jw_nl

Sorry, of course you are right Hrothgar. I've read the wrong line, the description I gave was belonging to 2NT. An Australian player used the 2D opening and apparently he played Polish club. I don't know Polish Club at all and I see occasionally that TD's don't allow it in their tournaments. Now it's clear to me. Thanks !

Tony, Yes I know that 40D of the Laws are giving the sponsoring organization (the BBO host) the possibility to limit the use of bidding conventions. In Polish club there are weak openings at level 2 and 3. All giving disclosure about the suit(s). 2D (wilkosz) is clear to opps: 7-11 HCP and 5+-5+ minors. In the two cases I described opps will have to guess. Maybe I should have asked another question: Do you know S.O.'s which allow the bidding conventions I described in my first post.

2 cases: one concerning an opening, the other an overcall. case 1, opening: Player opens 2D. Alert + explanation: 2 5cards suits weak. Player has 5H+5C In my country an opening must reveal (at least) one suit. Multi 2D with a weak 6cM is allowed, but that's the only exception opps don't know the suit. Muiderberg: 2H/2S is weak with 5H/S + 5+c m. Only guessing the m. case 2, overcall: Opp opens 1C, player overcalling 2D. Alert + explanation = 5+5 M+m. Player has 6S and 5C. Michaels is clear: at least one suit and and sometimes both suits are revealed to opps. In both cases the opps have to guess the suits. a: Is this legal ? b: Would you allow it in a normal free tournament with only BBO-rules stated?

Boring are the players who leave after a bad result, play their boards of a round very quickly and don't want to wait for the next round of the clocked tournament or quit for any other reason other than a bad connection. When I doubt if a bad connection is the reason for disconnection I always check his previous results and make the player a friend and check his relogin. Mostly confirming my thoughts. Some of my tournaments have the figures you mention. After such an experience I wonder why I still create a next one. Connections are getting better, behaviour is getting worse. Therefore I agree with you that the 40% is too high. I like that idea and would add a few suggestions to your list. 5. I would appreciate an automated mailmessage every time a player doesn't finish: "You didn't finish last tournament. That tournament has an unfinished percentage limit of #. Your percentage is # now." 6. If unable to register I would like a more specific message to the player. Instead off the cryptic "private tournament" message "Your unfinished tournaments percentage exceeds the limit of this tournament". 7. An automated message to the TD's if a player did substitute his red pd. Then the TD will have information about ALL deserters in his logfile. Jan Willem

In the Tournament Rules of this TD is: "Undos are allowed, please respect this and remember this is a game and NOT a war!! Reject a reasonable undo and I adjust UNREASONABLY!" Unfortunately most undorequests will not be accompanied with the new bid/card. So in my view it's impossible to know whether the undorequest is REASONABLE or not. I'm wondering in which cases the rejected undorequest really resulted in an unreasonable adjustment.

Clocked or unclocked isn't important. Both tourneys will have problems if a TD doesn't show up or loses connection. When I'm aware of a TD who isn't active (still sitouts, no subbing of reds, not responding to calls) I sometimes ask a yellow to make me TD and I will make it possible for the players to play the remaining boards. This doesn't work if yellows aren't available or allowed to sub the TD. Therefore I would prefer to have an automated procedure in these cases: TD's who are willing to help in emergencies can register as a general sub-TD for (free) tournaments. If a TD is inactive for x minutes, the software will add one or more (not playing or directing) TD's to the TD-list of the tournament.

Thank you very much. In today's two tournaments after maintenance no boring enemies.

Kathryn, 1. Sitouts are replaced in ascending order of tablenumber. If I have 2+ sitouts I fill these gaps by rightclicking on the sitout with the highest tablenumber and repeat that till all sitouts have been replaced. 2. I think the players who get red in the first few seconds after tournamentstart get the same status as sitouts. Only a red player who gets disconnected later may be replaced with the player you selected in the sublist. jw

There are 818 players on my blacklist, all with date, reason for blacklisting and sometimes a short description of their case. Two months ago I started the addition of the nationality and selfrated skilllevel to the records because I thought the percentage experts and nationalities on my list might be higher than the BBO-average. During this period I checked if blacklisted players entered BBO. Also I checked Myhands in those cases I had not seen them entering BBO. What I found was that 23% of my blacklisted players had not shown up during these 2 months. What happened to these players? Did they stop playing on BBO? Do they use a new UserID? I'm not sure but I think 23% is too high for only inactive players. Many players might use a new UserID now. Therefore I hope Uday will maintain the blockng of IP Addresses. The categories for blacklisting used in my database are: rude to td repeatedly complaining about A- spoiling scores leaving table after bad result rude to pd or opps leaving tourney not accepting tournament rules not informing TD about psyche talking / claiming dummy TD's who blacklisted me for unknown reason too slow for playing in tournaments not alerting, bad explanation repeatedly non english during bidding/playing bad ratio played/subbed in/subbed out other reason 'Rude to TD' is the category of players I like to exclude the most. Secondly the 'A- complainers', thirdly the "fun" guys who bid 7NTXX with nothing or like to get a redoubled -4000 score. By choosing 'Exclude enemies of the host' the software will not know my preferences. I am using this method now. I don't know how it will be if I change to 'Exclude players from a file'. Is this file processed like the 'Exclude enemies of the host' list ? Then there will be no advantage for me. However, if it possible that the software will give priority to the players on top of my file it might be an improvement. Then I will upload a sorted blacklist. Of course I prefer to exclude all enemies, but if that's not possible, my wish would be starting at the top of my list. An include file is no option. I usually create 'Starts when full" indy-tournaments if the number of inactive players is 500+ and no other 'only no enemies restriction'-tourneys are scheduled. An include file of 10000+ playersnames might give some problems. A table with some figures is on my site Choose Blacklist (on top) and Categories (left)

"So if you have changed something about the main window title, maybe changed the character coding or something like that, OKS will no longer find the the right window" right and OKS will stop running and give the error message "can't find window:" + the name of the expected window

Yes, I was one of the lucky guys again, but my problems have gone. I'm using OKScript on my PC and on my laptop. After the 5.0.3 update I got some problems running my script on my PC. OKScript was still working fine on my laptop. On my PC OKScript buttons for sending messages to the room, to tournament and private calls to players didnt work well. My script for creating tournaments never failed. After the Travelocity "fun" I'm running programs like Registry Mechanic, What's Running and Spybot rather often. Did I make a mistake and did I remove an important registry entry? If I can not solve a problem I finally try the systemrecovery way :) and it worked fine. So I thought I might have made a mistake. Until emelml and Todd wrote above about their experiences, of course. emelnl and Todd : Don't ask why, try! :) Fred: "OKScript automates the sending of repetitive keystrokes and mouse actions to other Windows applications in a flash! OKScript automation is activated from a "control panel" of custom buttons/menus created from instructions that are entered into OKScript's multi-file script editor. " A small example: BUTTON "say hi" black-yellow CALL sayhi - explanation: clicking the "say hi" button on the controlpanel (button with black text - explanation: on yellow background will call the procedure sayhi PROC sayhi WINDOW Bridge Base Online - explanation: go to the BBO window DELAY 500 - explanation: wait half a second to be sure the window is found PUT {ctrl}T - explanation: send ctrl-T to the BBO window - explanation: chat to tournamentwindow opens PUT Hi{enter} - explanation: send the message But you don't have to spend your time to OKScript. That's not causing the problems a few of us have met. Todd: "OKScript-X is provided free of charge. If you find the program useful and effective please consider expressing your appreciation by making a donation to help defer the ongoing development, support and web hosting costs."

Jan 13th BBO suffered from a cyberwave. I was running a tourney with 25% simultaneous reds. Other TD's had the same problem. In 16 tournaments before that day I had no enemies in my tourneys. In the 8 following that big crash I had an AVG of 2 enemies. In my last 5 tourneys I had an AVG of 4 enemies per tournament. My tournamentlimit is 64 players. My blacklist : 880 enemies. It's annoying to have to remove those enemies. Frustrating is to see the replacement of one blacklisted player by another blacklisted player. Is there a relation to the big crash of 2007-01-13 ? When will this situation stop ? jw

Even better would be starting the filename with YYYY-MM-DD. It's easier to read for all imo (may 7th 2007: 05-07-07, 07-05-07 or 2007-05-07). How about the names of the scoreboardfiles, now using the format: Day-of-week (first 3 chars) time (24 hours format GMT) "GMT" individual or pairs scoring (MP/IMP/Totalpoints) "Host" hostname "Title" tournamentname #?~#file~#tournament Tue_11-15_GMT_Individual_IMP_Host-jw_nl_Title-#1273_Ind._Focus-4x2_IMP_6MpB_Clock_SWF___~1~1162293304~1273 Starting with YYYY-MM-DD instead of Day-Of-Week would be nice.

I have been running location1 using 8 copies of IE for 15 hours (3 PC's) . I have been running location2 using 2 copies of IE for 15 hours (2 PC's) . No DriveCleaner popups.

Uday, I have seen the DriveCleaner ad with Firefox running immediately after starting location 1 yesterday. I stopped running Firefox then. On my 3 PC's I have seen these DC ads many times now (20+). Sometimes I can't see why they show up, but I think that it might be a good idea to focus on the Travelocity ad or the software that runs that ad. When that ad is starting on location1 it's almost always bingo. Unfortunately the ratio Forums, ACBL, The Bridge World, Kensington, Travelocity is about 15:15:15:1:1 so I have to wait very long sometimes before my patience is rewarded. Please change the 2 minutes per ad in a short interval or even better make a location3 next to location1 with only the Travelocity part of location1.html. I think that I will have to wait less than 2 minutes then. On location2 I have never seen the Kensington and Travelocity ads. Comparing location1 and location2 wasn't possible sofar. To people who like to join our DC-fanclub (3 members now): When the DC ad shows up click Cancel and then close the browser window immediately. Otherwise DC will keep you in an endless loop. Clicking Cancel / No and so on will only be followed by other DC suggestions to download DC. By the way : I have never seen the complete Travelocity ad. At the end the ad is flickering. Is that happening only on my PC?

Trying to stop DriveCleaner now for several hours. Every time after BBO-login Drivecleaner popup windows are showing up again and today it changed the language to dutch. I have seen new aggressive tries to let me download and install DriveCleaner. Sometimes after a few minutes, sometimes after half an hour. During periods without connection to BBO NOTHING HAPPENED. After reading a lot about DriveCleaner and running several times programs like eTrust AntiVirus, AdAware, RegistryMechanic, regedit I have to conclude for now that DriveCleaner isn't installed on my PC. I can't find any files/maps mentioned at sites like Symantec. It seems to me that the DriveCleaner messages aren't invoked on my computer but seem to have the source on BBO. This might be wrong, but we'll see. I will not connect to BBO with my computer with 4.9.9 installed for a few hours and wait for a new appearance of the DriveCleaner messages. After that period I will connect to BBO and wait for the next surprise. This isn't funny anymore !

Yes, using 4.9.9 Like you I checked my PC after what happened. AdAware showed only a few cookies, E Trust AV told me my PC was free of viruses and RegistryMechanic didnt find anything wrong too.

I got an agressive popup with the same text but in english. A Microsoft IE window contained a copy of my normal BBO window, which could be dragged a little. After rejecting the warning this window vanished and a DriveCleaner window appeared, again with threatening text. I did send Uday a screendump of the last window.

to Uday: I prefer clocked tourneys because in my opinion bridge is a game in which players are trying to get the best result in a limited time and equal to all players. Delay is often due to replacements of disconnected players. In those cases I will adjust and other players will not have to wait very long each round. Even with only 6 min per board I have an average of less than 1 unfinished board per round. When you have time set to 8 min per board many players have to wait very long each round. After a period with 7 min per board I'm back to 6 minutes per board now. When people are used to it, this speed is giving no problems at all. No more unfinished board compared to 8 MpB tourneys. My experience is that extending time will only result in slower play, talking about the previous board and so. Adjustment after the last will not change the published scoreboard, so to the last round I add time if necessary. I don't like clocked tournaments with time set to 8 minutes and then every round extended to sometimes 11-12 minutes per board. Most players find this boring. When a fastplaying player in unclocked tourneys has to wait for the scoreboard there is no win in time compared to clocked 8 min per board tournaments. That's why I prefer clocked tournaments. The number of complaints like "Soooooooo Slow" has reduced a lot now. I hope that an alternative for A- will be made. I will love that.

To Ben: My tournaments are 4x2 IMPS 6MpB Clocked indy's and limited to 64 players. At the end of the round I click on the tournament status, drag the popupwindow to the left side of the screen and keep these windows open. Resolution of my screen 1280x1024, Using BBO in narrow mode, Management window open on the left side of my screen. I direct with 2 accounts/PC's and this way it is easy to follow the progress of the tables and this way it's very easy to see which tables tables will not finish. TD's who have large numbers of tables will not be able to direct like me, but that's their choice. By going to the unfinished tables and click on movie it's clear who played the board. Adjusting is done using the Show the board history for a player (in the open Managementwindow), because then calls will not disturb reviewing. I will only adjust if the number of unfinished boards can be handled in a proper way. Otherwise I will add time. However, this is rather rare. After adjusting unfinished boards the windows with the numbers of unfinished tables are closed. So my players don't have to tell me which tables didn't finish and also I'm not interested in the result they like, because about 30% of these estimations prove to be wrong.

Players HATE the A- assigned automatically by the BBO software if a board is unfinished. Every TD who is directing clocked tournaments will know that. "Why A- ????? that's not fair." "Opps were slow !" "if they r slow why sd we lose points..pl revise pr" "why we get Ave in board 2 TD???????????????????" "sorry...why ave is 3 imp for opps??" "host 4. board???????????*" When I create a tournament my uploaded Tournament Rules include: "Adjustments. The software will assign automatically A-- to unfinished boards. TD will try to adjust as soon as possible. Don't bother about that A--, just wait for the adjustment or a TD-decision. Calling TD or chatting in private to a TD will only delay the adjustments. After reviewing an unfinished board I will adjust as often as possible. Once you have seen the popupwindow with the adjustment and you disagree, please tell me why. Tell me the way to make the result you expected. I will review the board once again and if necessary discuss it with you. Please stop chatting to me after I have told you the final decision. " I know that only a few players read these rules, so in my Description is : Adjustment of unfinished boards. Don't call TD! Wait for the adjustment." Maybe a player was very late aware of my tournament and did register very late. So in my welcome message is: "Unfinished boards will be adjusted." This was just one line and maybe a player forgot to read it. So after a round with unfinished boards I chat to tournament: "Unfinished boards will be adjusted. Telling me the result you like will delay adjustments. So DON'T CALL TD, Don't worry about that A-. Just WAIT for the adjustment. Substituting will get priority. Please patience." Tournament 1 After my standard message about adjustments three players started talking to me. With one of them: Player: its easy then when u see u r getting down play slow and get average?? is this the system?? Player: will u kindly answer???? After finishing my chat to another player TD->Player: scroll back and read my chats please. Player: NOT EASY TO LOOSE IN YOUR SYSTEM... IF U R DOWN PLAY SLOW IS THIS IT????? TD->Player: scroll back and read my chats please. Player: that means.... U SCROLL BACK AND READ ME!!!!!! Automated message: Player has been replaced with playerxx. Player (Lobby): :))))))) U WONT GET AWAY WITH THIS Player made enemy, box "ignore chat enemies" checked. With the second player: Player: please adjust #4 4!S-2 Player: YOU ADJUST or NOT as Promised>>>>>>>>>>> TD->Player: every chat by you and other players is interrupting / frustrating TD's work Player: well we have to tell you what to adjust no? TD->Player: NO if you had read my chats you would have known that Player: yes i read you chat but you dont know which one to adjust if we do not tell you TD->Player: I know which boards didnt finish............... Tournament 2 Here we go again. My standard message. Within 90 seconds 3 TD calls: Player: Tourney xx Director needed by player at Table 00X Player said:we win 5!h X -1 Player: Tourney xx Director needed by player at Table 00X Player said:please Player: Tourney xx Director needed by player at Table 00X Player said:come on please TD->Tournament: please read my chat about adjustment. don't call please Player: Tourney xx Director needed by player at Table 00X Player said:please change TD->Player: if you call again I will remove you Player (chat): please change the score ->TD: Automated message: Find substitute: Invitations issued Player: we do 5!h X - 1 ->TD: Automated message: Substitution complete. Player has been replaced with Playerx Player (Lobby): gros enculée TD->Player: READ ONCE in stead of bothering TD !!! Player (Lobby): ta gueule avec 16 tables tu dois te bouger le cul ->Player: speak english please if you want to tell me something If you don't understand french, don't think he told me he likes my tourneys :) Tournament 3 Round 1 was finished. TD->Tournament: the standard message. Player1 (priv chat): please adjust board 2 for us, we were 3 down Player2 (TD call) : my 2 board pls TD->Tournament: to players who didnt finish board 2 : please scroll back and read my previous chat: Maybe the players did read that. I didn't receive more chats/calls about adjustments. Due to many other TD calls the adjusting of one board couldn't be done during round 2 Round 2 was finished and again some unfinished boards, so I did send my standard message again. Player3 (priv chat): board 4 we make contract .why average? TD->Player3: scroll back and read please TD->Tournament : for players who don't understand how the A- for unfinished boards is assigned the next message: The software will assign A- to unfinished boards automatically. I will adjust as soon as possible. Don't bother about that A- and don't call before you see a pop-up window with the adjustment. Give me some time to review the boards. Telling me the result you like will delay adjustment. Substituting will get priority. Please patience. Player4 (priv chat): 4. board 2 sp +1 Player5 (TD call) : b4 average jon the other side??? Player6 (priv chat): controllare board 4 per piacere Player6 (priv chat): no ave TD -> Tournament: still players who are frustrating my adjusting. the next one who calls / chats will be removed. Player2 (priv chat) : my 2. board pls Automated message: Player2 has been replaced with player7 Player2 (Lobby): why? TD->Player2: read my earlier chats please Player6 (priv chat): board 4 no ave Automated message: player6 has been replaced with player8 Player2 (Lobby): bravo celebration Receiving thousands of calls/chats about A-- is so annoying. Should a TD educate players who play in his tournaments? Should be a TD the always friendly person who has to accept all kinds of remarks of players who think they don't have or are too lazy to read the rules, the description, welcome message and other TD messages and think their score is the most important thing in the world?? No, I don't think so. I hate that A-. If a TD announces at tournamentcreationtime that he will adjust unfinished boards, I think he should have the possibility to choose between assignment of A- and something else like TDA (TD will adjust) or TBA (To be adjusted). Players wouldn't see the hated A- and (with barometer off and in crossimp tourneys) the -3 imps. I think the TD will enjoy his tournaments much more or better, might enjoy his tournaments again.

Nice work Golfacer! Some remarks concerning tournamentchat. At 15 you mentioned the distraction by unnecessary announcements (by a TD) during the play. I totally agree with you but of all possible examples you chose the TD warnings about time. Rather unlucky in my opinion. I can give hundreds of better ones but now to the time-item: Dutch clubs play 4 boards in 30 minutes. After 25 minutes there is a beep of the clock, warning the players to hurry up (and not to start the 4th board if there was a major delay). In this way I use my "3 minutes warning. Late tables please hurry up" and a "2 minutes warning. Please claim as soon as possible" if it can be to the benefit of the progress of my clocked tournaments. My experience is that the players try to finish their boards quickly after these tournamentchats. I directed a lot of tourneys and never got any complaint or even a remark about these warnings. If the BBO software would have the option of automatic beeps I wouldn't use these tournamentchats any longer. As you say at 15 "Many players" find unnecessary TD tournamentchat distracting I expect that this opinion will also be valid for the tournament chat by players. Wouldn't it be a good idea to start after "10. Tournament chat" with a general statement like "Tournament chat should be set off if you like to direct serious tournaments." and add the reasons you mentioned at 15?

>90% of the people asking for undos at bidding don't know the laws. It's not a matter of cheating but simply not knowing that asking for an undo isn't allowed in most situations. Two recent cases in which I didn't reject the undo when playing in tournaments with UNDO allowed: A: I open 1C LHO 1NT pd pass RHO 2C and asks for an undo and the new bid was PASS and all pass (a rebid by me would have been a disaster), B: RHO opens 1C, asks for undo and the new bid was 1NT. No misclicks but change of mind in both cases. I could have rejected the UNDO requests in both cases if I had known the new bid. How about the possibility to use the alertwindow for announcing the new bid in case of an UNDO request ? A player will be careful now and only ask for an UNDO in real misclick situations. His pd will not be informed about the intended bid. In case of rejecting and playing in tournaments TD may be called. The TD should be able to undo the bid.

A month ago two players found the ♥-fit and after some cueing and asking keycards the final contract was 6♥, sorry misclick, 6♠. After this incident I made UNDO possible in special cases in my tournaments. After the first TD call concerning this kind of misclick I checked the undo box in the management window, asked for 2 undo's, asked the 'misclick'player to correct his bid and unchecked the Undo box. Not theory Ben, but practise:). I would like a 4th TD Call option: DIRECTOR UNDO which would call the TD to the table, suspend the bidding and inform the other players about this call. The TD should be able to undo bids without the help of the players. Adding this to the BBO software would be an improvement. Off topic but 2 other improvements would be 1: assignment of split scores and procedural penalties and 2: if a defender concedes one or more tricks, his partner should get a chance to object immediately.

My tourneys are almost always 16 tables, clocked, 7-8 minutes per board, "unfinished boards will be adjusted" in the description, my Tournament Rules and during tournament. TD is not playing. I like to finish my tournaments on scheduled time. Time will be added to the last round if necessary. Most players will know in advance that avoiding a bottomscore by slowplaying isn't possible. The number of adjustments is about 1 per 2 rounds. I never get complaints about this way of directing. Still I hear sometimes: "A- for board x isn't fair. Opps were slowplaying". Or : "Opps didn't accept my valid claim". (In spite of all my announcements, but some people will never read ;) ) I know that some TD's don't like to change A-- in case of unfinished tables. "That will learn them to play on time". Even if 3 players aren't guilty at all and assuming a player is really "guilty" if he is disconnected for a while. A- for "slowplaying" may be even an unjust reward instead of the bottomscore they deserve. And how about the A- in case of a rejected valid claim ?