DenisO

I agree this sounds a very interesting idea. I wonder if you could expand on how you see it working eg what needs to be prepared in advance - obviously the .dup files but would the actual bidding and play records also need inputting? I've created the .lin files for the 1955 BB and most of the 1957 event and there is a *lot* of effort involved especially inputting the card play. The more recent books are not as complete as the older books in giving all the hands of the final. I'm not sure when the transition occurred but the two books I've done were essentially factual records, whereas the later books have much excellent bidding commentary and play analysis but unfortunately do miss out some of the less interesting hands. Denis

Yes their importance in the team has certainly risen over the lat 2 years. The number of final segments played by each pair in Monte Carlo and Estoril are shown below : 2003 -- L/V (7), B/D (6), F/N (3) 2005 -- L/V (6), B/D (4), F/N (6) Denis

Superb entertainment !- THANK YOU to Fred, Sheri and Uday for giving us BBO and to Roland and the whole Vugraph Team for a great fortnight :) Denis

Oops - Thx - today's senior moment :(

I was out this morning and couldn't watch the live broadcast of the final :( There's nothing in the BBO archive for some reason - was there a vugraph? If so, any chance of posting it here for download? Thx Denis

USA1 take the maximum allowed 20 imp carryover into the BB final. Do you think that is fair based on result of one match in a round robin series of 21 matches ? Personally, I think the final of the world championship should start all square. Denis

Because there were only 6 contestants this year, with two qualifying for the Final (no semi-final as in previous years), Jack was deliberately set up to play even more aggressively than normal. This stategy worked for the Round Robin as Jack topped that. However it seems to have backfired in the Final and Wbridge5 was a worthy winner. I believe that although Wbridge5 is freeware, the version that played in Estoril is not the same as the free version. This was alluded to by Al Levy at the close of the commentary. I don't know if there are plans to release the stronger version.

Jack has a mountain to climb in the final 16-bd segment - he lags WBridge5 by 48-86 aftter losing the 3rd stanza by 37imps. I don't think Jack has ever taken a drubbing like that before.

And it happened again yesterday - no vugraph record of USA1's 107-40 victory over Italy :) Match record was overwritten with Egypt v India In the absence of a software solution, Could somebody (Uday,Roland, Inquiry ??) please tell the operators to give different names to simultaneous broadcasts to prevent this happening in the KO stages. Oh and they've managed to produce a blank record for match 19 -Sweden v Argentina Denis

Thanks for the update Roland. Denis

A segment (16bds) or two with commentary would be interesting :) Denis

Jack plays WBridge5 today in the 64 board final of the computer championship at Estoril. It says here that the final will be shown on BBO - is it on the schedule? http://www.ny-bridge.com/allevy/computerbr.../rrresults.html Denis

In the Bermuda Bowl yesterday for round 18, two matches were shown - USA2 v Italy and USA1 v Netherlands. Yet only one has been saved to the official BBO archive. Why has this happened? Simple - both matches used *exactly* the same file name so the match that finished second overwrote the first and the vugraph is lost forever :) It really shouldn't happen - experienced operators should know better than to give identical names to simultaneous broadcasts. Yet we continue to lose matches for the archive for this reason - so once again I suggest a software solution that will prevent two simultaneous broadcasts being given the same name. Fortunately I was watching the matches and changed the name of the first match on my hard drive as it finished. Both matches will be available on Nikos Sarantakos site. Denis

Joking apart - Jordan have played well for a 4-man team over this marathon!

Early days Helene - this is a marathon, not a sprint - one good round could see Netherlands shooting up the leaderboard :D

I hope Herve has some success - unfortunately you only get one chance to record these matches :D It seems strange that if you look at the data for the 1992 Olympiad on Nikos's site that we have pbn data for 6 matches (both rooms) in all 33 rounds. Although BBO Vugraph technology didn't exist then, the effort required to record all those matches must have been similar to what would be needed for BBO today. I wonder what was different about 1992 - were the WBF more supportive or were the local players in Salsomaggiore more intersted in recording bridge history? Denis

Also strange that Russian Ladies are not in the Venice Cup - yet they won the Olympiad in Istanbul - was that not enough to qualify here?

Perhaps a Broadcast in the main BBO Bridge Club for volunteers (Portuguese with English?) operators would help. They would need to know who to contact at Estoril!

That is bad news indeed Roland. At the time of the Olympiad in Istanbul there seemed to be a special relationship developing between the WBF (Jose Damiani) and BBO with BBO being apointed as official vugraph presenter and also doing a lot of programming for the onsite scoring displays. Has that died the death as we now seem to be in the lap of the gods to get good internet coverage of Bridge's Premier event. I've not checked what Swan have planned but for me there is no contest between BBO and the Swan broadcasts.

Hi Nikos It's not showing at that page. But fortunately you have the data at : http://www.sarantakos.com/bridge/vugraph/2...05-chamcup.html Denis

Parioli showing their mettle early with a 25-0 win over a strong England team.

Try Richard Pavlicek's File Converter utility -afaik it supports conversion from lin to duplimate.

It would be nice to see an 'official' version of Moscito and I thought that this what Paul Marston had started to do with his first version of the booklet which was released recently - even better if it was accompanied by an FD file :) So a couple of questions: Is the system you are documenting the same as Marston's or your own variant? Does Marston suggest a NT structure or does he feel like you that is up to partnerships?

As a GIB owner and fairly regular user of stand alone GIB, the main thing I like nowadays is to compare against top class players eg to play Cap Gemini events where GIB will score you against the world class field. In BBO I might even pay to compare against the field of human players but NOT, as we have at present, against other Gibs. I think there is a much better chance of getting revenue if a way can be found to compare GIB score against the human field but not allow the GIB tables to affect those scores. The other area where GIB and other bot programs are useful is to practice new systems. If BBO GIB were programmed to know systems like Precision, Polish Club etc, I think you would get some takers - but probably not enough to justify the effort involved.

I'm not sur if its possible from my hands, but one way is to make sure you log your deals to your hard drive; these will be in lin file format - then you can convert to rbn format using one of Richard Pavlicek's utilities. He then has a further utility which does a vey nice conversion of rbn to html, including bidding and cardplay. This prints nicely - a bit long winded but lin files are text files and you can merge lots of them together using a text editor so you don't have to go through the conversions often.