mrdct

Yes, we just set up a server on the Caiman Islands. The financial stuff is taken care of by a Gibraltar bank. The details are discussed on an encrypted forum not affiliated with Fred, Uday or any other person with a real-life identity. You know where to find us. That's pretty much how it went.

I presume "doesn't count" is a double entendre in the context of: 1. Any pairs outside the top 300 pairs would not be included in anyone's reasonable assessment of which pairs in the world are capable of winner major events. 2. One of the reasons why these pairs outside the top 300 would be unlikely to achieve great things is a flaw in their game around counting from 1 to 13 in each suit from time to time during a hand; i.e. they do not count.

I really liked it. Hopefully Herve will be making another one tonight when South Africa wrap-up their victory over USA1.

Do you also think that women's hurdles should be eliminated as an Olympic event or that the seniors' golf tour should be abolished? Who exactly is it that is being embarassed by the fact that these events exist? As a bridge player and fan I do not find these events to be even remotely embarassing. I think athletic pursuits are quite different to mind-sports in that there are physical limitations in the former which prevent women from being able to compete against men so it's quite fair and reasonable to have separate male and female events. At the Olympics for at least one sport where gender doesn't make any difference to one's ability to compete, males compete against females in "open" events; which is the way it should be for such sports, including bridge. In golf, you don't see the any seniors events being played on the same day and on the same golf course as a major open event. The embarrassment is for the game itself which is essentially saying that being female gives rise to some sort of mental impairment. Of course I would never suggest such a misogynist view. I don't really mind womens and seniors event existing, indeed they are quite important economically for the game, but they shouldn't be interfering with the presentation of the world's most prestigious bridge event. When it comes to what I want to watch on vugraph, I don't think I'm alone in my preference to watch the best players which of course will be in the Bermuda Bowl.

What about a one-table "pirate" broadcast of a Bermuda Bowl semi-final by an operator not actually at the table (or in the country for that matter) who could watch the broadcast of one of the other providers on one screen and key the action into a BBO vugraph prsentation on another screen. Would just need a way to get the dup file for the session to that operator shortly after the match starts.

Good Lord! I've just read Tuesday's daily bulletin and apparently there will be no BBO coverage of the first segment of the Bermuda Bowl! Surely the coverage strategy should be the two Bermuda Bowl semis from the start, have one of the Venice Cup and Seniors Bowl in each of the first couple of segments and from that point show the most interesting VC/SB match and in the event that one of the BB semis becomes a blow-out an extra VC/SB can be shown. Please note that I am not criticising BBO here as I fully understand the limited influence that they have in the vugraph choices. I also understand that there are two other providers involved, but with BBO having such a large audience surely they could be guaranteed at least one Bermuda Bowl semi.

If South Africa get past USA1, I think you would probaly need to make them favourites against the winner of Norway-Netherlands; so only one more "upset" is possible. Trivial question: in the era since the Bermuda Bowl has had a qualifying phase followed by the winners of the qualifying choosing their opponent, how many times has the winner of the qualifying lost their initial KO match?

That's not entirely correct. At the World Youth in Sydney, a broad coverage plan was developed up front that ensured every team would get at least one turn on vugraph, most would get three or four and the main contenders would get six or more. The WBF had absolute control and discretion over what the auditorium vugraph would be and 90% of the time this was one of the pre-selected matches. The convenor (David Stern) then had final approval over the balance of the coverage and again this generally coincided with the initial coverage plan. I thought we got the balance reasonably right. Every team had at least one vugraph appearance (I think there was only one team that only appeared once), most had three or four and the teams in the top six or so had between six and ten appearances. The trick is to put the "unfancied" teams on vugraph early in the round robin and when they are playing each other. The reality in the Bermuda Bowl is that all the teams are very good, so a match-up of teams in the bottom quarter of the field is still more than likely to be entertaining. This could have been done quite easily in the Bermuda Bowl if it wasn't for the excessive coverage of the restricted events being played concurrently with the Bermuda Bowl. My hope now is that we see both tables of both semis for the rest of the Bermuda Bowl.

Ladies and seniors events are an embarrassment for a mind-sport such as bridge. I wonder if chess and go have these restricted events at their world championships? Ladies and seniors are essentailly a money-spinner for national bridge associations where females and old people make up a majority of players where a bit of product differentiation helps maximise revenue.

I'd say it's a factor but not an overly significant one.

I wonder what "world class" actually means? One would think that being good enough to make the top 8 teams in a Bermuda Bowl would qualify. A feature of this Australian team is that the three partnerships tend to play most of their bridge, particularly in national events, in those partnerships. Neill-Jedrychowski have bid thousands of hands on BBO and are regularly seen practising on BBO. Green-Peake have been one the regular expert partnerships on the professional Noble team for some time now and Lazer-Gumby live together. If you can eliminate bidding stuff-ups from your game and be in reasonable sync with your partner defensively, you can afford to slip a little bit (only a little bit) in some of the judgement and advanced card-play areas and still be competitive at the very top level.

The cream does seem to rise to the top though. For clarity on the Conditions of Contest, the minimum board playing requirements are: In order to qualify for the Medals, Title, MPs and PPs won by the team, a player, in any case, must have played at least one third of the boards in the Round Robin. For first place: at least one third of the total number of hands in the final, semi-final and quarter-final combined and at least one third of the total number of hands in the final. For second place: at least one third the total number of hands in the semi-final and quarter-final combined and at least one third of the total number of hands in the semifinal. For third place: at least one third of the total number of the hands in the semi-final and play-off combined and at least one third in the playoff. For fourth place: at least one third of the total number of the hands in the semi-final and play-off combined.

Personally I think there has been far too much coverage of the restricted events at the expense of the open event which has lead to several of the contending teams in the Bermuda Bowl getting little or no coverage on BBO. Looking at the BBO matches only up to the end of round 18 coverage has been: Argentina 4 Australia 1 Brazil 7 Canada 2 China SMEG 6 Chinese Taipei 0 Egypt 4 India 0 Indonesia 5 Ireland 0 Italy 9 Japan 0 Netherlands 6 New Zealand 1 Norway 5 Pakistan 0 Poland 6 South Africa 3 Sweden 3 Trinidad & Tobago 0 USA 1 8 USA 2 6

If the 1-32 dup file has already had boards 1-16 played in an earlier session there a couple of security issues: 1. In the earlier match there is a risk, albeit small, that an operator could accidentally redeal to board 17 and thereby put that hand in the public domain well before players take their seats for the match using boards 17-32. 2. The dup file containing board 1-32 may be saved on to one or more operators' hard drives which could result in "price-sensitive" information about boards 17-32 being outside the WBF's control well before the time the boards are actually played. As for starting at board 17, when you load the dup file there is question about which is the first board in your session to which you simply say "17" (assuming you are loading a file that has had boards 1-16 deleted from it). I think it always safest and neatest to have a separate dup file for each session which only contains the hands for that session.

Is that because the hand data files used in matches using boards 17-32 also include boards 1-16 from an earlier match? That would seem to pose some security issues. It's quite easy to split a dup file into two separate files using a text editor which would alleviate this problem. Basically all you would need to do is open up the dup file in Notepad, delete the first 16 lines and then save. You will now have a dup file on just the last 16 boards which during set up you tell BBO start at 17.

This has been shown on BBO in previous years and has always been quite fun to watch; and fast too (about 4 or 5 minutes per board I think). Is there any coverage planned this year?

My personal preference is pictures of cards. I've just tried the new experimental "in four rows" view of EW's cards and it put the auction in the middle of the table where I like it, but I think it's going to take some getting used to having the EW hands layed out differently to the NS hands. My preference would be to have all of the hands layed out the same way but with the auction in the middle - but perhaps only achievably when using "small" cards.

Sorry I meant to say Flash. My son has a Sony Play Station Portable running s/ware version 3.71 which I understand includes a Flash player. The screen is more than big enough to handly BBOTV. It's school holidays at the moment so I've left him with a project to get Flash working on his PSP before I get home from work.

My comments: I prefer to have the auction in the middle of the table rather than in the corner. My eyes naturally look to the area in front of the player for their bid to appear. When you look explantions of bids, !C, !D, etc isn't being converted to ♣, ♦, etc. I found the "movie" (I forgot what it's called now) a bit difficult to use and would really like to be able to bring up a score sheet and quickly look at what the other table did in much the same way as the current windows client. Perhaps it just takes some geting used to. Question: With the auto-resizing, could we far away from getting BBOTV to work on a large screen internet and java enabled mobile phone/PDA?

The real-time scoring for last year's European Championships was one of the best I've ever seen and I would agree that it is well ahead of Swan's product. As I think everyone would agree, being able to browse around real-time scores on a second computer or in another window significantly enhances the viewer's vugraph experience. It's unfortunate that the provider of real-time scoring at this Bermuda Bowl has some apparent baggage vis-a-vis the relationship with BBO. The situation of competing businesses "advertising" for each other isn't without precedent in relation to a number of broadcast sports. An example would be football (of various versions) where in most places broadcast rights are split-up amongst several TV networks. These TV networks generally have pre-game shows that will preview matches for an entire round that will, of course, include matches to be shown on other networks. These shows also feature highlights from matches previously shown on other networks and, in Australia at least, this is always with the other TV network's logo sitting in the corner. These TV stations find a balance between promoting a match which is going to be on a rival TV station (and potentially losing ratings) and having an incomplete preview show that will have lower ratings if it doesn't cover all matches. I believe the TV executives take the view that the viewers are going to watch the match they want to watch regardless and that it's better to provide a more comprehensive well-rating preview show and bear risk of providing some free publicity for a match being shown by a competitor. I know this isn't exactly the same scenario as vugraph coverage of a bridge event, but I would've thought that better coverage (that may come at the expense of providing some free advertising to a competitor) will lead to increased audience numbers which will lead to increased patronage of BBO's pay-services such as ACBL tournaments. But, of course, Fred and his new well-credentialled business partners know a hell of a lot more than I ever will about how to run a successful online bridge service and I'm sure there are completely sound arguments for minimising the amount of free advertising for competitors that comes through vugraph commentary.

It all sounds a tad petty to me. The name of the provider of the real-time scoring service is plastered all over the WBF website, the Daily Bulletins and the EcatsBridge (WBF Secretariat) website. Of course for its extensive and valuable contribution to the online coverage of the event, BBO's name is also well publicised in those same places. Does a commentator providing a link to a webpage with real-time comparisons of what all other tables have done on the board in play really pose such a risk to BBO's market-share? I seriously doubt it. The quality of the BBO product is without parallel and a casual wander over to the "competitor" website quickly confirms this with very small player and spectator numbers and a really difficult to follow interface. But I don't think anybody would question the fact that this "competitor" does online presentation of real-time scores really well. I'm sure most, if not all, BBO commentators are regularly looking at the real-time scores of other matches to either add flavour to their commentary or simply to satisfy their interest in how things are going in other matches. I'm fully aware that there is quite a lot of background to this issue to do with access to data feeds and deals which may or may not have been done with certain bridge bodies, but my only concern is to optimise the viewing experience for the spectators; whose experience is surely enhanced by having access to real-time scores. I wasn't trying to publicly embarass BBO, which is obviously free to set its own policies and make its own decisions about how it conducts its business. I was merely trying to be helpful to a forum member (ironically called "goose") who was seeking to get access to real-time scores, but as I was aware of the policy of not mentioning that provider by name I did so via an indirect link from ecatsbridge. I acknowledge that there was a hint of sarcasm in the way I expressed myself for which I apologise. I hope the BBO Forum remains a place where bridge fans can freely discuss developments in the online presentation of bridge events without fear of being hammered if they say anything non-complimentary about BBO or its products and policies.

We may, but nobody dares mention the name of the provider. The are some links to the provider in question at http://www.ecatsbridge.com/Events/wbf/2007shanghai/links.asp

You can upload pre-dealt hands to teams games, but they will be played as board 1, 2, 3, etc irrespective of how they are numbered in the LIN file you have. The trick is to ask one person in the match to delay accepting the invite until you tell him to. This gives you time to click on "table" and then select the upload option. Once the hands are uploaded you tell the 8th player to go ahead and accept.

The "Olympic" flag you are using in BBOTV is a specifically modified version of the Olympic flag for use by Chinese Taipei only in international sporting competition. It includes the blue and white "sun" emblem that sits above the Olympic rings which is a symbol of Chinese Taipei. As suggested several times before, I think the country "Other" should carry a blank flag, a BBO flag or a WBF flag and we should keep the UN and IOC out of it.

I just played a hand at a random pick-up table and could see all 4 hands throughout the bidding and play.