Alright – I’m finally going to bite the bullet. No more hiding out and sparring with robots. I’ve only played one live Support Your Club game on March 26th – the very first private club event open to all honors players. But I’m among those who didn’t continue. No particular reason; I wasn’t holding out for lack of frozen yogurt and cake. If anything it was probably a general sense that BBO was crowded with lots of lag those first few days – but things seem better now.
How Was The First Live Game?
I’ll confess I probably did not have a representative experience. I tried my best to make conversation, especially with people I recognized, like fellow Friday Wine & Cheese tutor “marla3NT”. Not everyone had their names posted though, which makes life tricky. I can understand the need for privacy, but I thought the point was playing our former friends.
Careful Over-Clicking The Bidding History
But that was early when people were asking how self-alerting works. I also click the bids obsessively when I’m playing against the robots, because that’s what you do to understand how they bid. I didn’t realize that every time you click on someone’s bid, a window pops up asking them to explain! So I was unknowingly spamming all of my opponents asking them to explain simple bids like responding 1 diamond to partner opening 1 club.
Not Everyone Is There For Small Talk
Despite my trying to strike up some conversation, people seemed more concerned and stressed out about playing fast enough for the rounds. You get 21 minutes per round for 3 boards – and that’s without needing to sort or touch the cards. I’m a notoriously slow player, but 7 minutes per online board should be plenty. It’s also possible people don’t know yet how to chat to the whole table – it’s easy to accidentally chat to the entire tournament lobby, as discussed..
Partner Disconnected!
This is actually a plus more than a minus, but it caused me stress in the moment. My partner had a wife emergency and disconnected – not only in the middle of a hand, but in the middle of declaring!
With only 3 tricks left! The directors were called, and replacement player sat in for the rest of the game (thanks MJ!). But it’s hard to declare the last 3 tricks having not seen the prior 10. We probably should have just claimed, but instead defenders said nothing and we gave up a trick for down one. Very odd.
Nevertheless, the fact I got a replacement player for the last 8 boards shows the directors are there to make things go smoothly. I was expecting to be immediately disqualified.
Playing the 0-3500 Mid Flight!
Yesterday was the first 0-3500 Mid-Flight Event, and I’ll be trying it today with an all new partner! Hope to see many of you there, and I promise not to force you to explain your passes and other routine bids.