December '09 Bid's Reason Report Continued.

Greeting,

Sorry for being so negative recently. Murphy's Law never seems to go away and a person can only take so much before expressing frustration. I'll do my best to keep this blog on the straight and narrow PBS road. Are you ready to continue? Okay, let's roll.

Sunday morning I was relaxing at home and decided to give the PBS hotline a call for follow-up. My question was, "why was I awarded two layer six pairings when I bid the TTFATL feature?" Frank Bowling answered the phone and I was relieved to hear from him. I always enjoyed him being the RSR for DEN/COS and it was nice to finally talk to the guy. Frank explained to me that, in this case, the computer had to "optimize" our bids. The PBS computer is trying to award the trips it has available on coverage days and thus the computer looks at your entire bid and optimizes your award to match what the computer has to give out. Now in my situation, I bid for particular Christmas pairings in my layer 6. The computer gives priority to your pairing on dates. So, the computer was virtually trying to do me a favor since I bid the particular pairings and it was able to cover two coverage days with me.

So how could I have prevented this? Possibly more criteria layers and the removal of individual pairings on Christmas.

When I finished bidding I was thinking really hard about the worst case scenarios which, did help. The pairings I was awarded aren't horrible. However, I think if I would have used the "remove pairing on date" feature a little heavier on these coverage days the PBS computer would have optimized my award and not removed the pairing I was awarded in layer four for a pairing that the computer thought suited the situation better in layer six.

I also goofed a bit. I was awarded a local Christmas eve that was totally my fault. I put it in the wrong layer and as the computer looked at my layer 6, having not finished, it saw that I was bidding 'max credit' and threw me a 5 hour local to meet the maximum it could award me.

Clarification on line constraints: Line constraints usually occur when you bid line properties (I.E. Target Line Credit Range) that are outside of what the computer can award. This happens quite a bit and is one of the most difficult thing to avoid. That is one reason why looking at the bid info page is so critical to your bid.

Any questions? If not... let's get ready for SkedPlus!