[timouthy]

Hi, I was playing in a speedball tourney recently and my partner was taking more time than usual to make her next bid. An opponent called the director and, I believe, also wrote to the table and asked her to speed up. The tournament director came seemingly immediately and booted her within I'd say 5 seconds of his/her arrival. The director claims that he/she gave three warnings to my partner and was ignored, so hence the quick bootage. I saw none of them, but I wasn't paying much attention to anything written. However I can say that it was virtually impossible for there to be 3 warnings in 5 seconds of the director's arrival.
What I find so weird is that we have played several speedball tourneys by now and have witnessed many a slowdown artist, and have never witnessed anything like the quick yank that happened to us. Also in this particular tourney, we finished the previous three boards so quickly, that we had 6 minutes left to sit and wait. It seems like the "rules" of these contests concerning speed of play are unevenly applied.
Another rule that should be made clear to all players, one that we also experienced with this incident, is that once booted you cannot come back for the rest of the tourney.
So I have a few questions/suggestions:
I had a discussion with the tourney director after and was told there is a time limit for individual bids; I think he said 90 seconds. Where are these rules on BBO if anywhere?
Isn't it a good idea to post this info. somewhere easily accessible on BBO for each type of tourney? If there is a "bid clock", why not post it on the board so a player knows how much time they have left to bid?
How do you police tournament directors or, let me back up a sec. Do you police them? I would like a second opinion of the circumstances of the incident in question if possible.
Finally I would like to add for the record that I love the pace of speedball. I just think the "rules" should be more transparent.

Adv exp

[billw55]

I don't know, but I suspect that the directors are monitored very little, perhaps not at all. We often hear stories here about bad directors. The primary solution seems to be, do not play in events run by that director.

[diana_eva]

What sort of speedball was that? An ACBL Speedball, or a fast free tourney set up by a volunteer?

In ACBL and any pay tourney players are automatically assigned back to their seat as soon as the board in play is completed. Disconnected or slow players are allowed to come back and the whole process is automated.

ACBL directors are monitored. All their activity is logged, and can be checked in case there are complaints. If you find a TD's decision questionable in such a speedball you can email acbl at bridgebase dot com and tell them what your complaint is.

[barmar]

diana_eva, on 2014-April-11, 07:14, said:

In ACBL and any pay tourney players are automatically assigned back to their seat as soon as the board in play is completed. Disconnected or slow players are allowed to come back and the whole process is automated.

That's true if the user is disconnected because of a connection problem, but of course not if the TD boots them.

There's no time limit on individual bids in ACBL Speedballs. The only tournaments that BBO runs that has time limits on single actions are the Express Automated Fun tourneys; they allow 30 seconds for each bid or play, automatically display a warning if your time is running out, and replace you with a robot automatically when you don't play in time.

If a user runs a free tournament, they can set pretty much any rules they want. BBO does little monitoring of these tournaments, and their right to host tourneys will not generally be revoked unless they are abusive to players.

[timouthy]

diana_eva, on 2014-April-11, 07:14, said:

What sort of speedball was that? An ACBL Speedball, or a fast free tourney set up by a volunteer?

In ACBL and any pay tourney players are automatically assigned back to their seat as soon as the board in play is completed. Disconnected or slow players are allowed to come back and the whole process is automated.

ACBL directors are monitored. All their activity is logged, and can be checked in case there are complaints. If you find a TD's decision questionable in such a speedball you can email acbl at bridgebase dot com and tell them what your complaint is.

Thanks for your e-mail referral. I did write to bbo and am waiting a reply. And yes it was an ACBL tourney.

adv exp

[scarletv]

I dont think there is any TD never making a mistake once a while. Especially under pressure (lot of red ones, speedball or problems with the BBO software) this might happen more often than in normal tourneys. Additional risk factors are missing or wrong reasons for TD calls. Anyway when the TD arrives at your table you should watch the chat and react timely. There are little that ignore replies.

[Gerardo]

The director might sent these warnings to your partner privately.

[scarletv]

Normally I will send two private messages and one to the table before I replace a player ... but there is no general rule for TDs how to act in a tourney and with a lot of open calls I might reduce the number of messages and the waiting time before acting. But even when I might make a mistake once a week or once a month I hope players will accept that for the benefit of playing in a hosted tourney.

This might be slightly different in pay-tourneys (especially concerning the rules) but not completely.