mrdct

A while back BBO disabled the Mobile viewer which used to be accessible from www.bridgebase.com/mobile but that url now directs users to either use the desktop flash version or download the iPhone or Android app on their portable device. The non-android/iphone mobile version had a very similar look to the myhands viewer and was particularly efficient on a smartphone for watching vugraph or kibitzing an interesting table. I realise that I can do these things with the smartphone/tablet apps, however, my HTPC has a Linux-based OS and a web browser that cannot do flash and cannot install Android apps . To be specific, my HTPC is a Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC. Even on a desktop computer, I found the mobile viewer the most efficient way of watching multiple tables at once. Perhaps to avoid confusion with the iPhone/Android apps, it would be better named "miniviewer" or similar. My life enjoyment factor would be greatly enhanced if BBO reactivated this feature.

I'm not sure which thread you are reading, but I haven't seen anything in this thread which is supportive of the perpetrators; just a bunch of quite sensible posts supportive of procedural fairness and natural justice. Trials in absentia are inherently distasteful and when they're tainted by completely avoidable perceived conflicts of interest and the apparent exclusion of statements and evidence in support of the accused, it is only fair to cry foul. I have little doubt that the "perpetrators" are guilty, and indeed a***holes, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be given a proper opportunity to defend themselves.

There seems to be quite a material discrepancy between the final WBF report and the statements made by DVB as to whether or not Elinescu-Wladow denied the allegations. One can only presume that the DVB statements of 13/3 and 20/3 never made it into the hands of the tribunal which is worrying from a procedural fairness point of view. In matters of justice, perceived conflicts of interest are probably even more important than actual conflicts of interest. It was highly sub-optimal to hold the hearing in the USA and a poor decision to have anyone from Zone 1 or 2 on the panel. The panel should've been chaired and comprised of people completely free of any suggestion of bias and the hearing should've been held at a time and place convenient for all parties. I will bravely predict that the inevitable appeal will not have any Americans on the adjudicating panel.

Version 3.70 is unusable on an iPhone 4. One can't even see the vul on the board you are playing with robots because there is an ad covering it! Is there any way to roll back to the previous version?

In my structure, which includes a short club opening with transfers, when I'm in the mini position (1st/2nd fav or 1st nil) with 11-14 balanced I open 1♣ and accept the transfer, rebid 1NT with 15-17 balanced and in the event that it goes 1♣:1♠ (no major) I use 2♦ as an artificial 15-17 balanced and have a structure to sort it out from there.

I've been playing a mini-NT for almost 3 years years and find it very effective. My range is 8-10 (which is quite high frequency) and I only play it 1st/2nd fav and 1st nil. You wind up with opponents missing game quite often because they usually lower the values for a penalty double and often just can't quite work out where they need to be due to the one-level being taken away. It's extremely rare to be caught for a penalty and more often than not when the opps decide to defend, it turns out to be a good save or no great disaster (-300 vs a making partscore I can cope with every once in a while). Do check your local regs though as the 8-10 range may not be legal in all places, but it's fine in Australia and in WBF events.

Bridge i Norge has a different theory "Duboin was so dissatisfied with his partner that he was en route to have threatened to go home".

I'm not sure where you are getting "artificial" from. The datums used were derived from taking some sort of average, rounded to the nearest 10 and excluding an appropriate number of outliers, taken from actual results from around a dozen tables of open national teams in a multi-zonal tournament. There's nothing artificial about it. In terms of how they were used, normal IMP scoring against the datum. Mechanically, at the end of each match the players were handed a piece of paper with the datums and they scored up. This is pretty much how all of my home games are organised where I always keep a few sets of boards on hand from old events that I didn't play in or read about and have the datums in an envelope to score up after play.

We only had four pairs enter, but we do have other similar event in Australia where a field of 10 pairs reduces to one winner (straight on to the team) and places 2 to 5 fight it out for the remaining two spots on the team. It actually got to a point with just two pairs left as first and second were so far ahead of third with a round to go that the TD allowed them to not play the last last roudn and go home early (the draw had been organised to have 1v2 and 3v4 in the last round).

I'm not 100% sure where the datums came from, but I believe they were from a multi-zone open event from the mid-80s (I think WBF Zones 5 & 6) and they certainly weren't from an "imaginary external field". I'm guessing that there would've been 10-15 or so teams involved in such an event with some variability in standard smoothed out by excluding some outlier results. This particular event was a youth selection event and whilst it was disappointing that only 4 pairs entered, this was for selection of a state team, not a national team, and in recent years there have been three or less pairs entering so we are heading in the right direction. I think external datums are ideal for this sort of situation but an option may have been to use the same boards as the 6-table seniors event being played in the room next door and score-up against their datums or an 8-table datum including the 2 youth tables. Problematic though as the quality of the youth field was certainly quite a bit stronger than the seniors and we had slightly different session times. My main query though is not the use of butler scoring, but which VP scale should be used or should it just be on IMPs with some cut-off (which is how NSW and the national selection event do it).

There were only 4 pairs in the field, so if an internally produced datum was used you would be hugely at the mercy of what happened at the other table. It's very common in Australia to use externally sourced datums for field sizes of 6 or less pairs.

The format was a double round robin of 4 pairs playing 10-board matches for a total of 6 rounds. Each 10-board match was IMPed against predetermined datums (the hands were sourced from a zonal final somewhere in the 80s) and converted to VPs using the new WBF scale for 8-board matched.

It is quite common in butler-scored IMP-pairs events in Australia to use a VP scale based on less boards than the actual match length. The CTD running a recent event I was covering on BBO rationalised this approach on the basis that a butler is not the same as a head-to-head teams encounter because in teams two real bridge scores are obtained and IMPed against each other, whereas in a butler there is one real score compared against a 'flattened' average of a number of tables. Any thoughts on the merits or otherwise of this approach? It had a profound impact on the outcome the event in question with just 0.01 VPs (new WBF scale) separating 3rd and 4th in an event where the top three pairs form a team to contest a week-long event interstate with airfares, accommodation, entry fees, etc. Using the 10-board scale (new or old) would've reversed the order of 3rd & 4th.

The ACBL (uniquely in the world as far as I'm aware) have included within their screen regulations: After the final pass, players remove their bidding cards. At this point, the declaring side may exchange information about their own explanations. I note, however, that this is a "may" requirement; so not doing it would not be an infraction under general principles.

[hv=pc=n&s=s854hj53dt65caq43&w=st962haq762dc9852&n=sa3hkt4d987432cjt&e=skqj7h98dakqjck76&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=p1dp1hp2np3d(%21)p3nppp&p=s5s2sasjd8dkd6h2h9h5hqhkd4dad5c2h8hjh6h4dtc5d2djdqc3c8]399|300|9 tricks claimed[/hv] Board 21 of Segment 2. West: Helgemo; North: Auken; East: Helness; South: Welland BBO Vugraph Operator Comments: End of Trick 1: "Auken asking questions about the auction - whether 2♦(assume intended to type 3♦) would often have 4 spades, I think and I think that Helness says that it wouldn't, he'd bid something else with both Majors, but not sure" After the Trick 7 Claim: "Helgemo & Helness discussing the auction" "And now Welland has called the director" "Sorry - Welland spoke VERY softly to the director, so I still don't know exactly what was said about 3♦ or what Helgemo & Helness are still discussing. I assume that Welland was told that they didn't have a spade fit" As the auction on the next board was starting: "I really don't know what they did or did not know - everything has been said in too low a voice to hear, or else in a language I don't know :)"