johnson117

Well said :). Our content is about providing opportunities for learning about the game in an enjoyable way - either by watching the experts for the more experienced or watching animated tutorials (which make understanding easier than books or online text) for beginners. Where those players go on to play, whether in clubs or online - for most of us it's a little of both - is not important..

Thank you hrothgar - your support is much appreciated :)

Thanks for that - here is the link

Sorry - one more thing that the powers that be at BBO might enjoy - you say "Who thought green clubs and orange diamonds was a good idea?". Click 'reply' to this post and take a look at the options that come up above the text box - there are some suit symbols there........

What we are doing is producing some much-needed, and widely welcomed online bridge content that is educational and entertaining. The layout is necessary to accommodate the maximum amount of information on modern devices, and to minimise dead space on screen. Traditional screen ratios of 4:3, from old movie days and terrestrial tv in the 20th century have pretty much disappeared now, due to demand for widescreen movies and the dominance of handheld screens. The standard ratio is now widescreen 16:9 format (current trends are even more towards the horizontal). We want to reach as many viewers as possible so we need to work with this format and the approach we have taken is the cleanest way of ensuring that all information is clearly visible to all. During player voiceovers, the player who is speaking remains in colour and the other three are in black and white. This is quite a subtle change and in the next version of the video that we post, there will be a more obvious signifier to address this point. The display of hands with four colour suits is necessary to make them visible against the background and not at all uncommon or difficult to get used to. The partnerships are clearly designated by the compass points in the central triangles and the thousands of people who have watched and enjoyed the video have done so on a variety of devices without being troubled by the problems you are outlining. Yes, there are some inconsistencies in volume which we will address in future episodes and as I have already said about the pauses - it's a balance between information and entertainment on which we will do more work. You say we are "probably woefully underfunded". Let me address that point. When we set out to make this series, we obtained quotes from two tv production companies to do the job we are now doing ourselves. One was for £250,000 and the other for £1.2m. So we had a choice. a) Give up - there is no way we could raise that sort of money to make programmes about bridge. b) do the very best job we can with an almost exclusively volunteer team so that we can make the series on a modest budget and simultaneously fund the creation of our tutorial materials to give to schools for free so that we get young people interested in playing. Whilst there may be the odd imperfection in the resulting videos, I think that the vast majority of bridge players who are genuinely interested having as many people as possible enjoy and learn the game, would probably vote for b.

Indeed. We can cut out any or all of the players' thinking time but to do so would a) be deceptive and a bad example to less experienced players, who often don't think for long enough and b) mean that we also had to cut out the equivalent amount of commentary and player voiceovers, which would mean losing a lot of valuable learning opportunities. It's a fine line, and we will try to get the balance right in future episodes

The pace is a tricky (pardon the pun) balance between entertainment and learning opportunities from commentary. I guess the optimum ratio depends on the viewer's ability level. We will see if we can make things move a little faster in Episode 2.

New Tricks Bridge have posted the first episode of their Tournament Series on YouTube. World-class players battling it out in an individual tournament, with expert commentary as well as commentary from the players themselves. Search 'New Tricks Bridge' on YouTube Any thoughts on how to reach a wider audience of BBO users with this would be very welcome