Deanrover

I thought wrong. Guess there were gremlins. According to http://www.ffbridge.asso.fr/ "Dames Société Générale: Les Françaises éliminées par l'Angleterre" Which I think translates as "Womens' tournament: The French were eliminated by the English" Revenge for Euro 2004 :-)

I *think* that these boards did not start until much later in the day.

I don't think the potential for female customers to be harassed is a problem as the photo would be optional. I'd also take minor offence at your sexism - there is also potential for males to be harassed - it has happened to me at least once during my time on BBO. It would be a real nice idea to allow space for some private info. Perhaps via a weblink. I think it would add a lot to know something about who you are playing with, and would help BBO become much more friendly.

Managed to get on now. down to 4500 users.

Hi all, for 15 minutes I have been unable to log into BBO. I get the message "Connection lost..............(0)" All other parts of the internet are working fine. I have 56.6K dial-up Dean

This happens more often than you might think. You are playing in a tournament, the time is running down, you try desperately to finish in time, complete trick 12 and play two cards of trick 13, when you get timed out. As there is no room for strategy on trick 13, it should be autoplayed. I appreciate that the TD can adjust, but this provides unneccesary work for them, and also disrupts the ordering in Swiss style tourneys. On a related point, it is often the case, especially with 2 or 3 tricks to play that ANY combination of card plays will lead to the same number of tricks being scored. For example if trumps are drawn and declarers remaining cards are all trumps, or are all Aces (and he is in hand).

HI Uday, thanks for your reply. Sorry if you thought I was disparaging towards your work - I did not mean it this way. As mentioned in my post, it seemed like the new Vugraph options were primarily intended towards the on site audience. However, 3.9.0 was hyped as being the "Cool new Vugraph" version and as a consequence perhaps I set my sites too high. Hopefully if the on site display is a success then Fred can find time to work on the BBO side of things, after all there are probably more people watching on BBO than on site. Dean

I am disappointed with the new feature. i) It clearly seems to have been devised with a live audience in mind. The fact that the page moves forward every five seconds and gives a precis of the overall situation is nice if it is used on a screen in the Vugraph Theatre in Istanbul, however it falls short for home viewing. ii) In a real life vugraph theatre there will be multiple screens so you can keep one eye on the bridge whilst perusing the standings. This can not be done on BBO, unless you have the ability to log in as two IDs concurrently. iii) Unless I am missing something, the navigation is absolutely AWFUL. The only way to get to a specific screen is click "next" or "prev" multiple times. This is extremely tiresome. Why not have a main menu? Why not be able to click on the word "Argentina" as it appears in the "provisional rankings" page and have their team members, latest scores, group ranking etc. pop up? iv) Lack of group standings. Really hope these will appear soon, very important concept. v) This is only quasi-related but often I will be kibitzing match x and want to know what other games are available to watch. Clicking the "tables" tab should produce this information a la MBC, but it doesn't. vi) Before entering a Vugraph Room I would appreciate knowing what language commentary is on. Perhaps Wald could be given the ability to add this information? vii) Often I will want to go to a room because of a particular commentator (Fred, Scotty) however if you move your cursor over their ID all it says is "Fred is watching a live vugraph" NOT which room they are in. Hence one has to enter and exit rooms until you see which room they are in. This problem is compunded by the fact that Fred is often logged in as invisible making it impossible to know if he is commentating. IMHO when go into the V.T lobby and move your cursor over one of the match info green lines, as well as a list of players popping up (cool new feature), so should a listen of all commentators in that room. (n.b. seeing as all yellows are auto-ungagged this would involve the client differentiating between ordinary yellows and yellow commentators.) viii) There is a big bug in it. Go to one of the screens where it list all current scores from a match. Click on one of these scores. A little movie box will pop up. Click the "x" in the top right to close it. You will now get a Windows "Netbridge vu has experienced an error yadda yadda yadda box" and BBO crashes. Am running Windows ME. I hope that Fred and Uday do not take this post in too harsh a light. Generally I am a huge fan of yours and of course BBO is free blah blah blah. It is a nice feature but it needs a lot of development. I really don't see myself getting any benefit out of it this Olympiad.

Please post your thoughts on the new vugraph features here.

Hi Fred, when you are working with super-duper players, what does Team Captain and Team Coach entail? Dean

BBO are lucky to have some users who are very keen to fill in as substitutes for tourneys. However, it would be a time consuming process for them to sign up as a sub for every tourney going. Hence, I suspect, some users sign up as substitutes quasi-randomly. This is a problem, as often tournament x has extremely few disconnects, whilst tournament y needs 10 subs. IMHO, BBO should be striving to maximise the pool of substitutes, and also to become as user friendly as possible. Thus, after clicking tournaments, there should be a "sign up as substitute" button. Then the user could have a list of all running tournaments, with a check box next to each one. This would encourage people to sign up as substitutes.

Hi Fred, this is a very nice feature. Congratulations. Maybe this is the wrong post to bring it up in, but it has long been a pet peeve of mine that clicking a link in BBO does not open up a new window. Thus when I am browsing whilst using BBO, and am sent a link, it means losing to page that I am currently reading. :D Dean

I am not sure what the EBUs reticence is based on, but I suspect that the natural conservatism of such organisations is a contributing factor. The EBU chairman has never played bridge, and as such is unlikely to know much about BBO. These organisations are not by their nature revolutionary, so the best way to get the EBU to adopt BBO is to persistently remind them of its benefits and of the demands of its members.

I hope you all agree that the ACBL events have overall been good for BBO. They have provided members with generally nicely run tournaments, a chance for masterpoints, well deserved $ for Fred, Sheri, Uday and Magic + for the ACBL which will hopefully benefit bridge. They have also helped attract lots of new members onto BBO. I would very like for EBU tournaments to be run on BBO. Your can currently earn EBU masterpoints via playing on Bridge Club Live. Bridge Club Live has 10% of BBO users, charges a fixed subsription per year and has inferior software. However, the EBU appear reticent about expanding their approval to BBO. So what I would like you to do is to phone/email/contact the EBU telling them about BBO and about how you would like to be able to win Masterpoints through it. Hopefully they will understand that BBO=popular and popular=££££££s and ££££££s = good for the EBU. Also, I have noticed that BBO still has rather low recognition in the UK, so please try spreading the gospel to your bridge playing acquaintances. For example, if you have a friend distraught at not being able to make it down to Earls Court next weekend for the Lederer, console them with the news that they can watch the show from the comfort of their leather chair through BBO. Cheers, D

There is no excuse for the abuse you received. Sadly, it is widespread on BBO. I tend to alert everything (will alert NT as 15-17, stayman etc.) just to avoid any trouble/controversy.

The flag is installed to C:\Bridge Base Online\flags but the option to select it is lacking.

Perhaps "We" and "they" could be color-coded a la teams matches to clear up any confusion?

A tournament player can chat to others users, but they can not respond. However, many tourney players get understandably confused when they get no reply. They think that the person they are chatting to is being rude and can get irate. Two options suggest themselves i) Disable the ability of tourney players to chat to anyone bar yellows ii) (my preferred option ;) ) When a tourney player chats to another user, they should receive a message "Userxyz can not respond to your message because you are currently in a tournament". If people found ii) too annoying, you could add check box "don't show me this message again" D

Was anyone else i) Forced to restart their PC ii) Their desktop shortcut does not work

I am pretty certain that a moritorium currently exists on creating new bridge clubs. Some of the clubs were set up a couple of years ago and never used since. Hopefully they will be culled soon. Don't let this dissuade you from emailing Fred: if your suggestion is good enough you might just get lucky.

When declarer claims in real life he should clearly state a line that he will follow. He can not claim on a misdefence, so he is claiming on the basis that he will make x tricks irrespective of defence. So it does not really matter whether the defenders can see each others cards. And in any case, they can see their own hand, dummy, and now declarers, so they "know" the fourth hand anyway. In real life it is obviously impossible for the defenders to show their cards to each other without the declarer catching a glimpse, but thankfully online this is easy. So this feature is good, because it skews things in favour of the non-claiming party, which is how things should be.

Sorry, that was a typo. But it would have been a most cunnign defence :-)

OK. You were right that West has stiff heart ace left. So ruff the eight, pull two rounds of trump, then cash your ten of hearts. You are now down to[hv=n=shdtcq95&s=shdkca84]133|200|[/hv] And East can only hold minor suits. If he has zero or one diamond left, then you can cash your diamond and lead a low club to dummy, covering whatever West plays. As long as East has King + one or both of Jack and Ten of clubs you will make on an endplay. You will also make if you can guess to play west for Jack-Ten doubleton. If East has kept two diamonds and two clubs then play Ace and another club, ducked in dummy, and win the enforced diamond reutrn in hand to claim the club Queen at T 13.

Hint to Ben:

Yeah, this has been on the "wish list" for a LONG time. I'd guess it will not be in place within 10 weeks, but will be in place within 10 years. Most events that BBO covers will also have an "on site" vugraph. It should not be *that* difficult to hook the microphone up to some computer equipment then broadcast if not directly through BBO then through some weblink. Seems less likely that BBO will ever have live audio from Roland Wald Richie Reisig etc.