[pilowsky]

The two things about tournament registration on BBO that could be improved are:

• You can only do it in a 2-hour window before start time.
• Your partner must be online at the same time.

[Vampyr]

This site seems to have multiple hosts available or lots of singles signing up. I don’t think that tournaments on BBO have this available.

One strange this is that it seems that if you invite a partner you must pay for him/her.

[Gerardo]

Your prospective partner need to accept the invitation, so s/he must be online.
And no, you can invite paying for your partner, or letting him/her pay.

[Vampyr]

pilowsky, on 2020-July-24, 20:17, said:

If you are interested I can explain it to you in detail. You have misunderstood it. Feel free to contact me privately or go to the Stepbridge website for a comprehensive explanation.

I will investigate Stepbridge.

Why have you not switched to Stepbridge and abandoned BBO?

[pilowsky]

I play on both Step is an Australian Club. I am playing on it right now. BBO is my other main Club.

[paulg]

pilowsky, on 2020-July-24, 20:25, said:

I am aware of how BBO works at the moment.
It is no good.
I, and other users, would be very much happier if it could be improved so that BBO was at a similar high standard to that of other sites.

Instead of BBO being satisfied with their current low standard.

It is not good that I have to login and wait for my partner to be there and then be timed out by BBO when I could be going to make a cup of coffee or going to the bathroom, or practising or doing 5 other things. When I get back to the computer I have missed their invitation and they are annoyed with me.

It is a bad system. It is not as sophisticated as other systems and should be improved.

Then your customers will be more satisfied - smiley emoticon.
Does that make my point clearer?

I feel that this is very unfair and completely neglects the fact the BBO has been running tournaments very happily for the past 20 years and very few, if any, have asked for change. The influx of new members since March has introduced a very new player to BBO: one that was looking to replace their regular club bridge and this is a very different individual. Unfortunately all the changes that they demand come at a time when BBO is dealing with a sudden increase in the needed capacity.

Allowing people to invite people who are not online is not a panacea. There are a lot of people using BBO; I don't want to log in and find myself invited to 50 tournaments. BBO users are far more likely to invite me when offline than directly to my face, so to speak. I fear that those who invite me offline are far less likely to show up than an online request.

This is an old timer's view, so perhaps the new crowd will not understand this - but BBO has a lot more old timers.

[Vampyr]

pilowsky, on 2020-July-25, 03:16, said:

Vampyr should try it out there are no Robots on Stepbridge: it's just her cup of tea.

I think that robots have a useful function. In our virtual club last week we had a robot pair. It was a lot more convenient than having two players waiting around, possibly not getting a game.

I would like to try Stepbridge, but I would have to get some partners to sign up as well.

[paulg]

My 'unfair' comment was to the characterisation that BBO had failed to make changes that everyone had been asking for and that it is as poor a platform as you believe.

I think it is useful for people to make suggestions for improving the software, of which they have been many in the past three or four months as a new type of player has joined the platform. I'm sure BBO look at them all here and prioritise them. BBO has always been fairly poor at letting its customers know what they are working on and, currently, I suspect it is just coping rather than introducing new features. New features are easy with 1,000 online players, far more dangerous with 50,000.

But there is a long history of different behaviour on BBO that you have probably not seen. The people who want a very quick fix, a quick hour-long tournament of mainly single players with random partnerships. The people who say 'faster' if you take any time to think about what to play. People who like Survivor Swiss, where the bottom n% are discarded after every round so that they can find a new tournament with a chance of winning.

I don't know how many people are using StepBridge and the other platforms, but the silent majority at BBO to keep happy is a very big number.