Deanrover

It would sure be nice to have the ability to preload hands for a Teams Match. This would be especially useful for a coach.

Doesn't your line leave open some defensive mischief? What happens if a defender drops the Diamond Queen on the first round?

Good idea. You want to ask online Poker sites to advertise. I would suggest that BBO contains a high % of potential users, and they would be willing to pay lots of money. Also it mind bring some much needed color to BBO, whose scheme is a tad dull. e.g. the current "Bridge Base" cards are rather unsightly. I'd much rather see a coke can on the back of it. Actually, best would be to have advertisements from www.playboy.com on the back, though this would likely be too distracting from the bridge!

[hv=n=sqjt9xhaqj9dxcxxx&s=saxhkt87dakjxxxca]133|200|7 Hearts by South. Can you combine the D and S chances? This came up in partnership bidding, so we don't know the lead. C or H would be most tricky, so assume one of them.[/hv]

I'd like to see a form of IMP scoring that I am sure has an official name, maybe Butler, not sure of that. When comparing your score in order to give the IMP result, I'd lke to see the "highest" and "lowest" scores removed in order to give an "adjusted mean". I think it would give a more accurate representation of the hand, and would remove from the equation some of the more eccentric results we see. I appreciate that over the long run, you are as likely to be lucky as unlucky in your comparisons, but this would be beneficial in the short run, thus ideal for tourneys (depending on the size of which more than 2 boards would be removed).

For this event the operator (who is excellent) has had problems with the Closed Room and as a result either Bo or myself has opened the C.R. from the comfort of our living rooms and entered the results as Anne-Lene tells us. We hav listened to what you said Denis, and you should receive your wish today. Ask and ye shal receive......

Indy tourneys play a big role on BBO. However, at the beginning of every new round you have to sort out some semblence of a system. This is time consuming and annoying, besides which you can't cover everything. Take a typical situation. RHO opens 1NT and you have a 2 suiter. Maybe you should assume natural, but then nobody wants to lose out to those who bother to make enquiries. But asking takes up time, e.g. p says "CApp" and you say "Dont know CApp" (note that you can't make a suggestion having seen your hand), and you give UI that you are interested in bidding. To avoid this UI you should always ask this q, but then most people won't and a smart declarer can draw conclusions if the opps did not ask what they played. It would be nice if users had to register their preferences over a number of areas, and BBO made suggestions. Now, bidding is a very complex area, and if full harmony was too be ensued it would require lots complex logic operators and technical programming that would not be a useful way to spend time. You would have to place an ordering over stuff such as Acol/Sayc/2o1/Precision/Goren/Moscito/Polish Club/etc. 3 and 5th/2 and 4th/other stuff udca/standard mckinney/odd&even CAPP/DONT/LANDY/NATURAL No blackw/blackw/1430/03/14 "Over ps 2C opening do you like 2d=weak or 2d=waiting,2h=weak" Much of this will be optional, but perhaps some essentials should be made compulsory. BBO now makes suggestions as to partnersip agreements. e.g. "You and you p agree on and are thus assumed to be playing Acol 3/5 standard carding 0314 LANDY " You were unable to reach agreement on the following, but BBO suggests "Mckinney etc." This tool could perhaps more importantly be used to help find compatible partners online.

Here's the scenario. Your kibitzing a Vugraph, and cycle through the "tables" list. You happen to see a spot available at a really hot table. You rush to take it. You click "back" and get the list of vugraph tables. You click "back again" and get the "explore bridge menu". Once more returns you to the lobby. You now click "play bridge" then "main bridge club" then you scroll down to the hot table and guess what, no spare seats anymore :blink: Disconsolate, you retrudge your steps until you rejoin the Vugraph. It would have been much simpler to be able to click on the empty space whilst kibitzing Vugraph. But, alas, this option was not available. Other niceties could be included. For example when right clicking the name of a user, it would be nice to have the option to join them (be they playing (you kib), partnership bidding (you kib), or maybe they are kibbing (you join them)). Our users could probably add many more.

Guggie - left-click your mouse on your username as you see it in the top left of the lobby. This will allow you to alter many settings, one of which is to ignore lobby chat. Yellows have the power to chat with everyone online, including those who have lobby chat blocked. This is because we may have urgent announcements to make about system crashes and such like. The ACBL also have this power to announce their tourneys, but your objection will be noted.

Eric, imagine that we agree to cheat in a high profile tourney. We exchange phone numbers. If the tourney follows the current format (all play same boards) you simply say to me I have "SAKxx HAxxxxx Dxxx" and I say I have "ST9xx HX D xxxx C QTxx" Both of us will benefit at our respective tables. We also comment on what bids are being made. It is possible that we will realise we are at the same table. We agree on one of us who is more likely to win, and the other throws the board, going for 1400 etc.

The majority of times that either I try to arrange a Teams Match, or someone tries to arrange one with me in it, it takes 3 or 4 attempts before we can get 8 people to agree. Each time someone rejects, the organiser has to troop out to the lobby to check who is online, and then troop back to the Teams match room to start a match, and then enter all the information again. This is annoying and unnecessarily laborious. When someone rejects, the create Teams Match box should pop up again, so any necessary adjustments can be made. It would also be nice to have a shortcut to "Create Teams Match" in the Lobby

I guess Dwayne is right. Even with our restrictions, two players can phone each other up and quote their hands, thus greatly benefitting both of them. Whilst we can search the winners' boards for signs of foul play, good cheaters will leave just too little rope to be hanged with. This is very frustrating as there must be thousands of honest people who would be delighted to play for money, and BBO would certainly be delighted to take a % of that :blink: With blind tables in a large tournament we can probably make it so that users can not arrange to play with or kibitz each other and cheat this way. We can at least make this probability small. With the collective brain power of this board, we must be able to come up with solutions to the other problems.

Wow! Kudos to Uday and also to the anonymous lady who complained to FG. This IS better! Ideally you could click on the Date Host Format Scoring Boards Title and arrange that column in time/alphabetical order, but until that day this will do very nicely.

Here follows an idea for a tourney. It is an individual tourney. You do not know who your p is, or who the opps are. There is a MINIMUM numbers of players needed for it to go ahead, say 100. No kibitzers are allowed. Say 90% of the prize money is returned in the following percentages 1st 50% 2nd 20% 3rd 10% 4th 5% 5th 3% 6th 1% 7th 1% The tourney could be any length, but for high stakes would be at least 20 boards I guess. How much would you be willing to pay? If it cost $100 a piece, then top prize is a juicy $5,000 If you are a good player, and 90% is paid out, then it is definitely worth entering. These events could costs as little as $1 up to $10,000. It would also be possible for you to sell a stake in yourself to someone else on BBO. E.g. if it costs $100 each, and you are a good player but poor or risk-averse you could sell a 50% stake in you. This would not have to go for exactly $50, if you are a phenomenal player you could even get more than $100 for it. Thoughts would be most welcome. Would the possibility of cheating deter you? How could we making cheating more difficult? Would you like longer tourneys, say a 2 day event?

We already have BB forums for those who want to offer feedback. You can also email the Management with your opinions. Also feel free to contact the Yellows with your views. We genuinely value them, and will pass them on. For big issues such as ratings, it is possible for you to have a fair and frank discussion on here. If we relied on a committee report for their opinion, it would be less democratic, and the view would likely be distorted by individuals.

Both of your software suggestions are very nice. Hopefully they both will be implemented. Fred and Uday are not particularly secretive about the future of BBO. Unfortunately, there are only two of them, and Fred has to spend much time playing in tournaments, so progress can not be as fast as we like. They spend a lot of time dealing with technical support. If BBO was a pay site, we could afford to hire more programmers, but you pays your money and you takes your choice. I have no inside information, but I think it very likely that they will re-write BBO from scratch some time in the near future. When it was originally written its intention was to be an online store for Bridge Base products only, and thus perhaps some of the fundamental building blocks were for the wrong kind of house. Hopefully this would help speed up any future enhancements.

This is overcome simply. When all 8 are agreed, they are banned from joining any new tables, and they are returned to the lobby at the end of their current board. They can not then rejoin a table. When all 8 are in the lobby, the game starts :-)

After all 8 players have agreed to a Teams Match, it starts almost immediately afterwards. It would be more polite if it waited until all 8 players had finished their current board. Unlikely to be much more than a 5 minute wait anyway.

When you go to sign up for a tourney, and it is full, you should have the opion to go on a waiting list because 1) Sometimes one pair pulls out, their free space should be allocated to the pair that tried to sign up first, but instead it goes to the pair lucky enough to be in the tournament room at the time 2) Sometimes a TD will decide to increase the limit of a full tourney. Similarly, a waiting is the most equitable way to allocate these seats 3) Roughly 50% of pairs tourneys start off with two sitouts. i) It is most fair to give this to a pair who were first on a waiting list ii) The TD will often sub in two complete strangers who have no partnership agreements. Amongst other disadvantages, these two often spent the first two minutes sorting out their system, which is especially bad if they have no common language 4) What happens if a pay tourney is fully booked, but when it starts some of the pairs are not online? Either i) BBO takes their money anyway, in which case they get angry. or ii) We do not take their $, but then we lose out on revenue If we had a waiting list, a simple solution presents itself. + If we feel extra cunning, we take the $ of those who are not online AND the $ of the waiting list players who get in :( :D

I find the most commentators pitch their commentary at just the right level, and thus help improve my game. However, I was watching with my mum and she found it pitched at too high a level. She is not a "terrible" play either. If BBO has two rooms of a vugraph being commentated on in the same language, it would be nice if they were pitched at different audiences. One at the current level and one at a lower level. Note that this lower level would not be aimed at novices, but at a level akin to Shep's mentoring lessons. e.g. The simpler room would mention things such as shortage in your partner's suit is a bad thing, whilst in the higher level room this would be taken as known. If we had plenty of rooms an "expert" room would be a possibility. Not sure if this is practical or not.

Hey, I am always curious to find out more about the guys I play and kibitz on BBO. Especially what they look like. Having met many BBO members in real life, I can say that without exception they have looked very unlike I had imagined! http://www.seanet.ro/scrabble/isc/ is a website for an online scrabble club. I would guess that setting up a similar BBO site would not be too hard. Unfortunately I lack even the basic techno-ability to do this. Any volunteers or suggestions?

Why does /myhands only offer an average for IMPs? It would surely make much more sense to have an IMP total and average + a separate MP total and average.

At the moment you do not need to enter your current password in order to set a new one. This has the undoubted merit that it is quick and simple to do. However, many people will tick the "remember password" box, or leave BBO on, even in public areas (I know this from Malmo). Which means that some looney could easily log on and lock the other user out. It is normal in the field of computers to have to enter your old password as a safeguard. Perhaps BBO should implement this as a pre-emptive strike?

Can we kick you too Uday? :D

The best option in my opinion is to be able to disable tourney chat but NOT that of the host. The host may have some very important announcements to make, and it should not be possible to block these. Agree that some tourney chat is very wearisome and out of control.