[Thranduil]

This situation just came up in a BBO Swiss Pairs tournament. I opened the bidding with 1♦ and in the resulting competitive sequence, an opponent eventually bid diamonds. For me, it was unclear what that bid showed and therefore unclear how I should continue. So I clicked the bid to ask the opp in question to explain it. However, while I was waiting for the explanation, my own time kept ticking down, and eventually I was forced to guess a bid to not get booted for letting my 30s run out. That guess was of course wrong and we got a near-bottom score.

In a tournament with a real TD I'd have called the TD obviously, asking for the result to be adjusted as we got damaged by the opp refusing to explain their bid. In the automated tournament, there is no such option.

Therefore, I suggest to change that - when a bid gets clicked to ask an opp to explain it, it should be that opp's time that is ticking down and the opp refusing to explain should be the one who gets booted.

A similar issue exists with claims, as when you claim and wait for opps to accept, your own time continues to tick down and you'd get booted eventually if opps do not accept or decline, unless you stop the claim yourself and continue playing.

[pescetom]

Thranduil, on 2024-December-08, 11:01, said:

This situation just came up in a BBO Swiss Pairs tournament. I opened the bidding with 1♦ and in the resulting competitive sequence, an opponent eventually bid diamonds. For me, it was unclear what that bid showed and therefore unclear how I should continue. So I clicked the bid to ask the opp in question to explain it. However, while I was waiting for the explanation, my own time kept ticking down, and eventually I was forced to guess a bid to not get booted for letting my 30s run out. That guess was of course wrong and we got a near-bottom score.

In a tournament with a real TD I'd have called the TD obviously, asking for the result to be adjusted as we got damaged by the opp refusing to explain their bid. In the automated tournament, there is no such option.

Therefore, I suggest to change that - when a bid gets clicked to ask an opp to explain it, it should be that opp's time that is ticking down and the opp refusing to explain should be the one who gets booted.

A similar issue exists with claims, as when you claim and wait for opps to accept, your own time continues to tick down and you'd get booted eventually if opps do not accept or decline, unless you stop the claim yourself and continue playing.

This is so obvious that it should be part of the ABC of electronically played bridge (obviously the opp should have a few seconds of tolerance before his clock starts to tick). Alas the WBF have yet to regulate such matters, but platforms like BBO should see the need nevertheless.

In a free BBO tournament with a real TD it can actually be worse, as you will often still get booted, in my experience... but that is not BBO's fault.

A very relevant side issue is that on BBO it is far from obvious to an opp how to handle an explanation request and even less so a request for a better explanation (it's a nightmare for the bidder to figure out how to dismiss the yellow box, and requester to figure out what to do with "no explanation"). Again this has been discussed to death between players without any acknowledgement or fix of the problem by BBO.

[pilowsky]

Interestingly, nobody ever complains that it's impossible to tell robots what is meant by a human bid.

[thepossum]

pilowsky, on 2024-December-08, 22:19, said:

Interestingly, nobody ever complains that it's impossible to tell robots what is meant by a human bid.

Indeed!

Regarding explanation time, after you click the bid should not the time go to the enquiree - although I guess that could be abused too