mrdct

At the World Youth Teams Championship in Sydney in August 2005, during the round-robin phase the BBO coverage will be single table coverage from at least two and hopefully three separate matches each round. In previous major championships, BBO coverage of matches involving non-English speaking countries with high BBO membership has had English commentary in the open room and non-English coverage in the closed room. Such splitting of the commentary wont be possible until the knock-out matches in Sydney. It would be a nice service to vugraph fans to have an unofficial chat channel running simulataneous to the BBO presentation in which commentary can be undertaken in a non-English languages. Such unofficial chat channels could also be used for the controversial "free-for-all" commentary. Ideally the software or website that runs the chat channel will need to be free and easy to install. Optimally, it would be purely web-based (perhaps java-based) and not require complex registration or burden viewers will lots of pop-ups. Does anyone know of any suitable products out there that might be able to deliver this sort of functionality?

Connectivity problems can be controlled through proper venue selection, testing and contingency planning (i.e. having a dial-up connection on stand-by). Prospective vugraph operators need to be in close communication with convenors/organisers many months before the event they are planning to cover to ensure that a quality internet connection will be available. My personal policy is that I will not undertake vugraph coverage of any event unless there there is redundant dial-up connection available to at least one table.

In directing "Wildman" last night, I had what I thought was an extraordinary number of disconnects; probably around 30 during a 12 board tournament. Towards the end of the tournament, I started writing down the names of the people I was replacing and then at the end of the tournament I went back to take a look at the last hand played before/during the disconnection. Not surprisingly, there was a very strong correlation between poor boards and disconnections. I sent a report off to abuse@bridgebase.com with the details of the most blatant offenders, but what would be really useful would be if the system itself could generate a summary at the end of a tourney that details the names of the players that needed to be subbed with a link to their last board scored and cummulative score up to the time they disconnected.

I created a tournament of 12 boards IMP pairs, 4 rounds. Well before the tournament started I went into table and uploaded my LIN file. The LIN file was created in BBO by taking a .dup file from DealMasterPro and then opening it in netbridgevu.exe (just like you would for vugraph). This process puts a file called vugraph.lin in your C:/bridge base online folder. When I loaded the hands, I got a message that 24 hands had been loaded. When the tournament was underway, board 1 turned out to be identical to board 2 so I had to abort the tournament. I then logged in as a vugraph operator (invisible) and started a dummy vugraph show with exactly the same file and it was OK with just the 12 hands. I also tried loading the same file to a teaching table, and again everything was OK. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for the idea Dwingo. I'll see if I can get "tournament convenor" rights and give that a go.

The Australian national team wants to play some teams matches on BBO with some pre-dealt instructional hands. When starting a teams match, there doesn't seem to be an option to upload a set of hands. Is there any chance of this functionality becoming available shortly?

Do we know if a single wireless connection is being shared via a switch or hub to the various vugraph operators at the tables, or does each vugraph operator have its own wireless connection to the hotel's access point(s)? In my experience, wireless generally only delivers a consistently stable internet connection for the 3+ hours straight you need for BBO when you actually have line-of-sight to the access point. Some venues will have better quality network infrastructure than others, but it's always a good idea to check first.

Obviously I'm not at the venue, but based on my fairly extensive experience with running BBO vugraph presentations, the frequent shut-downs and restarts can only be explained by a poor internet connection onsite; possibly wireless. It may well be that the majority of the problems have nothing to do with the BBO operators but are more related to venue selection. Can anyone who is actually onsite give me a detail description of the entire set-up.

It may work differently from country to country, but in Australia the process is: 1. A computer dealing program approved by the national body generates hand data files which are not necessarily in the "dup" format used by BBO. 2. The hand data files are sent (usually by email) to one of the various individuals, bridge clubs and private companies that have dealing machines. For major events with a large volume of boards there are basically two private companies in Australia that do commercial board dealing. 3. The organisation to which board dealing has been contracted-out physically deals the boards, often usually using casual junior labour. For some events there may be board dealing on-site with only a day or two of hands dealt in advance. 4. Printed hand-records with Deep Finesse analysis are produced from the original hand data files. Usually at or about this time, and sometime using the software that does the Deep Finesse analysis, the original hand data file (which I think in Australia is often a "bri" file is converted to a "dup" file which is what BBO needs. This a is point of the process where catastrophic failure (i.e. an event leading to cancellation of a BBO vugraph presentation) has been known to occur. 5. The "dup" files for the event, which are hopefully clearly named so different segments wont get mixed up, are saved on a disk and given to a tournament official who eventually hands them over to the BBO vugraph operator. For smaller events, such as a single head-to-head knock-out final, the process can be streamlined in a number of ways. For example, the original hand data file can be generated in "dup" format and if the dealing machine supports that format (which many machine in Australia don't) the boards can be dealt from that file and the hand records can be generated from that file. In theory this method is fool-proof as the "dup" given to BBO will be identical to the one used to deal the boards and hasn't gone through any conversion process that may stufft things up.

Sadly, a lot of the time the dup file is not checked by anyone. This is virtually always completely beyond the control of BBO vugraph operators as a number of event organisers and bridge administrators simply don't understand the technology or don't understand what things increase, decrease or have no effect on hand data security. When I'm working with reasonable tournament convenors and directors, the BBO vugraph operator is considered a trusted member of the tournament staff and is given reasonably free access to hand data files. In such circumstances, I like to personally check that the dup file opens OK in BBO (whilst offline of course) and then cycle through each hand in the set to make sure there are no hands with incomplete data and, if I've been given one, check the first and last boards of the segment to the hand-record. At the Australian National Open Teams, about an hour before play each day all of the hand data files for the day were copied onto my USB memory stick and were either checked by me or by the official scorer who had all of the hand-records on his machine ready to upload onto the web at the end of each session. The USB memory stick was then retained by the official scorer who gave it back to me a few minutes before each segment. If for so-called "security" reasons you can't get the hand data file a reasonable time before the segment starts, the next best thing is to have a good talk to the person who is handling the data files (sometimes the CTD himself, but often the person in charge of board duplication) and make sure you are comfortable that he has appropriate process and controls in place to ensure the accuracy of the hand data files, particularly if the hand data files are being converted from another format and/or split into smaller files for each segment. If you can't do any of the above, just pray!

I'll see your 4000 miles and raise it to my 9000 miles from Houston! In most serious events (such as the Seaside Festival) captains are required to complete line-up sheets. When everything is working smoothly one of the tournament officals can pass the line-up sheet, or a copy thereof, to the vugraph operator. But of course often the CTD has other issues on his mind like getting the correct boards out and chasing up late players. Having the match data on a piece of paper at your fingertips is certainly the way to go, but still wont work if the players sit the wrong way. In multi-match coverage that I've run, I've always included the table number of the match I'm covering to avoid any confusion with the LIN file names.

Be careful using the "f" word. I'm sure the operators are doing the best they can and, believe me, it is not as easy at it looks. Unless you are onsite, you wont have the full story about other problems that they may be encountering. I think in my time organising, operating, commentating and watching BBO vugraph presentations I've just about seen it all in terms of what can go wrong; and there are lots and lots of things that can go wrong that even perfect preparation won't be able to handle. Like all bridge fans, I hope they can get it all sorted out for the rest of the event. And, Nikos, what have you got against the Seaside Festival? I'm sure it's a fine and prestigious event. In any case, the USBF event is only selecting the USA's "B" team.

The problem is that tournament organisers quite often refuse to release the hand data files to the vugraph operator until just seconds before play starts (and in some cases after play starts). This can often put the operator into a bit of a panic where their priority is to get the show up and running by quickly clicking through all of the options and accepting the defaults for event name ("Untitled"), team names ("Team 1" and "Team 2"), carry-forward scores ("0-0"), etc. My advice to vugraph operators is "don't panic". Even if bidding has already started when you get the hand data file, load the file up in a careful and considered manner as viewers will always be happier to miss part or all of the 1st board of a segment than have wrong team names and carried forward results for an entire segment. In practice, if the auction is over before you get time to load the hand data file, you can just enter the contract as a single bid (but please alert it as such so people will know) and carry-on. Similarly if the auction is over and play has already started, you can simply enter the result for that board in "movie". The reluctance of some tournament organisers to allow the hand data files to be loaded earlier may be due, in part, to a design problem with BBO that displays the first hand in the hand data file to the world-wide audience immediately upon commencement of the presentation even when that is not the hand on the table about to be played. It would be much better if no hand gets displayed to the audience until the operator "redeals" to the first board to be played. The other related BBO software deficiency is the inability to edit team names and carry-forward scores after a presentation has started. Fred has told me that such functionality has been developed, but its stability hasn't been properly tested yet; but hopefully we will see that soon. At some, but not all, Australian events the players are required to be seated 5 minutes before the official start time to go over pre-alerts and to listen to any special instructions from the CTD. If you are in discussions with tournament organisers about vugraphing their event, I strong recommend that you encourage them to include such playing conditions in the regulations. As part of the preparations for the BBO vugraph coverage of the World Youth Teams Championships from Sydney in August, the line-up sheets for the broadcast tables will be pre-printed with the precise answers to all of the start-up questions so that the naming of segments and teams will have a consistent look and feel for the audience. In the knock-out stages this will include the official carry-forward scores also.

From an operators perspective, there are a few issues with alerts when screens are in use (which is usually the case for vugraphed events): 1. Players alert via a variety of means ranging from placing their "alert" card in front of their screen-mate, pointing at their bid, waving their finger in air and even just making subtle eye contact with their screen-mate. A lot of the time the operator will simply not see the alert as he or she is entering a closed room comparitive score or taking care of some other task that only be done during the auction. 2. Generally explanations are given in writing which quite often cannot be read by the operator without overtly leaning forward and peering at the players' notes. This of course is a serious breach of protocol and could be passing unauthorised information to the other side of the screen. 3. Quite often, albeit contrary to the rules, players give whispered verbal explanations and/or sign language (such as a clenched fist = "strong") which the operator may not be able to dechipher. 4. Many alerted bids don't have explanations sought or given so even if the operator sees the alerts there are no explanations available. Roland's comment that some operators "don't always remember" to highlight alerts is a little bit unfair as non-alerting to the BBO audience is generally completely out of the control of the operator for the reasons described above. Fortunately, as Roland pointed out, the commentators usually pick-up on the artificial bids and indicate as such to the audience. Also, there is often someone in the audience who knows the players' systems well and will privately message a commentator the meaning of bids (such as in a relay sequence) that the commentator can pass on the the audience.

I think we would tend to find that a table attracting 500 spectators would have no trouble at all rustling up 3 or 4 decent commentators. The free-for-all approach is more likely to come into play for tables with under 100 spectators where, based on what tends to occur with popular kibitzing in the main bridge club, its unlikely more that 6-10 people or so would bother saying anything.

The event organisers and/or vugraph operators themselves would make that decision. There would not be anyone at BBO or elsewhere determining which events are worthy of official BBO commentators or not. What I am proposing is additional functionality that gives vugraph operators a completely voluntary and easy means of getting some commentary underway if and when they find themselves in a situation where scheduled commentators haven't turned up or when they are running an unscheduled vugraph presentation. I have personally found myself in both of those situations and found it quite a hassle to ask around for my friends to join in the commentary while trying to follow the bidding play. As many of the regular official BBO commentators know me, it wasn't too hard for me - but for other operators it may be a different story. If any spectators would prefer silence to anarchy, they can simply turn the commentary off with click of their mouse. Perhaps the ideal functionality (as suggested by Echognome) would be for all spectators being able to chat and make comments, but users can opt to "ignore public vugraph chat" and just see the "official vugraph commentary". A number of online cricket sites (fairfax for example) do exactly this. I know there has been some previous discussion under the "suggestions for the software" section about having different "chat channels" during vugraph broadcasts (such as multiple languages, beginner-focussed commentary and free-for-all) which is a strategy I would support and commend. It's all about offering the users of BBO vugraph (spectators, operators and convenors) more choice, functionality and flexibility.

With an increasingly congested vugraph schedule where it is sometimes difficult to rustle-up the requisite number of commentators, it may be a useful feature for vugraph operators to be able to "ungag all" and effectively make it a free-for-all for spectators to comment on proceedings. Often when in the main bridge club or in a teams match involving a few high-profile players there are 50-100 kibitzers and quite interesting conversations ensue in the form of "chat to kibitzers". Only very rarely have I seen any rude or inappropriate comments and there would be in-built safety in that all vugraph chat is archived so any people making offensive comments can be followed-up through the abuse process. Having free-for-all commentary shouldn't become the norm, but would be an option for operators and convenors of less-mainstream events. It could also be a useful option when undertaking two-table coverage whereby the open room can have the "official BBO commentators" and the closed room can be a free-for-all. What do you all think?

Most BBO vugraph sessions are 16 boards, which can take anything from 2 hours to 2.5 hours. With a few 20+ board sessions floating around, 3 hours should ensure that most sessions in-progress remain in the schedule until they are over. Further "bells & whistles" would be for a session that is in-progress to be notated as such by being a different colour and/or flashing.

The new vugraph schedule presenting session times in the users' local time zone is a great innovation. One slight annoyance, however, is that once a scheduled session has started it drops off the schedule. It would be nice if the vugraph schedule didn't drop sessions off until about, say, 3 hours after the advertised starting time.

At the upcoming World Youth Teams Championship we are planning to tap into the official WBF TV camera during session time and use that feed as a webcam.

This can be done already in a number of ways: 1. In the c:/bridge base online/players/ directory, create text files called playername.txt for each participant in the event. Within these text files put a hyperlink to the convention card (for which any serious event will have all of these available online) and a photo if available. When the vugraph operator enters the player names, provided the name is exactly the same as the text file, the details will be automatically picked up. Of course, this would involve quite a lot of advance work for the vugraph operator but would be quite feasible for events with a small number of teams or a head-to-head KO match. The format is: Full Name||Country|Profile 2. On a match-by-match basis, if the operator has time he/she could quickly copy and paste the hyperlink into the player profile box. 3. Commentators can (and usually do) regularly advise the audience of the official website for the event which ought to include player convention cards. I note, however, that under options 1 & 2 above, when watching a vugraph presentation the player profiles are not "copy&pastable" and a webpage typed in the profile is not "clickable" so this would require some software changes. A further software improvement for BBO vugraph would be to have a configurable button (maybe saying "Tournament Website") where the vugraph operator can insert a link to the offical website.

I've notice a couple of this with the Cavendish coverage: 1. In movie, imps seem to be scored up against some sort of datum on the fly. Is that using Deep Finesse or some other technique? 2. At the change of round the new players and boards load without having to close the vugraph presentation. I've never actually run vugraph og pairs events, but I'm interested to kinow how it works for pairs events.

The PABF Championships would be a really interesting event to have on BBO, so if anyone reading this thread happens to be in Seoul it would great for all of us if you could have a go at undertaking BBO coverage of the event. I'm more than happy to provide technical support and advice from afar. The event website is http://kcbl.org/pabf2005/main_pabf_info.htm which includes contact details for the organising committee.

That being the case, perhaps it would be prudent for BBO vugraph commentators to somehow waive their intellectual property rights in relation to their commentary. A sentance to that effect could be included in the BBO software licence agreement that we all agree to each time we upgrade to a new version.

At two of the Australian national events that I covered last year the Australian Bridge Federation only allowed single-table visible coverage; apparently so that if a team wanted to "hide" a nervous pair they could. At more recent Australian events shown on BBO the ABF have allowed dual-table coverage. Interestingly, the supplementary regulations for the recent seniors playoffs includes this: "6.5 The Convenor may, without notice, designate any table as a Vugraph table and no changes to seating are permitted if already posted." This is obviously a pleasing development which will make things a lot easier for people in Australia seeking to undertake BBO vugraph presentations. It is still a good idea, however, to speak to the organisers/convenors nice and early to get something sensible about vugraph into the regulations of the event you'd like to cover.