mrdct

Nonsense. The security risks to which you refer are either identical to those associated with having kibitzers or can be easily mitigated by any and all of: - deal enough boards so everyone plays the same hands at more-or-less the same time. - don't allow people to enter the playing area during a session. - don't allow mobile phones and other electronic devices in the playing area. If someone is going to cheat using a means such as a concealed radio ear-piece, vugraph isn't the problem. Security is more about avoiding inadvertant comments about about hands in between rounds and from adjacent tables, which I'm sure must have been an issue at the Reisinger Semi-Final due to the decision to only prepare four sets of boards.

Completely hopeless. For the last 2 rounds that they graciously chose to show us, both 3-board matches were the same 3-boards including an extremely boring 6♠ contract. To add insult to injury, they wouldn't keep the room open at the end to tell us who made the final.

The ACBL really are pathetic. I don't buy the excuse of "players were concerned with security". Who is in charge of the these events, the directors/convenors or the players? Surely a movement and other protocols could've been organise to ensure security of hand data. In any case, with boards not being played simulataneously the great security risk is players wandering around between boards discussing hands that other pairs haven't played yet; which obviously has nothing to do with vugraph. And you have to love the results service from Hawaii. They provide the results of all the meaningless side-events, but nothing from the main event!

Semi-final coverage limited to two 6-board stints per session for "security reasons". When will these nimrods running ACBL events get their act together?

The recommended work-around is to start a new vugraph presentation each round. A moderate amount of additional preparation is required, principally splitting up the hand data files into a separate file for each round. Splitting a 28 board file into seven separate file would take about 15 minutes inclusive of checking each file back to the original. It is also recommended that the event name be abbreviated to something short given that the operator will need to type it several times during each session.

I live in the country and my local bridge club (Echuca Bridge Club) runs two sessions per week at the local senior citizen's centre, one gets about 4 tables and the other gets about 7 tables. It is non-profit, has a playing director and charges about US$3 table fees. They bought a dealing machine years ago and use predealt hands with hand records for all of their duplicates. I think this is quite the norm for Australian Bridge Clubs.

I don't understand your point here at all. This is about the best-defined pass of any system I have seen. And you are trying to take advantage of precisely this part of the system? How do you want to penalize them when LHO can just....pass? And if he bids, he doesn't even know partner is weak, he also knows he has some support... Yes. Good point. I hadn't really thought that one through. The full opening structure is: Pass = 0-5 balanced 1C = 0-1 unbalanced or 6-37 balanced or 16+ unbalanced 1D = 2-6 unbalanced 1H = 7-9 unbalanced 1S = 10-12unbalanced 1NT = 13-15 unbalanced 2C = Wonder bid in Clubs (take out of clubs (10-14 hcp) or weak 2 in clubs) 2D = Wonder bid in Diamonds (take out (10-14 hcp) or weak 2 in diamonds) 2H = Wonder bid in Hearts (take out of hearts (10-14 hcp) or weak 2 in hearts) 2S = Wonder bid Spades (take out of spades (10-14 hcp) or weak 2 in spades) 2NT = 5/5 any 2 suits 3C = 6+ Hearts and 5+ minor 3D = Hearts or Clubs (Pre-empt) 3H = Spades or Diamonds (pre-empt) 3S = 6+ Spades and 5+ minor 3NT = 6/5 in majors 4C = Transfer to Hearts 4D = Transfer to Spades 4H = to play 4S = to play The full system notes are at this link: http://www.vba.asn.au/CompleteGuidetoPUMA.pdf The system is being played in a state selection event this weekend by one of the pairs from the Australian Schools Team that did reasonably well in the World Youth Teams Championships in Bangkok this year.

Must be a funny old place ACBL-Land. I can't imagine any bridge club in Australia staying in business if they didn't provide hand records with Deep Finesse analysis. The more successful bridge clubs provide comprehensive website results services including downloadable hand-records in several formats and individual recap sheets to see how you went on each board. Have a look at http://www.ksandqs.com/results.php for an example.

How would you suggest defending against the following opening structure: Pass = 0-5 balanced 1C = 0-1 unbalanced or 6-37 balanced or 16+ unbalanced 1D = 2-6 unbalanced 1H = 7-9 unbalanced 1S = 10-12unbalanced 1NT = 13-15 unbalanced I'm thinking of playing some sort of fert in 2nd seat after the 0-5 balanced opening to try to catch the opps in a one-level penalty (i.e. 1C 0-9 any, pass 13+ any, 1D,1H,1S natural 10-12 and 1NT 10-12 with C).

It's more to put presure on the players to play faster and to try replicate face-to-face conditions where bridge is time-limited. I'm only really interested in it for serious practice matches where I can specify the time limits and number of boards exactly as per the conditions of contest for the target event. I'm still curious about what gave rise to the count-down timer when I played in a teams match yesterday as there is no option in the set up to be clocked. I also note that the clock seem to be visible to players but not kibitzers.

I noticed when playing in a 20 board teams match yesterday that there was a countdown timer, but setting a time limit per board doesn't seem to be an option when setting up a match. The countdown clock started at something ridiculous like 220 minutes, but I'd quite like to be able specify 7 or 8 minutes per board for teams matches that I run.

The logged LIN file comes out with imp scoring. Easily fixed manually by changing the "I" to a "B" in the 1st line of the LIN file using a text editor, but a bug nonetheless.

Wow, I didn't realise the New York Yankees had seceded! I must watch the news more closely in future. All you need to do now is get the New York Yankees recognised by the United Nations or have them field a bridge team in an Olympiad and I'm sure Fred will add their flag immediately. I wonder if they play bridge in the Hutt River Province?

I think we should get rid of the flags altogether and replace it with languages spoken which will actually be useful information when deciding which table to sit at. It would also open up a whole lot of potential new functionality in future versions of BBO such as: - Automatic vugraph commentators requests with languages spoken being a selection criterion. - Automatic translation (probably via a freeware translation engine such as google or alta-vista) of chat comments which will go a long way to alleviating the frequent problem of players talking to eachother in a language their opponents don't understand. - Automatic translation of vugraph commentary to one of your spoken languages.

Because one of the most interesting things about bridge is different bidding methods. Events where all the players are obliged to play SAYC are fine for beginners and restricted players, but these guys have dozens of world championships between them and I want to see them play bridge in all its glory - including interesting system stuff.

Who do you charge the time to when opponents play complex methods that require detailed explanations? Explanations rarely take a material amount of time, particularly when properly completed system cards are made available and pairs have done some preparation with regards to complex methods. Notwithstanding that, the "chess-clock" would only be a guide to directors/appeals commitees as to slow play penalties and I'm sure they would take complexity of systems into account. It gives declarer incentive to play easy claim hands out. But declarer would be doing so in contravention of the ethics of the game and would place himeslef at risk of being accused of time-wasting. Bear in mind that the "chess-clock" will only be on vugraph matches so if a person engages in this practice there will be lots of people watching. The hands do not always lend themselves to both pairs needing similar amounts of time. They will in the long run.

Par would be good, but I think what would even more useful, particularly for beginners, would be a GIB v GIB result including the SAYC auction and lead; or perhaps several GIB results.

Here is something to ponder: - LHO has a weak opening with ♠ and ♦ and even though he's non-vul in first seat, you can probably count on a few points in those suits in his hand. - RHO has a penalty double of 3♥ so presumably has some values in that suit. - Partner has overcalled at the 3-level, but looks like he probably doesn't have much of his values in ♥ so where has partner pulled this 3♥ bid from?

The event was actually IMPs not matchpoints.

For a couple of years now I've had a policy of saying absolutely nothing to my partner or opponents during a match other than alerting, calling for cards from dummy and asking and answering questions. So the ear-plugs are somewhat a natural progression. Ear-plugs are also my defence to the unethical practice of many of my opponents to insist on discussing each hand after it's over and often well into the next hand. Of course, post-mortems at the table are a flagrant breach of Law 74A2: "A player should carefully avoid any remark or action that might cause annoyance or embarrassment to another player or might interfere with the enjoyment of the game." I don't play in tournaments for the social aspect, not at the table at least. In any case, there is plenty of opportunity to socialise between matches and in the bar after play.

Just to clarify, the event in question was played without screens and with written bidding (which is very common in Australia and New Zealand). With written bidding you alert by saying "alert" and simultaneously drawing a circle around the alerted bid on the bidding pad. Accordingly, there is no risk of missing an alerted bid. Bidding boxes tend to only be used in Australia in conjunction with screens when the alerting regime is very "ear-plug friendly" as you need to wave the alert card card around or vigorously point at the alerted bid and, moreover, do so siliently. Also, questions and answer are also written. The next tournament I'm playing next month will be played with screens, so it's my intent to wear ear-plugs again. If and when bidding boxes gain wider accecptance in Australia, I think the Australian bidding box regulations require the alert card to be held on or near the alerted bid in an obvious fashion. I don't believe there are any bridge clubs in Australia, with the possible exception of some rubber bridge clubs, which use spoken bidding and certainly no tournament use spoken bidding.

I tried a new technique at a bridge tournament this weekend whereby my partner and I wore ear plugs to cut down on the amount of background noise; but also to make it difficult and even pointless to attempt to say anything to eachother or to our opponents. The ear plugs we used were noise protection ear plugs similar to the type that factory workers wear. They don't completely eliminate noise, but turn sounds into a fairly indistinguishable muffle similar to the noise you hear when scuba diving. It was still possible to ask the opponents questions, but you had to lean into them a little bit to hear properly, similar to the way that a person hard of hearing would need to. Does anyone see any practical or ethical issues with this approach?

I think I've tried just about everything for the various vugraph broadcasts that I've produced. Here are my thoughts and observations: ADSL - via ethernet Two venues that I've operated from (Dallas Brooks Hall and the VBA in Melbourne) had small business ADSL connections, both of which I believe at the time were 1500/256. Connected directly to the ADSL Modem/Router or via a Switch by ethernet cable I found this to be close enough to 100% reliable. The hassle factor was having long blue cables all over the place which I made up at the venue with a big box of Cat 5e and a modular crimp tool. ADSL - via wireless I tired this at the VBA, but I would just about always get a drop out or two during a match. I found that if you had line-of-sight to the wireless access point, it was OK but if you can't see the antenna of the wireless access point from where the playing table is, I wouldn't rely on it. Wireless Broadband This was what we used in Sydney for the World Youth in 2005. There were some problems, only in the evenings, when it seemed that network load on the node we were connecting to (which was about 2km away) was such that we couldn't sustain a stable connection and would get quite a few drop outs. I would be very reluctant to use this method again. Hotel Wireless I tried this at the Eden of the Park Hotel in Melbourne and similar to my experience with wireless at the VBA, in areas where you had a visual on the access point it was fine, but the organisers wanted the vugraph table in a particular location in the playing area that was unsighted and too far away so after doing one match where I had a couple of drop outs (albeit with reasonably quick reconnection) I used dial-up for the rest of the event. Dial-Up This is what I've used for the last two years in Canberra at the Australia National Open Teams. I've found it very reliable and quite OK for up to 4 computer sharing a single dial-up connection. The basic setup is Laptop A has the dial-up connection and has Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) enabled for it in Windows XP. Via ethernet, Laptop A is connected to a small switch or hub, which all the rest of Laptops are connected to. A few things to be careful about are what the maximum session time is with your ISP and whether you may get an automatic disconnection for inactivity if your ISP doesn't recognise BBO as "activity". To deal with those issues I always establish a fresh dial-up session before each match and make sure I have a web browser open that I periodically click on. Different dial-up plans will have different rules as to session limits and auto disconnections so check with your ISP as what will be most suitable. Prepaid dial-up can be a good option, as typically the prepaid connection is for a set number of hours (say 40 hours) that is ample for doing semi-final and final of most events and they generally don't have auto-disconnection for inactivity as they are happy for you to chew into the prepaid hours even if the connection is inactive. Conclusion Getting access to an analog telephone line is usually quite cheap and easy at all venues and provided you are using a reputable ISP, dial-up is probably the most reliable method and least succeptible to third-parties stuffing things up (such as the hotel's IT manager restarting a router or switch in the middle of a match). Accordingly, I would generally recommend dial-up unless the venue's broadband connection is affordable, reliable and wired (unless you have line-of-sight to wireless access points).

I expect no such thing. Players at this level don't complain about opponents' psyches. Moveover, if they had a problem with the bid they would've called the director at the time which I presume they didn't.

The local organisers in Shanghai have decided to increase coverage to at least two matches per round from now on with the China Open Team to be given blanket coverage for the rest of the event.