works in a minute or two.


OK, now let's postulate two tourneys, they are going to race against each other.
The first one is your standard Clocked Tourney, 7 minutes a board.

Against this is my unclocked.

We'll set the tourney at 3 rounds of 3 boards each.

Ready set go!

0:01 And they're off!
0:11 The fastest table in both tourneys finishes. In the clocked, they now begin a 10 minute wait.
0:12 The second fastest table in both tourneys finishes. In the unclocked (and some clocked), they now immediately begin Round 2 against teams from the fastest table.
0:13 Four more tables finish and are off to the next round, or begin waiting.
0:16 The unclocked TD starts getting panic messages from a few tables which didn't read the instructions and think they are going to run out of time.
0:17 Unclocked TD reminds tourney that if they started a board they will finish it. Players who were trying to run the clock to just take an ave - rather than a bottom start to realize there's a flaw in their plan.
0:18 Unclocked timer hits zero. Players who didn't understand or read the format are surprised to see they are still playing, and not avoiding their bottom.
0:19 Unclocked players who took too long to start their third board now find the computer has pulled it automatically. Players in the clocked tourney start running the clock to avoid a bottom. Clocked TD starts getting messages complaining about slow opponents.
0:20 Status check (let's say 20 tables)
Clocked: Round 1: 16 finished and waiting, 4 playing
Unclocked: Round 2: 16 playing
Round 1: 4 playing

0:21 Clocked tourney round 1 ends. Clocked TD begins wading through adjustment requests.
0:27 Last of the stragglers in the unclocked finally finish their board and move on to the next round
0:28 Fastest of the unclocked finishes round 2.
0:29 2nd fastest of the unclocked finishes round 2. Even if these are the same two tables that finished round1 first, there is still one match up possible and that match up now begins and Round 3 is underway for them. (Note this is why you can only do 3 rounds, for the 4th round you would need to bring in an extra table to prevent replaying a team you'd faced in the first three rounds)
0:34 Unclocked TD starts getting time panic messages from players who don't understand the format.
0:35 Status check

Clocked: Round 2: 6 finished, 14 playing

Unclocked: Round 3: 8 playing (the extra time is starting to pay off)
Round 2: 12 playing

0:36 Second unclocked Round timer runs out, computer starts pulling and averaging Board 6 of people who took too long to play Boards 4 and 5.

0:40 Clocked TD starts getting time messages about delaying play.
0:42 Second round of Clocked ends and TD begins his second round of adjustments.
0:45 Status check
Clocked: Round 3: 20 playing

Unclocked: Completely finished: 2
Playing Round 3: 16
Playing Round 2: 2

0:50 Status Check
Clocked: Round 3: 20 playing

Unclocked: Completely finished: 4
Playing Round 3: 16

0:58 Status check
Clocked: Completely finished: 4
Playing Round 3: 16

Unclocked: Completely finished: 16
Playing round 3: 4

Unclocked TD considers whether he will TD adjust Board 9 of the remaining teams to A== in order to get results out within the hour as he had indicated in the rules. Either way is fine.

0:61 Clocked TD gets panic time messages.
0:63 Clocked Tourney ends. Td commences his third round of adjustments.



Unclocked Advantages:
1) Teams spend very little time waiting around between rounds. This only tends to occur when there's an odd number of tables, and it occurs then to the slowest group.
2) TD does FAR fewer adjustments. Even if nothing else in this was true, this would make the whole format worth it. TD does zero adjustments based on time, unless he chooses to pull a board from the straggler group to speed results. The computer auto-pulls Boards 3, 6, or 9 if the tables play the previous two boards too slowly.
3) Players CANNOT play the clock to avoid a bottom. All any delay will do is cost them a later unplayed board.
4) Time adjustments are Ave ==, not ave-, so players aren't as antsy about time limits as they progress or "penalties" when they are assessed.
5) The faster players LOVE you for it. They play other fast players and the pack seperates. The cheetahs will finish 9 boards 20 minutes faster than they would in a regular clocked tourney.

6) Finally, and this you will have to try and see to believe. The combinations of
a) the eliminated pause between rounds
the visible 6 minute timer
c) the computer auto pull of the 3rd (or 4th board) in a round if the other two aren't done quickly enough
creates a zeitgeist. EVEN IF YOU DON'T AVERAGE A BOARD OF THE STRAGGLERS BY HAND, THE ENTIRE TOURNAMENT WILL END FASTER.

Try it and see if I'm a liar.

[jillybean]

rigour6 I agree with everything you say, unclocked tournaments are faster and simpler for the TD to run. I run all indys unclocked and I dont understand why anyone would run an indy clocked. Playing indys is a gamble and noone cares who they play with or against.
However, in a pairs tournament won't we get fairer, more accurate results in clocked tournaments where players play more pairs. Is the best setup where NS pairs play all EW pairs? More work for the TD but is it fairer competition?

[rigour6]

It's a very valid point my friend jilly makes.

Is a 12 board tourney in which you play 3 rounds of 4 boards fair?

Not, not really. But my tourneys are just designed for fun.

A much fairer tourney would be a 12 board tourney of 12 rounds of 1.
However, even then it would still be a 12 board tourney and thus inherently not so fair.

There's an undeniable trade-off, because the smaller you chop up the tourney, the more you force faster teams to play at the pace of the slower. At the ultimate end, you could try a 12 round Swiss. But if you do, you know what will happen:

First people will get annoyed by the wait.
Then when they realize every round is going to be a wait, they will start abandoning ship.

So you will spend the tourney doing sub after sub, or you'll bring the timer in and now you've got the players who run the clock to take their ave - rather than their zero.

For me, the advantage of running the tourney fast and the enjoyment the players get more than offset the decrease in "fairness". Plus the ease of TDing it means I can run more tourneys. Tourneys I still don't charge for. But it's a judgement call for sure.

[rigour6]

Here's an example using 4 board rounds.

42 table tourney:

After 15 minutes:

Round 1: 38
Round 2: 4

After 20 minutes:

Round 1: 22
Round 2: 20

(half the field is playing faster than 5 minutes a board)

After 25 minutes:

Round 1: 0
Round 2: 41
Waiting: 1

All teams have played 4 boards in 25 minutes. One table has actually played 8 boards in that time!


After 35 minutes:

Round 2: 31
Round 3: 10 + 1 waiting for a round 2 table to finish

After 40 minutes:

Round 2: 21
Round 3: 20 + 1 waiting

half the field is still getting around in 5 minutes a board

48 minutes:

Round 2: 3 tables
Round 3: 33 tables playing, 1 waiting for a Round 2 table
5 tables finished, that's 20 people who just played 12 boards in 48 minutes.

60 Minutes (i.e. 5 minutes a board)

Round 3: 21
Finished: 21

72 Minutes (i.e 6 minutes a board)

All finished but 2 tables.