mrdct

The flag for "other" has been changed from the UN flag to the Chinese Taipae Olympic flag. Perhaps not such a great idea. Strictly speaking the UN can only be used with the consent of the UN and obviously the Chinese Taipae Olympic flag isn't what should be used. I'd suggest either a generic "BBO Logo" flag, the WBF flag or don't give people an "other" option

I think GIB is now disabled for vugraph operators.

I think that's an absolutely fantastic idea and should be implemented as soon as possible. At the same time, may as well get rid of the auto-play singleton option altogther as no person in their right mind would elect to use that option and as noted above it creates too many unnecessary UI siutations.

The Bulletin doesn't say that at all. Quoting from the Bulletin: "(NO) Appeals The procedure to decide upon judgement cases is a very careful one nowadays. Before taking such a decision TD’s consult each other and strong players to be sure that a majority opinion is chosen. This means that an appeal committee normally will support the decision taken. Only in cases where fresh and relevant information becomes available or the original decision was a borderline one with the committee consider overruling it. This means that in most cases appealing is useless and money (60 Euros) could well be forfeited." As in any bridge tournament, frivilous appeals can result in forfeiture of the deposit and/or some other sanction. The regulations for the event are quite clear on this point: "22.3 Deposits will be refunded if the appellant's case is judged to have merit, even if rejected."

I don't think you can do that for BBO teams matches, which must always be boards in sequence starting at 1. It can be done vugraph macthes though.

... or even better provide the option to upload a LIN from Nikos' site to play against. At present the only option is the 2000 Spingold Final

Indeed the yellow I spoke to basically said there's nothing I could do other than wait or send an email to Uday.

Prime-time in the antipodes.

University tests have shown that self-rated World Class players never are. Hey, I've got a great solution for the self-rating problem on BBO - don't have one. Players can mark the players they want to play with and against as "friends" and make their own player notes on people. The self-rating system serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than pissing people off.

Space is not an issue. There are several bridge games available for hand-held devices, such as Omar Sharif Bridge. Sheenshots: http://tinyurl.com/2a6e8k Some work might need to be done to squeeze a line or two of chat it, but it doesn't look that hard. I think the real problem is going to be the size of the market.

Not really viable. Inconvenient for the kibitzers, interupts a complete LIN record of the session and it's likely that opponenet will call it a night rather than muck around moving to a new table. If I'd had the forethought to review the table settings before my partner left, I would've ticked "permission required for players". We did in fact have 100+ kibitzers and I am fundamentally opposed to blocking kibitzers in any circumstance. It is against the laws of bridge to block kibitzers unless the sponsoring organisation has separate regulations that provide for such an action. Whilst it wasn't the situation with this particular problem, if I am the host of a table and someone breaks my rules, it should be my right to boot them. I have a zero tolerance policy for my opponents being rude to eachother. Perhaps when the host boots someone a reason should be submitted such as "wont bid or play a card", "was rude", "was not welcome", etc. That didn't really help when I wanted to play a few boards in the MBC this afternoon. I didn't have the time or inclination to set up a teams match and I'm not a member of any of the clubs. If I had set up the table initially or acted a bit more quickly when hosting duties were passed to me, I would've largely averted the problem; although with the "close and reject all button" not actually doing anything I still would've been wading through the permission pop-ups but at least I wouldn't have been banned.

It would be nice if the system could somehow recognise completely innocent bootings of players that shouldn't attract a ban. I'm currently banned from the Main Bridge Club due to an incident a couple of nights ago when I was having a friendly game in the Main Bridge Club. This is what happened: - My LHO was the host of the table and, as such, I had no control over the table settings. - My partner announced that he was going to finish-up after a couple of hands, so I messaged a few of my friends in lobby to see if anyone wanted to jump into my game. One of my friends replied in the affirmative, and I messaged my LHO to ask him to reserve the seat for him when my current partner leaves. - During the next hand (which was my partner's last hand) my LHO briefly disconnected and I became host. As I was concentrating on the hand in play, I didn't think to check the table settings. - After the hand was claimed, we all said goodbye to my partner and I opened up the "table" settings to reserve the seat for my new partner (which you can't actually do until someone vacates a seat). My partner stood up and I started typing the name of my new partner in the reservation box, but before I could type his name it greyed out due to someone else sitting down opposite me. - I then got stuck in a loop of booting the player who sat down and then trying to type my partner's name in before someone else sat down. This went on for maybe 30 seconds or so during which time I must have booted at least 6 players. - It then dawned on me that the previous host didn't tick the "permission required to join" box so I ticked it and then came an avalanche of requests to join the table. Clicking "close and reject all" doesn't seem to do anything as the invites just kept coming. - Somehow I managed to eventually get my new partner's name reserved and he took as seat and we had a nice game. - A day and bit later I get a BBO message upon login that I have been banned! I think the automatic banning rules need to recognise situations like this where the host of table is clearly trying to organise a specific person into his game and can only do it by booting people. I also think there would be some merit in "permission required to join" was the default.

Double wouldn't show 4♠ as you would be generally expected to reopen with a double on any hand that wasn't stacked with ♥. As I explained in my previous post, I was deeply concerned that partner would trap-pass 2♥x with something like: Ax Axxxx Ax Jxxx With us winding up taking 4 or 5 defensive tricks only. Even if we shot it a trick or two, it would be inadequate compensation for what must be a cold 3NT for us if partner has ♥ stopped and 1+♣. In retrospect this was a bad decision as we take 2♥x to the cleaners, but I guess that's why my opponents at this table were the pros and I'm the amateur. On the actual hand partner held: Axx J98xx AT9xx - Both minors were 3-3 so we take a bucket of tricks against 2♥, but it would've have been a different story if the 3-3 breaks in the minors were actually 5-1 breaks.

I was the victim holding the 4027 hand on this hand. A couple of pertinent facts: - The 2♥ overcall was alerted as "not weak". - You have a 10imp lead and you are on the penultimate board of the match. Bidding 3♣ didn't really come into my thinking, although in retrospect it probably would been a reasonable bid. I was 99.9% sure that if I doubled we would be defending 2♥x with what I expect to be a solid or semi-solid ♥ suit on my left and in all likelihood no more than 1 defensive ♣ trick in my hand. I didn't think we could afford a -470 at this stage of the match so thought we should try to get to a makable game. I chose 2♠ more so to convey the playing strength of my hand than seriously fishing for a ♠ contract. I was anticipating partner (with the trap pass hand) bidding 3NT and then living happily ever after. As it happens 6♣, 3NT and 4♠ make, although my declarer play skills weren't quite up to the task unfortunately.

My request/suggestion has nothing to do with OzOne. I generally have no difficulty getting OzOne LINs as I'm either kibitzing the matches myself or I can get a player to email the LIN to me on the few occasions that I've missed it or it hasn't captured itself properly on my machine. The request relates to my desire to get better access to BBO teams match records for general entertainment and research purposes. I'm surely not the only person who has an interest in browsing through teams match LINs involving high profile players. My interest in this was sparked by Ulf Nilsson's excellent blog http://viewsfromthebridgetable.blogspot.co...at-service.html in which he refers to Masakatsu Sugino's PS-Bridge reports which, at the time, had been set up to produce PDF reports of all BBO vugraph matches by automatically pulling the relevant data from http://bridgebase04.bridgebase.com:81/vug/?C=M;O=D. At Ulf's suggestion (and without any input from people at OzOne) PS-Bridge began doing a similar thing with LIN files published on the OzOne website. I know Ulf has been looking for a way to get his hands on LINs and/or match reports of Cayne matches which are generally played at an inconvenient time for Europeans to kibitz. Sure it would be possible to get Charlie Weed or Jimmy Cayne to email the LINs from their hard drive after every match, but it would be a bit of a hassle for the individuals concerned with the amount of manual handling involved. Also, if I understand the way PS-Bridge is set-up, it all happens automatically by regularly polling the websites with LIN files and then automatically generating a PDF report if and when it finds a new LIN. As you suggest, I wont hold my breath, but it remains something on BBO that I'd really like to see and I'm sure would be of interests to many people.

Yes, I was well aware of that link but it's not really useful for reviewing and reporting on a 28 board match as you need to open 56 individual LIN files. The code must already exist in BBO to create a single LIN file of a teams match as these already get saved to your c:/bridge base online/hands/username/ directory every time you play in or watch a match. Would it be a big deal to have this data save itself into a directory on BBO's servers that can be accessed for a few days after a match is played? Bridgebrowser sounds pretty useful for some other purposes and I wouldn't mind checking it out in more detail at some point.

Again, the information in myhands isn't really useful for my purpose. I'm looking for something similar to what gets logged on my hard drive when I kibitz or play in a teams match. Is there a url for those archives? What, who and/or where is "sfbp"?

"forever" isn't quite necessary, but I'm involved with coaching of a couple of teams that have regular practice matches on BBO and from time to time I'm not around at the time that the actual matches are played so can't capture the LIN myself. I'm also aware of a number of people who like reviewing match LINs involving high-profile players, such as the Cayne matches. Teams match LINs are usually of much better quality than vugraph LINs due to better completeness of play details and alerts/explanations. In the lead-up to a major face-to-face tournament, I may want to do some analysis of potential opponents' playing style to go into player briefing notes. BBO teams match LINs would be an ideal source of that data. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the information available in "myhands" is one LIN per board per table and not a single LIN file with all the bidding and play from both tables in the BBO teams match. Obviously, it's quite a tedious process to go through the LIN files hand by hand and problematic to produce written reports and analysis. I'll have a poke around previous threads about bridgebrowser in a moment, but if it hasn't been explained elsewhere, could you tell me how, for example, to access all of the LIN files of the Cayne matches for the last 7 days?

It would be useful if teams match LINs were auto-archived on the BBO website in a similar way to vugraph archives. The details that are currently on the BBO website at http://web04.bridgebase.com/tourneyhistory...&d=Team%20Games don't have the actual match LIN.

I started when I was 18 right after I finished high school during the summer break before starting university. My parents had recently divorced which had left my mother quite depressed so my brother and I learnt bridge initially as something to do with our mother, but we both fell in love with the game and went on to enjoy quite a bit of success.

At present there is a 4-pair minimum for a pairs tournament. I have a need to run a 2-pair pairs tournament and fully appreciate that a winner will not emerge. Basically, I have a 5 table (10-pairs) pairs event being played at a face-to-face bridge club but one of the 9 pairs will be offsite. What I want to do have the absent pair "sit" at the stationary table in a baromtered howell movement and when "real" pairs come to that table they sit at a couple of laptops in the director's office and play against the absent pair on BBO. There are obviously a few security issues, but the prize money isn't overly significant and I'll make the absent pair ineligible for prize money anyway. I'll also need to deal an extra set of boards or two to cope with the barometer movement. The impediment I have, however, is the 4-pair minimum for BBO pairs tournaments. Would it be possibly to change the minimum to 2 pairs?

A sensible compromise would be to only allow kibitzers who don't share an IP address with someone else in the tournament. A self-kibitzing cheat would then need to be employing somewhat tricky technological work-arounds to present a different IP address for his kibitzer than his own. I know this wont solve the problem for all bona fide kibitzers, but I think it would allow the vast majority of genuine kibitzers to watch ACBL tournaments in peace.

I use this feature all the time. The best method is to tell one player not to accept the match invitation until you tell him that it is OK to accept. That will give you plenty of time to upload the hands. I agree, however, that it would be nice to be able to upload pre-dealt hands in the match creation dialog box. The teams match improvement that I really want to see is when a match creation is unsuccessful due to someone rejecting, when you try to create it again it automatically prefills with whatever you had last time so you dont need to reenter everything again.

I think there are all sorts of bugs with logging at the moment. I've had several problems with matches not being logged when kibitzing.

Kitty, What software do you use to do the LIN to html conversion? I'm particularly interested in the match reports, e.g. http://usbf.org/vugraphs/Vanderbilt2007/ht...2007_F_1_s4.htm Dave.