Pertinax

Acol is bidding system based around a philosophy of simple, natural bidding where you can usually just "bid what you think you will make" (Dormer). EBU Standard Acol is a simple 4 Card Major Acol with only a few simple Duplicate conventions like Transfers. All Duplicate players can just sit down and play it, or play against it. The EBU has several levels of system restrictions for Duplicates in England based around the concept of EBU Standard Acol, and players are used to those, and like them. There are different forms of Bridge. Bridge in the Relaxed and Acol Room are not tournaments, with experienced partnerships using complex partnership agreements battling it out, but casual walk-up Bridge. It involves players of varying abilities who are playing simple bridge without agreements and they are there to have fun and play cards as a social activity of an evening. Yes you can play whatever system you like on BBO. The counter is that opponents don't have to like your slow relay system, or play against you in a casual card game and "Ignore" you. It is hard to see what you would gain from practising against such players anyway. The EBU runs Acol duplicate tournaments, the Main Room has players who play all sorts of systems And if you make friends and learn how the Acol Room functions, you will find that there are some very good players who play more complex system there too.

Drag and dropping with a mouse is the major cause of computer related injuries. 20% of Autocad users have wrist injuries from the frequent dragging and dropping the interface contains. No interface should use drag and drop.

I don't understand what you mean getting a phone call more important than a bridge tournament. Nobody expects to ring someone anymore without being prepared for voicemail. Now if you were making a 911 call, as happened to a partner of mine during a tournment when rioters set fire to the house next door, that I can understand.

Most play on BBO is duplicate, where your score is relative to players of a similar level, playing the same cards as you at 15 other tables. IMPS is cross-IMPS where the differences between your score and the scores at the other table are calculated, then converted from points to IMPS to flatten the score (so that one -1400 doesn't dominate all the scoring) and then averaged. The advantage is that game swings tend to be the same size as in a simple iMPS teams duplicate match. MPs is another duplicate scoring system where you get points for the number of pairs whose score you beat, and half that for pairs you tie. Total Points (TP) is not scored as a duplicate against other tables, so who ever has the most As & Ks should make the most contracts and win. It still uses the duplicate points system though. It is the closest to what you want. There is no rubber anymore as it was eliminated.

BBO scores duplicate hands using Cross-IMPS across 16 tables of similar rank. Unfortunately the scores for Beginner and Intermediate tables tend to be a bit random. The Main Club would be a bit better. Total Point is not scored as Duplicate, which avoids this problem, but without Duplicating the side with the most As and Ks wins.

Rubber Bridge was added as a kludge to the Windows Client (as the server is a hand-by-hand duplicate system) to compete against OK Bridge and to take the Rubber bridge players from MSN Bridge and WP Bridge, which they contracted for, in the early days when the site was trying to grow as fast as possible. However, Rubber wasn't very popular or profitable, because Rubber Bridge players didn't buy robots or play in paid MP tournaments. The Windows Client downloads all the table and player information when people log on, which put a high load on the server. As they want to move to a web-based version that would work on multiple platforms -- iOS, Linux -- they decided to retire the Windows Client. Most people preferred the Windows client interface, and some Rubber Bridge, so it continued in use, and there was a many year transition period as they tried to prompt people to switch. Initially they promised that the Flash browser version would be upgraded to have an interface as good, and the all the features of, the Windows Client but that was quickly and quietly abandoned. Of course Flash was a dead end, so they had to rapidly move to HTML5. The Flash and HTML5 clients were unable to support some tournament and paid services so the Windows Client returned to use for those. A small number of people who used those services are authorised to use the Windows Client and can play Rubber. There is a note somewhere on the site saying that Windows Client support will finally be ended in 2020, over 12 years since they first tried to phase it out. So Rubber and the US form of Chicago are not available. IMPS (teams and pairs), Matchpoints and Total Point (duplicate scores (total not IMPS or MPed) but not scored as a duplicate across tables for players who don't like that). It is a shame because Rubber Bridge was the original form of the game and is a great, fun, social card game. Without Rubber, Bridge is becoming an activity taken up by retirees, who have the time and money for duplicate classes needed to start playing it. The average age of an ACBL member is approaching 70. Hearts, Spades, Cribbage and even Chess are online games that are much easier for people to pick up and play.

The most common strong NT in Acol was 15-17 played when vulnerable. But changing the strength of the NT means you are playing a completely different system with different suit openings, raises and rebids. Which is confusing and annoying, so it fell out of favour more than 50 years ago. Playing a strong NT with 4 card majors you are playing 1960s Goren with invitational raises. You have to worry about suit quality when opening 4 card Majors, have to rebid 4 card Majors sometimes, can't draw as many distributional inferences from partners bidding and you often don't have a good rebid with a balanced 12-14 after a forcing Acol 2/1 showing 9+ (or even 8 with a long suit). The problems that weak NT and 5 card Major systems were invented to solve. Playing a strong NT with 5 card majors and you are playing modern standard. Acol came to mean a weak NT with direct natural bidding and invitational raises through-out. Suit openings are 4 card Major, or 5 card Spade & 4 card Heart (e.g. Dormer & Klinger). This is what the not 50-year-old Acol textbooks recommended in this thread teach. It's a simple and fun system to play, excellent for Match Points but has become rare for high level IMPs play, where 2/1 with cheating became de rigueur.

There aren't a lot of modern Acol books, Ron Klinger has updated most of his in the last decade though. In the Master Bridge series Klinger has a beginner's lesson book "Basic Bridge: The Guide to Good Acol Bidding and Play" and then the intermediate level "Guide to Better Acol Bridge". There is also "The New Complete Book Of Bridge"(2014) by Albert Dormer with Ron Klinger. This is an update of "The Complete Book of Bridge" by Reese and Dormer which was an Acol alternative to Goren's Bridge Complete, and what I learnt Bridge from.

The Windows Client has a much better interface, more features like Rubber Bridge, and doesn't use Adobe Flash which buggy and a serious security risk that everybody else is moving away from not to. For 8 years you've been promising upgrades to add features to Browser client to make it as good as the Windows Client but have done nothing. That is why after 8 years of trying to stop people using the Windows Client it's still in use. Now you are forcing people to use something inferior and you will destroy all the communities that have been built up using it. I play mostly Rubber so won't be here much anymore.

Drop and drag is the last thing you want. It's hell on the wrist and the easiest way to carpal tunnel syndrome.

Rubber existed, and still does exist, in BBO. Since BBO does things by hand it was a bit of kludge implemented in the Windows client over the top of that. There are still some Rubber players in the Relaxed Club but you need a copy of the old Windows client and an old account to see or play at the tables. It is dying out though because you can no longer download the Windows client and can't open a new account for it if you do find a copy of it. Rubber is a terrific game for social play and new players, much better than Duplicate. The problem of players leaving is less of a problem at Rubber than it is in Duplicate tournaments.

You can still play Rubber Bridge on BBO if you have the old Windows client and an old account and there are a few rubber players left in the Relaxed Club. However, it is dying out as they can't be seen from the Browser clients, the Windows client is no longer available for download and you can't open a new account to use it even if you do get a copy.

There is still a community of Rubber Bridge players in the Relaxed room. But you can no longer download the Windows client, or create new accounts with it. So the rest of the players can't see or join Rubber Bridge games. So Rubber Bridge on BBO will dwindle and die out. Which is a shame because Vanderbilt's game is a good card game.

Except that you can no longer download the Windows client, and they have blocked the creation of new accounts using it. So while there is still a community of Rubber Bridge players in the Relaxed Room nobody else can see it or join it so it will dwindle and die. Which is a shame because Vanderbilt's game is a fun card game.

I will vote for Rubber Bridge to be added to the web client. Rubber Bridge is fun and less competitive and less about sacrificing than Duplicate. These days card games are mostly played on computers it would be a shame if the original form of the game disappeared because it is offered anywhere. And if it is can the scoring be modified so you have a subtotal for the current rubber and then a total. At the moment the Windows client only keeps an overall total.

Has anyone checked the algorithm? It is not as easy as you think to get right. We were using a dealer written by an applied maths lecturer in our club a decade ago and there were complaints. We checked it and the algorithm was not truly random. I have noticed playing Rubber and Total Point on BBO that one side seems to win a lot of the time. So I had a look at 50 hands from yesterday and they averaged 20.80 HCP, so definitely was a streak I spotted and not just my bad play. Now I will have to write some code to analyse all my old hand record files and look at a decent sample. And until I do guess which way I am sitting.