mrdct

Putting a delay on vugraph coverage mitigates a risk which is more than adequately dealt with by other security measures. How are the commentators meant to interact with the operator? I may rethink my position if and when the authorities catch someone with a secret communication device in their shoe, but until they do I think the risk is pretty much a fantasy.

Hi Fred: I have mixed thought about scanning players for electronic devices. I don't doubt that this would be desirable. At the same time, I question whether whether the WBF or the USBF can realistically be expected to develop some kind of electronic surveillance suite and transport it from point to point. ..... Introducing a time delay to vugraph seems like an obvious step. If you believe that the fans would find this too objectionable, you might consider ensuring that Vugraph's always covered Barnett Shenkin's table. You'd very quickly get a time delay with no additional coding required. For about US$20 you can buy a bug sweeper on Ebay which scans for RF from 50Mhz to 6Ghz which covers most potential electronic devices players could use to cheat. It would be cost effective to buy a couple of them and just wander around the room with them during qualifying and have one permanently sitting at the table in the final. I can't stand watching any sport on delay and I don't think bridge would be any different.

I worked out the "B", "O" and "C" thing using the "read the instructions" technique, but sadly for vugraph fans it is still the most common error that operators make. If you are going to rework the way the hand loading part of the software for vugraph, I'd suggest a single window into which the operator would enter all the opening info and then click OK, after which the software confirms a few things such as: - The first board isn't "1", so why isn't there any carry forward? - You have selected "B" coverage, which means one operator will be entering the results from both tables, is that right?

You might see the same thing if your connection got dropped and your BBO client had not realized this yet. Has this happened more than once? Does it only happen in the middle of a claim? Fred Gitelman Bridge Base Inc. www.bridgebase.com We were certainly having some connection problems at the time this happened with a very long wait for the server to respond between bids - so that may be the cause of the problem. It happened two or three times on Friday night (Sydney time). The only other time I've seen something vaguely similar was when I was running a teams match and subbed a player at the same time that a claim was being made by one of the players which caused everything to freeze-up and then the claim dialog box remained on the screen for the players for the rest of the match.

Opening lead was made and declarer claimed immediately. I clicked "claim", adjusted the number of tricks to what had been claimed and then clicked "Ok". The "Waiting For Response from Server" pop-up appeared and stayed there. Couldn't click on anything in BBO and the only way to get out of it was to close the application through task manager.

I was operating the NOT from Canberra on Friday and Saturday and all sorts of strange things were happening. For example: - receiving chat messages from people who weren't watching vugraph that were clearly intended for other people and/or tables in tourneys or MBC. - v5.0.3 did a forced download and instal at least 10 times on one of the laptops. - freezes when a fast claim is made. While making software improvement suggestions for vugraph, my top 3 are: - do something with the "B, O or C" option during hand-loading to make it more idiot-proof - possibly an "Are you sure?" pop up-when people choose "B" for Both when they are trying to do two-table coverage, which of course is wrong because you only selection B for single-table coverage. - a reconfirm pop-up for claims that re-expresses the claim differently and gives the proposed score before the operator commits to it. - ability to edit team names and carry-fwd scores after the show has started.

For those who want to learn more about the way UK gaming laws have affected pinball design for machines in that market, refer http://www.pinballnews.com/learn/ukposts.html

There is a precedent for the way the UK courts assess the chance versus skill issue in relation to pinball machines. In the UK success at pinball in considered to be predominantly based on the luck of how the ball bounces around, so where pinball machines are in commercial use and offer prizes (including replay credits) they need to be modified with an extra couple of buttons to briefly raise posts from the playfield in front of the drain areas which (to the gaming authorities satisfaction) apparently tips the luck/skill element sufficiently over to skill. I play a lot of pinball (I own a Bram Stoker's Dracula) and I'm not particularly good at it, but I consistently beat my wife and my daughter and I'm neck and neck with my son. Does that mean my son and I are more skilled or more lucky? If you go to a pinball tournament the champion players are absolutely amazing in how long they can keep a ball alive.

Do you know if Jack can play a hand many times, using different bidding systems and think-time settings, to generate an "average" which could be scored against?

I'm trying to find an efficient way of generating a Par score from a hand record or hand data file that already has makeable contract information. Does anyone know of any software that can do this?

I'm not aware of any jurisdiction where four-card majors is alertable, however, online bridge is quite different to face-to-face bridge insofar as: - alerting doesn't create any UI situations because partner can't see your alerts; - most people (especially random pick-up partnerships) don't have convention cards completed so there isn't an easy way for opponents to find out that you play four-card majors without asking and potentially passing UI themselves or giving away info to the opponents. Many players are quite unfamiliar with four-card majors and if you practice active ethics you will go out of your way to ensure that your opponents understand your methods. When I play four-card majors and/or a NT range other than 15-17, I always alert and self-describe. I also believe that aside from ACBL Tournaments, ACBL Alerting Rules are completely irrelevant on BBO. The Alerting Policy to follow should be: http://www.worldbridge.org/departments/systems/alerts.asp

OK, I pulled my finger out and did some research on this myself. Chiara MARTELLINI: http://www.worldbridge.org/people/person.asp?qryid=6987 Doesn't appear to have played any representative bridge, but has played in a few European Open Championships with fellow suspended players Massimo de VINCENZO and Enrico BENASSI; finishing nowhere. Massimo de VINCENZO http://www.worldbridge.org/people/person.asp?qryid=6986 Same as above, partnering both MARTELLINI and BENASSI is various European Open Championships events with no notable performances. Enrico BENASSI http://www.worldbridge.org/people/person.asp?qryid=10168 Same as above. Roberto TERENZI http://www.worldbridge.org/people/person.asp?qryid=7525 Doesn't appear to have played any representative bridge, but has played in a few European Open Championships with no notable performances. Roberto BRACCO Doesn't have a listing on the WBF or EBL websites.

I must say I've never heard of players 1 to 5. Does anyone know the details of their cases. I seem to recall that some of the Italian suspensions related to matters other than cheating (abusing the director or opponents?).

There are further Oz-One vs Cayne BBO matches scheduled as follows: Wed Jan 3 at 7:30pm New York (Thu Jan 4 at 11:30am Sydney); Wed Jan 10 at 7:30pm New York (Thu Jan 11 at 11:30am Sydney). The LIN files, including the LIN files of the replay matches involving the OzOne players who didn't against Cayne, are available from www.oz-one.com.au.

I agree that a "Chess Clock" would not be appropriate for bridge if it were a straight 50/50 allocation of available time to the two sides; particularly for short matches. I do, however, believe that some form of automated time monitoring in online games and vugraphed matches would be useful for tournament directors in assessing slow play penalties and putting presure on players to play faster. Slow play is often, but not always, highly questionable ethically and is a scourge on our game. I'm in favour of any sensible measure that helps keep the game moving along. If automated time monitoring was introduced, you would want to have some variations in time allocation. The sorts of thing I believe would need to be factored in are: - When a new board is dealt, both sides get charged 50% of the time for the first 30 seconds of the auction to recognise some communal time for hand sorting and evaluation. - When the auction is over, the defence only get charged for opening lead thinking time greater than 15 seconds to recognise some time necessary for explanations of the auction. - When the opening lead is made, both sides get charged 50% of the time for the first 30 seconds or the duration of the first trick (whichever is shorter) to recognise communal planning time for both the defence and declarer. - If technically feasible with GIB or some other analysis tool, 100% of the time gets charged to declarer from the point of the hand where a claim was possible to the point where the claim was actually made. This would discourage declarers from needlessly (and often unethically) playing out hands where they should claim to consume the mental energy of the opponents. - If a claim gets rejected and later transpires to be accurate, 100% of the time from when the claim was made until the hand was over gets charged to the side that falsely rejected the claim. I know there will be situations where a claim is made when a guess still needs to be made, but unless there a technical way of identifying such situations, on balance I generally want to punish people who incorrectly reject claims. - I'm not sure what the formula should be, but I would be amenable to some discount for the declaring side during the play of the hand. Perhaps something simple like 10% of delcarer's time gets charged to the defence. I was actually under the impression that Fred had done some development work on this priot to the USBF Championships where it was going to be used to assess slow play fines, but I don't think it was deployed.

I have strong preference to play teams matches with the barometer turned off, but often find myself playing in matches with it turned on when someone else organises the match. I usually put a Post-It Note on my computer screen to cover-up the score and stay away from "Movie", but it would be optimal if hiding the score was a user preference.

It was 31-31 with a board to play when this wild hand came up: [hv=d=w&v=b&n=sqj92hk9843d976c2&w=st73haqj7652da43c&e=shtdjt52caqt98754&s=sak8654hdkq8ckj63]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] In the closed room Oz-One (Hans-Nunn) played in 5♣X-1. In the open room Garvey (sitting East for Ireland) never mentioned his 8-card ♣ suit and sold out to 4♠ which Aussie Vince Demuy brought home for a 9 imp gain to take the match 40-31 in front of about 250 kibitzers. The LIN file should be (but isn't as I write this) on the Oz-One website shortly. In the meantime, board-by-board LINs are on the BBO site here.

There is virtually no delay whatsoever between when the 8th player accepts and when the match starts. The "2 minute" count down is more for when that match requests expires and automatically gets cancelled. With there being no delay between when the 8th player accepts and when the match starts, if you want to upload predealt hands (as I do for some of the Oz-One matches to have more comparisons of the boards for discussion and anaysis) you need to tell one play to DO NOTHING with his match invitation until you tell him to. A quick word on hand data files for upload. They need to be LIN and have one hand per board. Be careful with using vugraph files as they usually have two copies of each board (o1, c1, o2, c2, etc.). Easy to manually fix in Notepad. Personally, I would prefer it if teams matches had the same facility as tournaments to specify when it is going to start. Finally, tonight's Oz-One vs. Ireland match on BBO is probably going to start about 15 minutes late (20:15 Sydney time 09:15 London).

The Oz-One website has system cards or at least system summaries of all four pairs in the squad, three of whom are playing moscito in one form or another. Accordingly, for all Oz-One matches there will be at least one pair playing moscito. For the match on Saturday night against Ireland, 8:00pm in Sydney is 9:00am in London and 4:00am in New York. For the matches against Cayne, these have been pencilled in for Thursdays at 11:30am in Sydney which is 12:30am in London and Wednesday 7:30pm in New York (previous day). These aren't vugraph matches per se, but can be found under "Click to Play or Watch Bridge" -> "Teams Matches".

I've got nothing against people from the same IP address playing together. I just find kibitzers from the IP address as a player a bit sus.

I haven't seen it first hand, but I understand Yellows have an option to view a player's IP address by right-clicking on their name. So given that BBO is tracking people's IP addresses, perhaps just barring kibitzers with the same IP address as a player at the table or in the same tournament would be the way to go.

So, in other words, are you saying that ACBL Tourneys on BBO are not being played in accordance with the ACBL Conditions of Contest? I note that the ACBL Conditions of Contest state: "Sponsoring organizations may, with ACBL approval only, amend these conditions for a specific event. Such amendments should appear in all printed tournament schedules and be posted prior to the start of event" Obviously some translation to the online environment is required, but it would seem clear that for a ban on kibitzers to be legal in ACBL games, ACBL approval must be obtained (has it?) and the details of the amendment to the Conditions of Contest need to be stated somewhere that players can see when they are contemplating entering an event.

Kibitzer status isn't displayed in the tournament information, unless the host chooses to mention it. Whilst it is apparent from this thread that ACBL tournaments now disallow kibitzers, none of the upcoming ACBL tournament mention this. The only way to find out if a tournament bans kibitzers is to enter and then see what happens after the tournament starts. Personally, whenever I enter a tournament and then discover that kibitzers are banned, I withdraw on general principles. It is interesting to consider whether or not the kibitzer ban for ACBL tournaments is legal. Law 76 seems to imply that unless kibitzers are doing something wrong, they are allowed to watch. Law 80 allows sponsoring organisations to establish special conditions (presumably including a kibitzer ban) but one would presume that such conditions would need to be published to be effective. Is the sponsoring organisation for ACBL tournaments the ACBL or BBO? Can ACBL masterpoints be awarded for a card playing session that isn't conducted in accordance with the Laws of Bridge?

How is one meant to know whether or not a tournament allows kibitzers?

This cheating scenario has little to do with vugraph as exactly the same thing can easily occur if a kibitzer sits down at the table and watches board 1, 2 and 3 and then wanders around the playing room, toilet area or whereever players mingle between rounds and tells his friend "on board 1 EW can make 6D but only if they play N for the Queen of trump". As I keep saying, proper security measures deal with both the vugraph environment and the non-vugraph environment. If the ACBL were indeed worried about cheating the Reisinger semi-final due to boards not being played simulatanteously, kibitzers would need to be banned and player movements in between rounds would need to be very tightly controlled. If they didn't do that, they are just acting in fear and ignorance by blocking the vugraph.