blackest_k

until there is a better solution http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html I think this could help. regards John

how do you make the casual room successful? it needs to be used regularly and have a high traffic or people will carry on just playing in the main bridge club, regardless of time and that will not solve this problem. A radical idea but what if you replaced the main bridge club with two doors casual and serious. each user then has to make a choice. however the casual room as a public club ,promoted on the mainpage and on tournament sign up pages, could be successful I am trying to think of this as a gathering area before the main event or a place to meet your prefered partner at least if it doesnt catch on to a great extent minimal changes will have been made. regards John

I think something simple in the discription of your table like 8+ hands is enough to alert someone that you object to players who will leave after a few hands or no tournys or "just a few" if you don't mind in the main bridgeclub you always have the option of setting your own table and setting what you expect from people joining. create a "waiting room" for tourny registrees , waiting for regular partner, 15 minutes to spare, nobody is forced to use it but playing in there you will expect a shortgame. (is that easy to impliment) I often can't sit for 2 hours but a hand or 2 can be fun if everyone knows you may not be there for long. must be a simple solution somewhere that doesn't create more problems for everyone else to keep a few happy. regards john

just a thought is it possible to break down the disconnects data grouping tournys by length. Are short tourneys less prone to this than long ones. perhaps some people enter tourneys not fully aware of how long they have committed themself for if its clearly stated this is a 2hour tourney maybe people would be less likely to enter realising they havent the time available or the bladder control to remain sat at table I can't be the only person praying my partner will get in a contract so i can get away from the table for a minute. warm regards john

there is always the option of conceding if your ops will not claim and its a forgone conclusion. Warm regards john

what i am thinking is currently as soon as someone makes a claim the hands are placed face up on the table as soon as they intend to claim but if its still up in the air as to what the result should be it's quite unsatisfying for all concerned as the person who is declaring will obviously say they would play it to their advantage. have you ever conceded a hand when your partners hand had winners or come close to it. much to your partners anoyance. perhaps the sequence should be. I wish to claim x tricks are you willing to let this hand go down. if either of the other 2 players objects play should continue as normal else then the hands go down as now. because objecting to a claim doesnt identify who objected it should still allow a reasonable chance of a fair game to continue, on the other hand if i put a claim in that was refused initially it still might be sign enough to know how the remaining cards lay. I think a simple third option play on when a claim is in doubt could be implimented without too much trouble. but is it desirable? it would be one more mouse click. would it be open to abuse more or less than the current system? now i will shut up and let everyone else speak :( warm regards John

over in the general discussion there is a debate about claiming if the claim relies on a finese or cards being in a particular hand to make. knowing they are there makes it a certainty you will play that way. Would it be better not to show the hands until everyone agree's to see the hands and allow the claim to be rejected without having the hand spoiled by the hands now being open. hence this is a suggestion for the software, warm regards John

Slashdot uses a system where all posts rank a score and you can choose to read posts based on score but then i think it needs a moderator to do the scoring unless you have the readers score posts as they read them. I suppose the current system of ohno not him again works quite well (wondering who is actually going to read this). Scoring might help thou and encourage me to be quiet :) warm regards john

I think the current system is the best way it may not be polite but it doesn't give the opportunity to be impolite either. unlike this forum :) Idea's are sometimes good sometimes bad but they all can be useful to help fred towards building an ideal software environment for us to play bridge. with a complex product like the bridgebase software there are many area's it could be grown, refined, expanded. It is natural for the focus of a forum like this to focus on the negative since these are the area's that may be selected for the next round of improvements. If someone raises a point about a negative aspect of the software it's not an attack on fred it's just something which could be refined once the current crop of bugs are dealt with if it's important enough or trivial to change. Fred is an artist, just like an author a painter a musician and he wants to create great software i am sure he appreciates the work he doesnt have to do because of this forum :) I have yet to see anything written with malice intended about the software. warm regards john

Is there a web page somebody could be directed to which would help somebody fill in a convention card? I have to admit i don't have one. the problem exists though that there is a vast number of conventions out there If anyone knows them all i salute them. when playing casual bridge it is quite possible that your partner is not aware that a bid is using a convention sometimes it would be desirable to alert them as well. ok i know that might be considered outrageous but i think the distinction should be made between a casual game with a casual partner against a tourney where all rules apply perhaps a new table type "just for fun" for those of us wanting to play and not minding conventions being explained or other infringements. warm regards john

Isn't that more a problem of how the software works ? I have never run a tourny, but there are several ways the substitution could be done which wouldn't involve a director typing in a subs nick. 1) simple queue where subbing is first come first served, subs ordered in order of registration (could allow all subbing to be done automatically) problem being it wouldn't allow for different abilitys systems ect. unless you could specify terms perhaps american, intermediate, sayc 2) present subs in a list dbl click the sub required in a list and a request would be sent out automatically. 3) something else If you don't have to type the name the problem goes away. warm regards john

it may be prettier without underscores however there is a reason why I have one I use pretty much the same user name across a number of systems which insist i log on with a user name of some sort. Its actually shortened on bridgebase but thats ok i type till i run out of space, incidently I don't use just one password I use three main passwords easy , long and difficult. this reflects the security i feel i need to apply for a particular account. It's a practical way of keeping security issues to a minimum better than having a postit note a file on my system which lists my combinations of usernames and passwords or auto logon. I have enough to remember already :D warm regards John

you are right we all have enough computing power to search and highlight features we are interested in. Bridgebase online has two components a server to which we connect and a client which is what we use on our own computers. The more server side features you add the greater the bandwidth and processing power needed for the server to cope especially as numbers of features/users increase. a client side database would minimise the traffic to the server keeping bridgebase fast. I presume as your friends list follows you round from computer to computer that when you log on its downloaded as a local copy when you log if its newer than the existing version on the computer you are using and when you make changes it gets updated on the server. We have the chance to discuss idea's here those with merit may get taken onboard we can only hope B) warm regards john

I like this Idea it shouldnt be too difficult to achieve presumably the existing friends enemys neutral flag uses at least 2 bits and possibilty a whole byte of data which is downloaded from the server. so adding further lists user1 user2 shouldnt be so hard to achieve. However you do have a practical limitation on how many lists you can highlight without getting totally confused. So perhaps you would need to have an option to choose which list you choose to highlight in the club. Currently purple is used to highlight friends if as a user you could assign this to one of your lists it would become a very useful tool for users and club organisors and by defaulting to friends it would still be useable for novice's warm regards John

Ok the beta has a number of filters and the majority like them but what filters could be useful to add? filter1 I feel it should be possible to distinguish between players with an alternative charactoristic to friend enemy and neutral. like now you can see your friends in the main bridge club this other charactoristic would also be plainly visible. This would show something else but user defined. perhaps you might use it to show people who speak your language or use your prefered bidding system or just that you enjoyed playing with them. filter2 It might be useful to have a table view that could show only locked tables or unlocked tables. filter3 It could be useful to filter players registered in a tourney so you don't sit down at a table with ops about to be whisked away. I think that if you accept there is an arguement for filtering due to expanding numbers then there is also an arguement for additional filters this is my top 3 Please contribute more suggestions and indicate your preferences warm regards John

John, Not to split hairs but this "fun" is unnecessary and its availability would create frequent violations of the rules of the site, and the partner of the table captain could throw someone off his own table. The ability to discard a partner sounds like a vindictive thing (my partner is not good enough to play with me...) especially with the implication that would be fun. It wasn't meant as a serious suggestion. In fact I have removed myself from a table for my own poor play my partner deserved better and once due to the intolerablely rude behaviour of an op to their partner. The ability for a table "captain" to delegate the responsibility of choosing an ops partner to the remaining op was a serious suggestion although the abilty to remove should remain with the table host (preferably consulting the other players first). john

That needs moving for sure! It would be worth giving up one line of names for scroll arrows immediately below the list of names. I can't be the only person who hasnt spotted it :) regards john

The lobby would be more useful with a scrollable window. currently i think a maximum of 80 names including your own is available. enough to show 2/3rds of americans online atm. country filtering within the main bridge club appears to be broken with version 3.6.3 i tried looking for empty tables with Poles it was returning random results with no connection to my search criteria

Without filtering by country currently your forced to deal with your own prejudice's, (if any) ,you won't get up from a table just because someone is from a country you don't like and its only really practical to scan your potential partners card if you actually want to play. you may choose to play with someone from a country because of the interaction you had with a fellow countryman of theirs. One nice feature of bridgebase is that if someone leaves the table you do see if they have actually gone off line and not run away from the table to avoid spending time in your company, being ladies and gentlemen means we wouldnt do that. I concede there could be a place for filtering in the lobby but lets keep it away from the mainbridge club. I would ask thou what safeguards are in place to stop somebody taking up a membership to deliberately spam members of a particular country not easy with the current version but certainly possible with a country filtered version. I would hate to see say version 8.x.x with filtering on the tables so you can reject players automatically according to a predefined set of criteria. one feature I would love to see is an additional characteristic or 2 to that you can assign instead of just friend neutral or enemy giving it a destinctive color in the main bridge club perhaps light blue it would let you keep your friends list manageable without consigning everybody else into the murk of unknown or worse still enemy for a minor reason. we can choose our own meaning for it ,nice to play, speaks my language, gsoh ect. I don't think for a moment that the concept of filtering by countrys has been introduced for anything other than positive reasons but I do see a negative side Would someone monolingual filter on the basis that they will not be able to communicate with someone who's country has a language different to their own? Why play with someone who hates you because of where you live? because hopefully your personality will help remove their blinkers and besides it can be fun too. The true language of bridge is in the bidding and while sometimes we misunderstand we generally get by warm regards john

if you really want to cheat you can always just run msn messenger (or any other chat client) and chat to your partner that way yes dummy sometimes does make the odd slip up but its in the minority of hands. to be honest I don't think its deliberate mistake on the part of dummy. Its pretty much in the league of misclicks on cards it happens but hopefully not that often. How many times have you seen a partner play a perfectly makable hand and drag it down with their play and what did you say WPP :) sometimes you just want to cry out not that play the ... guess if it happens a lot mark them as enemy if not be forgiving :) Tourneys, well it is out of order but as was said before you can call the tourny director. regards john

I do like the suggestion of allowin an opponent to choose their partner could be even more fun if they could remove their partner too :) locking a table for me is usually a preventative measure to allow my partner to get seated before someone else jumps in the seat but once they are there i tend to unlock. pity there is no way of getting rid of the following senerio p says i am leaving after this hand ok msg friend The guy i am playing with is leaving do you want to take their seat. ok i will come kibutz msg table host my friend mrx is waiting to be my partner when my current p leaves. hand finishes partner bids... one more hand ... half an hour later and your friend gives up and joins another table. seriously thou letting an op choice his/her partner a good idea :) regards john

The latest beta of the bridgebase software has the option of filtering online users by country and while i do see a benifit in being able to find citizens of a particular country which could perhaps lead to playing face to face and other agreeable benifits. I feel that this is better achieved by joining or forming a public or private club. Ifeel the country filter will divide the membership and into divisions I do not like. I do not want to be playing with someone because I am of an acceptable race to him or her. I want to be chosen because people enjoy playing with me or are prepared to get to know me as a person not because of where i am born or what flag i decide to support. now by not having a country filter doesnt stop an individual filtering out members of a particular country but it doesnt make it easy to do so and it is not done automatically as they log on to bridgebase. We all have predjudices good and bad for example I like canadians and Poles, I speak a little Polish and Canadians all seem to be nice guys but it would be denying myself some superb games if i limited my playing to canadians and Poles we are all world citizens and we have grown up with many sterotypes imprinted on our brains in a world community like bridgebase online we get the chance to break down our stereotypes and see people as individuals and play great bridge something we all share a love of. We all act as ambassadors for our countrys and we should remember this. Fred said that this latest beta is a radical departure from what we are used to. Normally a Beta is designed to make sure as few bugs as possible go into the release version by having willing victims use the product, who accept sometimes it will not work properly and report back. This beta is different because it alters the way we will interact with each other. Country filtering is not in the current version it is in the beta once the beta is accepted it becomes the current version and when this happens it will become extremely difficult to reject the country filtering feature. So I am asking you to reject it now tell your friends and get them to reject it too it doesnt mean we don't have great respect and admiration for fred and all the others that work to make this program as good as it is but adding country filtering steers this community down a path i do not wish to follow this is an important issue for all of us. please give your opinion becauser it matters. regards john

hi I would like to propose a new classification or two to the player listings currently you can choose to assign friend enemy or neutral to an individual player. this feature is quite useful by scrolling down the lists of tables you can locate your friends easily. however there is a limit to how many friends you can handle, you dont want to greet every player you enjoyed playing with but its difficult to remember who you have played with before and who you havent. I would like to suggest a new catagory "prefered" and possibly played. prefered would show a user to see players they haved played with and enjoyed playing with played would show players that you have played with but have little preference for (who likes making enemys) this leaves neutral as players we have yet to meet. this would allow you to make an informed choice when picking a table you would see who you have played with before and enjoyed playing also those who bored you played too slowly ect as well. Perhaps this could be implimented as a client side list but maintained on the server ie you log on your preferences are downloaded from server as now but then the local copy is used once it is downloaded this would save the server working overtime trying to remember and display everybodys preferences towards individuals. This simple solution would i hope be an attractive proposal to the majority of members and could replace the country filter currently implimented in the new beta version which I feel reinforces racial stereotyping. we all know adolf hitler used the six pointed star to great effect to promote racial hatred within germany do we really want to do this in online bridge ? I hope no one is offended by this post politics should have no part in bridge and the country filter has the potential to divide our community. what comes next? We can't like everybody but at least lets make our choices based on the individual. regards John

Dear Fred, I have given the new Beta a brief try and I dislike it intensely! 1) it insists on taking all my screen space with no ability to resize. I much prefer to give bridge base a corner on my screen and leave me some space for my other activities. which could be watching tv playing music file transfer or chatting to friends. The only reason i can see for making it full screen is to try and avoid cheating if it is for this reason then it is flawed in the extreme. a)Cheating in Bridge is totally against the spirit of the Game, Bridge is played by Gentlemen and Ladies. b)those who wish to cheat still can and there is no way you can stop a networked user cheating if they wish (I could for example login on msn on one pc and play bridge on the other ... ). 2)Filtering by country / skill level this is a double edged sword. a) for this arguement it makes it easy to find opposistion/ partners from the same background / skill level as yourself. b)against its very cliquey is it a good thing to say allow arab players to automatically filter out all jewish players by choosing not to display players from israel. I think one of the biggest plus points of bridgebase online is it is a worldwide community of bridge players and as well as the bridge it fosters friendship around the world, lets us see us as one race called humanity, filtering by country automatically is a really bad thing. filtering by Skill level again isnt such a good Idea either very judgemental. when I joined i said advanced discovered the drawbacks to acol changed to beginner and learnt sayc and then changed to intermediate which probably is my skill level. now skill level is generally a matter of Ego (excluding world class players who earn their ranking) bridge is a social game excluding people on their perception of their own skill is a bad thing to do automatically. what is wrong with the existing systems? I like the friends enemies buttons you might also expand it to allow you to mark too slow or too fast playing (although that may depend on computer power and speed of connection at that time). It is great to be able to mark up as friends enemies expanding that to a personal ranking could be a good thing too or adding a class "prefered" player. If I come on to bridgebase online first i look for friends then i look for an existing table I hold my mouse above my prospective partner and see his basic card his system and skill level now if i take to long somebody else jumps into the empty seat but i find it worth while to spend a little while looking. To be honest I dislike playing with so called experts ( they seem so stressed all the time, not just when partnering me, and make other players uncomfortable). I also admit there are experts who are fun to play with too. So yes i too apply some filtering but its on an individual basis and I have occasionally marked the odd enemy but the majority will be left as neutral or as friend I would love to see an individual marking for prefered. of course there are times when I take pot luck and I have met many fine individuals this way. one thing i do dislike is when an experienced player decide's to go beat up on novices and i have seen that happen a few times these are usually candidates for enemy for me :rolleyes: If a user wants to play with experts for example i am sure there is a public or private club to accomadate them but lets not have this in the main bridge club. thanks for reading I hope many more give feedback on the beta version and where they would like to see it go. I hope this beta is reconsidered although It may mean abandoning a lot of work it is radical and i feel too radical it will be hard to withdraw a feature once it becomes part of the current release. Regards John thank you for listening and all the hard work.