dodzi

Port 9999 problems As mentioned somewhere else by Uday, some ISPs throttle port 9999 and I think this is the cause of the very slow login problem that I am experiencing (am awaitng reply from my ISP). I previously fixed this by editing bbover.ini to use port 80. I think the latest BBO update changed this back to 9999. Now I find that port 80 no longer works - BBO just hangs with 100% CPU usage and never starts up. Is this deliberate or should I be able to use port 80? If not, what can be done about this? Can BBO use a different port number which is not throttled by some ISPs?

I have a similar problem though not with Vista. It can take several minutes to login to BBO. Sometimes it appears to freeze while counting players, then I cancel and it often works the next time (eventually). This happens on more than one computer and started in January I think - possibly at the time that BBO was upgraded.

[hv=d=n&v=n&w=s83ht86d875ck10982&s=saq6hj93dq64caj54]266|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] 6NT by North. Bidding was 2N (20-22) - 6N, partner leads the ♠J. Declarer wins the Ace and leads the ♣4. How do you defend?

We had 7000 people online yesterday, far too many to cope with in the lobby list of players. We have filter options, but in they could be improved. I would like to set my options to show ALL friends, ALL hosts and ALL champions but show other people from certain countries only. Currently if I select a few countries to display so the list is more managable, I no longer see friends and champions from other countries. I suggest that if you select friends/hosts/champions that these are not filtered by country or level but are always shown. Mark

On a similar note if you cannot see your own name on screen you have to return to the main lobby to change your profile or settings. For example you might be in the lobby of a tournament. It would be nice to be able to access your profile from anywhere - maybe a right-click on a blank area of the screen, or from within the Options dialog. Also, when signing up for a tourney it would be useful to be able to right click the profile in Partnership Desk and Registration to send a chat message to your chosen or prospective partner.

In England a balanced 1NT is never alerted, however it is your responsibility to know your opponents 1NT range (by checking their CC). Although most play 12-14 NT here there is no presumption that this is the default range. I usually do announce our NT range at the start of each round. On the occasion in question my partner announced instead that our CC was loaded, which ought to be enough, but we shall certainly say something like 'We play weak NT, see Convention card'.

Are there official BBO guidelines on when to alert? I had a look just now but couldn't find anything. I was playing in a (free) tournament whose rules state 'alert all conventional bids'. I have prepared and uploaded a convention card. As the use of convention cards is still rather limited, we took the trouble to inform all opponents that we have loaded our CC. We followed the tournament rules and alerted conventional bids including Stayman and transfers - I didn't notice anyone else bothering to do this. We play weak NT (12-14). Now as a courtesy I usually alert this but at one table I forgot to do so. I didn't worry too much as the range was on our CC and in partner's profile. In any case it is not a conventional bid so needn't be alerted (per the tourney rules). At the end of the hand (which we played in 2♠ - 2) the opponents noticed that they had a combined 27 count (split 14, 13) and complained to the director. Director ruled that as CC was posted there was no problem. One opponent insisted that weak NT is a conventional bid and demanded an average +. The director did not agree and the player favoured me with a stream of abuse along the lines of 'you are not gentlemen'. I do not find this acceptable. I wonder at the state of mind of a person that can get so upset over one board in a fairly meaningless tournament, but perhaps if there are clear alerting guidelines if would help avoid scenes like this. It is as if certain players view weak NT as something akin to foul play. If BBO officially state that opening 1NT other than 15-17 should be alerted then we'll know where we stand. But do not let people say that weak NT is a convention because it is not - any more than strong NT is.

I have a PC running XP professional. After closing down BBO and shutting down the PC I get a dialog 'End program = BBO Server Stub ... the program is not responding'. Have to click on End Now to shut down the PC. This happens when exiting with the close button (not every time, but often). Mark

Double. Will risk the pass rather than risk missing a major fit. How short can the diamond bid be in your version of precision?

I am beginning to think that it is only those who are patently not experts that claim to be so. Having been paired up with so many 'experts' in tourneys that can barely follow suit I now virtually ignore it. How about a 'private only' tournament?

Are there any plans to make it possible to view the travellers for boards within a tournament, when the scores appear? I know they are available at the end from the website (with slightly different scores) but it would be nice to see the other tables' results when the scores have been calculated.

I'm not sure it is a good idea for the director to be able to seat a substitute at a table without confirmation. It happened to me and I didn't notice for 5 minutes because I was doing other things in the meantime, not sitting waiting for a substitute call that might not come.

Better still, can we have an indication on the tournament list of how many boards and how many played, e.g. 7/12 so we can see before deciding to register as a substitute? I concur with the suggestion that subs should be indicated as such in the final results list. There do seem to be those players that depart with 1 or 2 boards remaining, leaving the sub to inherit a score of 30% or so.