mrdct

In Sydney three separate wireless broadband interent connections were used. One shared wirelessly amongst the three or four broadcast tables and one about 500 metres away shared amongst a wired LAN with about a dozen computers in a players' internet cafe and three or four computers in the vugraph theatre. The third was in WBF offices for the use of the bulletin editor and WBF officials. Most of the time this worked OK, but in the evenings the internet was noticably slower and on two or three occasions we had sessions (I think matches 3, 6 & 9) in which we reverted to single table coverage. When problems with the internet arose, my priority was always the online coverage for the 2000+ spectators we usually had rather than half-dozen or so people watching in the onsite theatre. For the onsite vugraph theater it is true that there were a few evening matches where the connection to BBO was unstable for the few people there, but it was usually sorted out fairly quickly by restarting the wireless modem and disconnecting a few computers in the internet cafe. Only a few boards were missed iirc. We fiddled a few things around as the event went on, including moving the computer on which comparitive scores were entered to the playing area and reducing the number of machine sharing a connection with the vugraph theatre, which sorted things out for the last few days of the round robin and for the KO matches (where we also had one table on dial-up to be doubly sure). The internet situation in Sydney was not optimal, but it was a reality we had to deal with as a DSL connection at the venue was going to cost about $2000 compared to $180 for three one-month subscriptions to a wireless service which the provider actually threw in for free as a sponsorship. Having a BBO server onsite was considered, but I decided against it for the following reasons: 1. It may have been more reliable for people onsite, but much less reliable for people offsite (as was clearly evidenced with Istanbul fiasco). 2. It would've been a major pain in the arse to set up. including all sorts of security issues around BBO's source code, etc. 3. Site survey tests of the wireless connection (albeit conducted during the day) indicated that the connection would be more that capable of handling everthing. 4. On the reasonable assumption that the interent connection would be stable, the most likely point of failure would be the local server. BBO's servers in the USA are hosted in a climate controlled data centre with 24-hour monitoring and continuous power - so I took the view that failure was far more likely with a local server. The WBF's preference for a local server is based on ignorance and lack of appreciation for the fact that only about 0.5% on the vugraph audience is onsite. Slightly off-topic, but as has been said in this forum many times before, having a good quality internet connection is the key to a successful broadcast.

Just to clarify, the arrangements in Sydney for the five full-time operators were free hotel accommodation at the venue and three meals per day, although a couple of the full-time operators made other accommodation arrangements in Sydney with family or friends (for example Nick generally stayed at his own home). From my own perspective this was quite acceptable as I had a nice 9 day holiday in Sydney doing something I love and with my only out-of-pocket expense being some petrol to drive there from Echuca. With adequate notice, I would've been quite happy to cash in some frequent flyer points and fly to Bangkok for 10 days if my accommodation and meals were being picked up; but too late now. I'm intrigued as to how they plan to run the onsite vugraph. The PABF youth was held in Bangkok only a month or so ago and I believe BBO was used there for the onsite vugraph, so surely they would look to use the same system for the WC. Of the hordes of WBF people in Sydney last year, the only one that appeared to add any value to the process was the Operations Manager, Dimitris Ballas. Even in Sydney, it was quite apparent that the WBF had absolutely no interest whatsoever in the online coverage with their only concern being which fancy restaurant they would go to for dinner each night. Perhaps they should grab one of the WBF freeloaders and sit them at laptop in the vugraph theatre to provide the service.

Discrimination laws general reach a lot further than employment into areas such as access to education, welfare, childcare, housing and leisure activities (such as the club or bar that won't let me in because I'm black). I can't speak for the UK or Europe, but in Australia there is an exemption for competitive sporting activities: EQUAL OPPORTUNITY ACT 1995 - SECT 66 Exception-competitive sporting activities 66. Exception-competitive sporting activities (1) A person may exclude people of one sex or with a gender identity from participating in a competitive sporting activity in which the strength, stamina or physique of competitors is relevant. (2) A person may restrict participation in a competitive sporting activity- (a) to people who can effectively compete; (:P to people of a specified age or age group; © to people with a general or particular impairment. (3) Sub-section (1) does not apply to a sporting activity for children under the age of 12 years. It would be interesting if someone sought to challenge whether or not "strength, stamina or physique" is relevant in bridge which would could potentially render women's bridge events illegal in Australia.

Differences of treatment between different individuals or groups on the grounds of age are invariably based on generalised assumptions and stereotypes. When individuals are subject to discrimination as a result of such stereotypes, their fundamental right to respect for their human dignity is violated, as they are denied equality of treatment and respect. It is incumbant upon all humans to stand-up against prejudice, intolerance, racism, sexism, ageism, genocide and idiotic EBU directives. Oh, the humanity!

This would be completely illegal in Australia under Equal Opportunity legislation. Is discrimination on the basis of age not dealt with by British or European laws? The EBU position on this matter offensive to humanity.

I guess that living in the UK and having Hugh McGann as her boyfriend would open up a few doors to get a few decent games in Europe. Notwithstanding that, Fiona has been around the Australia youth bridge scene for several years and has won at least one national youth title that I'm aware of. I'm all in favour of young attractive people being the face of bridge.

Have they defined what they mean by "commentate"? Are English juniors barred from writing articles on matches involving junior players? Are English juniors barred from discussing a vugraph match with a few people (be that online or otherwise)? What happens if and when BBO introduce multi-channeling of commentary - will they be allowed to sit in a virtual room and chat about a vugraph match with a few mates and anyone else who cares to listen? Sounds like a typically stupid bridge administrator decsion.

Not quite true. Predealt hands can be loaded to tournaments (which is quite easy) and teams matches (a bit tricky).

As watchers of the World Cup would've noted, the country to which you refer is officially known as Côte d'Ivoire (refer UN website & ISO 3166). Côte d'Ivoire is indeed the official "English" name of the country. Just as we don't call Costa Rica "Rich Coast", we shouldn't call Côte d'Ivoire "Ivory Coast".

I hope they show it. It was a lot of fun last year and very fast too - about 4 minutes per hand if I recall correctly.

The synchronisation of comments with play only seems to work properly when there is only one table being broadcast. I have no idea why that is the case.

On the occasions when I've needed to sub a player in a teams match, I simply click on "table" and a box pops up where I enter the name of the player leaving and name of the player coming in. Seems to work OK.

Haven't seen anything in the BBO schedule yet. Is there likely to be any BBO coverage?

That's fantastic news Jan. From the looks of the samples this seems just about world best practice for bridge tournament online reporting. I hope the ACBL can follow suit with their Nationals. As for convention cards, why not simply make it a condition of contest that ACBL or WBF convention cards be completed electronically and be submitted to webmaster a few weeks before the event starts? I find it hard to believe that any serious pairs would be completing their convention cards by hand.

Fred, Can you clarify whether the invisible vugraph tables are counted within the limit? Dave.

What I do with all of my multi-table broadcasts is prepare a data input sheet for the operators with the exact information to be keyed at start-up. I find this takes a bit of pressure off the operators and helps achieve consistency with the look and feel. At the World Youth, for example, we knew the next day's matches the night before so I would prepare the 9 data input sheets we needed the night before (3 rounds of 3 broadcast matches per round) and then I would fill in the player names by hand once the line-ups were posted. In Sydney, the line-ups were entered by the captains online so as soon as the last line-up was entered, the chief scorer would hand me a sheet of paper with all the player names and positions for that round. Having a consistent naming structure was also helpful for commentators trying to find which table they were meant to be at. One other thing, which is more for tournament organisers than vugraph organisers, is to have a requirement that players be seated 5 minutes before the official session time. The only tournament I know of where this is a requirement AND is enforced is the Australian Interstate Teams, but it meant that I could get all my vugraph tables started and have a wander around to make sure everything was OK well before actual play started.

I don't think you are in the minority Richard. On the limited studies that I've done where viewers have a choice between watching a table with highly artlificial methods and watching a table with mainly natural methods, the majority of the total kibitzers will generally be found at the table with the unusual methods. My theory is that unless you are one of the lucky few that live in one of the few jurisdictions where such methods are permitted, vugraph is about the only chance you'll get to see new and exciting methods. The caveat is, however, you really need at least one commentator who is reasonably familiar with the artificial system but this is rarely a problem.

Fewer than half the PCs that connect to BBO are set to use English these days, fwiw. My point exactly. I can't wait to see the likes of Jack Zhau, Fu Zhong, Patrick Huang, Paul Marston, Furuta Kazuo, etc. contesting the PABF zonal championships which was one of the most interesting, well presented and well patronised BBO vugraph events last year.

It must be wonderful to live in the centre of the universe.

A recent idea I've had is to semi-automate some aspects of commentator procurement. What I have in mind is not intended as replacement of Roland, but as a tool that vugraph operators can use when they find themselves in a situation where they have insufficient commentators at their table. I've operated a few "low-profile" events over the years and have often found myself short of commentators and I can tell you it is quite difficult to scrounge around for commentators and operate at the same time. What I propose is that an additional class of member be added with, for example, a picture of a microphone next to their name to denote that they are "approved" commentators. Roland's mailing list would probably be the best place to start. Vugraph operators would then have a button that they could simply click on that would automatically send invitations to all of the commentators currently online to join his or her table. The concept could be extended to give operators the flexibility to send invitations to people from a specified country and/or skill level. In addition, anyone who is interested in commentating could click a button similar to "find me a game" or "register as a substitute" and then those people would be made available to the operator to ungag at his or her discretion.

I'm not familiar with the procedure for loading up a new set of three boards each round without closing the presentation, but I presume you are over-writing the vugraph.lin file in the BBO directory on the laptop with a new file each round. For a variety of reasons I think the superior approach is to start a new presentation each round. This will ensure the data, including names, is all captured properly. When I was watching the Cavendish, I invariably changed tables each round to watch my favourite players so getting booted and then having to go to a new vugraph table each round doesn't sound like much of hassle given that I'm more or less doing that already. As for names, when you start the presentation you should have a blank table before you redeal to the first board. You can enter the names right then and there I believe before you bring up the first board. How real is the risk that someone in the big-bad internet will hack into an operator's laptop, locate the hand data file and then covertly communicate key information to players? I'd think very low risk, but the risk can be quite easily mitigated through the following steps: 1. On the operator's laptop don't have any directories (especially ones with hand data files) shared and enable the built-in firewall in the Windows operating system. 2. To the extent to which kibitzers are allowed in the event, they must be in the playing room before the start of the session and if they leave they cannot return. 3. Players to have escorts for toilet breaks. 4. Ban on any electronic communication devices in the playing room. I guess it's possible for a hacker to use a packet sniffer or something similar to intercept the hand data when a wireless network is used; but basic WEP or WPA encryption should solve that problem and keeping players quarantined during session time ought to eliminate the risk of information being covertly passed to them anyway. If it remains a concern for event organisers, perhaps Fred needs to have a look at the whole way in which hand data is loaded, stored locally, transmitted to the BBO server and transmitted to viewers. As for Richard's "computer in the shoe" scenario, the chances of an invited expert pair deploying such a technology for a once per year event with a first prize that is tasty money, but certainly not the sort of life changing cash that could be had by duping a casino game, has to be remote in the extreme. But if organisers remain paranoid about it, you can buy a hand-held bug detector for about $200 which will pick up any electronic signals coming in and out of people's footwear. I think the players would find it quite amusing being swept for bugs before the start of a session! My final comment, and one that I've made many times before, is that when event organisers book venues make sure that the terms of access to the internet are reasonable.

Sorry Richard, I thought you were referring to hassles for event organisers for whom all they really need to worry about is getting a hand data file cut up into smaller bits and giving it to the operators. I'll admit that there are some hassles for the vugraph operators, but all in a day's work. My message is that in most cases doing vugraph coverage is to all intents and purposes completely unobtrusive and requires nothing from the organisers other than: - hand data files; - possible minor modification to table placement/orientation; and - a venue with a phone line or internet connection in the playing area. For coverage of one or two tables, the vugraph operators) can just about turn up with a laptop 30 minutes before showtime if the organisers have advance knowledge to prepare the hand data files and have a phone line or other internet connection available.

Don't rule out dial-up. If the playing tables are in individual hotel rooms it sounds particularly convenient to simply plug into the analog phone line. I've used dial-up several times and it's generally been OK - even when sharing the connection amongst three machines. From a cost perspective it should be way cheaper as you will just have a few local calls and half a dozen dial-up accounts that can either be pre-paid (if such a product exists in the USA) or just cancelled after a month.

During the round-robin of the World Youth in Sydney we covered three separate matches each round with a single table being broadcast and the comparitives being keyed by a single operator logged in invisibly under three separate VG IDs on the one machine. I think this worked really well and could be good model for your round of 16 and quarter-finals. Doing it this way also minimises the dilution of the audience and commentator resources. The human resource requirements were four vugraph operators, a recorder at each comparitive table and a runner to bring the record sheets to the 4th operator (the one doing three tables). I mostly worked as the 4th operator so I could keep an eye on things and I found that I had plenty of time to enter all the bidding and play and still wander around from time to time - so I don't think four matches will be a problem. Lots of advance planning (which you are obviously doing) is the key and make sure you get a good internet connection. As for commentary, I do it for the fun of it and because of my time zone I'm usually sitting on the couch watching TV, fiddling on the laptop and having a beer at that time of night anyway. A few general pointers for commentators: 1. Try to think what problem/alternatives the players are dealing with and explain potential thought processes to the audience. 2. If you haven't said anything in the last four or five lines, say something. 3. Don't overuse GIB - it is often very obvious when commentators are simply relaying what GIB says. BBO broadcasts are significantly enhanced when there is a website with realtime or near realtime results from all tables. This is very much the norm in several countries now and I would encourage the USBF to look at doing something like this. I know that in previous years when I've been trying to follow USBF events the timeliness of website updates has been very poor. Finally, BBO broadcasts benefit greatly when the vugraph operator can give a bit of a flavour for what's going on at the table as far as body language and interaction between the players in concerned. I actually thought the recent Cavendish operators did a great job of this, particularly David Stern.

Well surprise surprise Sherlock - the complaints all relate to the way the event was presented online so what do you know ... the complainants are "random people from the internet". As for knowing nothing about the topic, the complainants include the two preeminent bridge data archivists on Earth and several people deeply involved in tournament organisation and online presentation of bridge events. The online vugraph presentation and website very much represent a symbiotic relationship between the event, its players and its spectators. Proper presentation of the event generates a higher profile for the event (attracting players and sponsors to future events) and showcases the talents of professional players (putting upward pressure on their market rates). "Entitlement" - perhaps not, but it's a two-way street in which bridge fans, pro players and tournament organisers can all benefit if it's done properly. What are the "very large hassles involved"? What are the "very real security concerns"? BBO (including the hundreds of volunteers that make vugraph possible) have been gracious enough to offer their facilities and long-cultivated marketable audience to WBP to showcase their event. Sounds like a p...ing contest to me, but I think BBO can wee-wee the furthest.