oryctolagi

This is a recurrent problem, I get it sometimes, with Chrome and Win XP. No other websites ever lock up on me.

Well you are a vindictive lot, that's all I can say. I remind you that I did say "very occasionally". 99% of the time, I'm a firm adherent of Thumper's immortal advice: "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all" As it happens, the very person whom I felt obliged to call out (see above), joined the table I was playing at, last night. So evidently the Mods decided there weren't 'sufficient grounds'. He/she was a bit aggressive, but nothing to complain about - and played reasonably well, the one hand he/she played. I kept my mouth shut. He/she only stayed for 1½ hands, in any case. So we can all be wrong at times.

No thanks. I find the chat - within the table - very useful, especially when playing with a casual partner (which is almost all the time, for me). You need to agree a convention, also complimenting partner or opponents on good play (or commiserating on bad luck) is only basic courtesy. Also, very occasionally, when dummy, after the hand's played out I'll suggest to partner (or even opponent) a better line of play, which I spotted but they apparently missed. I hope they don't take it amiss. Unfortunately, even in-table chat can get out of hand, as I discovered while playing yesterday! My two opponents started flaming each other, it got nasty, and in the end I quit the table without a word. Quite likely I've now been blacklisted by a few people (is there any way I can find out?) but I mean no-one any ill-will. I just think it's better to walk away from aggro instead of fighting back. I still hope that what happened yesterday is the exception rather than the rule. :)

Maybe I spoke too soon! Quite a lot of flaming on the Acol Club this evening - but not on the table I was playing at, we were all behaving impeccably: it was elsewhere in the Club. It was somewhat distracting, got to the point where I decided to report one individual to abuse@.... This is all the more reason why I really want there to be an option to turn off chat "->Club" when you're playing at a table. Is there any chance this might be implemented, any time soon? It would really enhance one's experience of BBO.

Is that an offer? Maybe I'll take you up :rolleyes: . Ah! But you see, I'm a pensioner, so I have a bit more time to waste. But I agree, younger players ought to be encouraged to keep the game alive - if they can find the time! When I first learnt to play I was quite a youngster. As well as BBO, I've recently been playing face-to-face at a local U3A club. The most senior player I've partnered there, to date, is a young lady who's just celebrated her 101st birthday. Still a pretty neat player, although her arthritis makes it difficult for her to shuffle or deal, so someone else performs that honour for her.... I don't expect to last that long, myself... :unsure: Oh and I hope no-one thinks me a tightwad, as regards paid-for content. I subscribe annually to several useful websites, including a music-composition site on which, sadly, I haven't actually composed any music for almost a year. So - I think I'll take up a BBO paid account. I've now used the site a lot. The one thing I will not subscribe to, on the other hand, are the newspapers' paywalls, especially the UK ones. I see no reason to pay good money only to read some opinionated rubbish which I'm bound to violently disagree with.... :angry: Cheers. Pete.

I may well do that - if I build up enough confidence in my ability! ... :unsure: No robots, though. I'm sure the GIB robots are excellent, but ... I've tried robotic bridge before now (not GIB and not on BBO) and found it a bit soul-destroying. I keep thinking of HAL ("I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't bid that....").... :D Human players are fine with me.

I'm running BBO on Chrome. I've had to enable AdBlock for the bridgebase.com domain. I was reluctant to do so, knowing that this may lead to BBO losing some much-needed advertising revenue, which I have no wish to deprive them of. But it seems I have no option. The problem is not the adverts themselves: I have no interest in them, but they all pop up conveniently in the sidebar and can be ignored. No: the problem is the incessant notifications of a popup loading ("waiting for...."), which appear at the bottom of the screen, directly on top of the chat-line entry. This makes it difficult to type in any chat text which happens to be longer than one of the stock abbreviations like "typ" - e.g. agreeing convention with partner. Getting the chatline moved up the screen a bit would solve the problem. Failing that, AdBlock stays on, I'm afraid. Unless anyone has a better idea. I don't want to switch to another browser if I can help it. I use Chrome for nearly all browsing activities, not just BBO.

The cases which have been raised on this forum are highly selective. Of course, otherwise they wouldn't have been raised: they are the 'exceptions that prove the rule'. The rule is, I still believe that BBO is a good environment to play in, and very few people spoil it. Does that make me a sort of 'Pollyanna'?

I read through this thread with some interest, because I fear that, for my sins, I am one of those who drew attention to the issue with a recent post and the ensuing thread. I wonder if too much is being made of an issue which is not really all that serious? I have only been active on BBO for the past three months or so. In that time I have played nearly 1,000 hands ( :o ), all in the Acol club, with many different partners and opponents. In all this time, I can count on the fingers of one hand - OK maybe both hands - the instances of bad-mouthing that I have experienced at the table. Have I just been fortunate in my choice of partners, opponents, and tables, or am I missing something? Maybe other sections of BBO have more of a problem than the Acol club? It's unfortunate perhaps that I raised on the forum, the one instance that did 'get to me' I suppose. I just wanted to get something 'off my chest'. And as regards abuse on the internet in general, yes I've seen and experienced plenty. Not all of it is buried under the cloak of anonymity. I've had people be abusive towards me on the internet, people whose names and addresses I know, people whom I've met face-to-face. I could, I suppose, go round to their homes and 'sort them out', but I'm not that kind of bloke...

Thick skin duly grown. :lol: Don't worry, I'm used to this sort of thing in other places - but other BBO players may not take it well. Let me illustrate another point where I think the use of an UNDO call was questionable. This was not at the table which I referred to in the OP, but on a different occasion several weeks ago. I passed as dealer, and my partner opened 1♣ or 1♦ - I forget which. RHO overcalled 1♠ and I passed, and so did LHO. Then RHO asked for an UNDO, and without thinking too much about it, both I and my partner accepted. So RHO retracted his 1♠ and doubled instead. This seemed a bit irregular to me, since it now transpired that RHO had disclosed two lots of information about their hand: strength and spades, in a somewhat unauthorised manner. Anyway, this now gave me room to bid 1♥ so I did so. This was passed around to RHO who now bid his spades at the second attempt. I passed but my partner took us into 2♥, the final contract. It was not a good contract and I went down. I felt that, on that occasion at least, my opponents had not taken advantage of the retraction and RHO had shown his spades legally. And my poor result was my fault really. So no point in making a fuss. But since then, I've been wondering about the whole process of UNDOs. I shall go on being wary of them. Anyway, enough said.

I accept this. Nevertheless, I do hope that expelling someone from a table, because you don't like one thing they did, is not the sort of action that most BBO participants would take! I'll take my experience as a one-off.

I really don't want to quit BBO. I've been playing entirely in the Acol Club for two or three months, almost all the people I've played with are excellent company. I'm hoping to improve my skills (even at my age!) and this is a good place to do it. I don't want to make up my own rules, so it looks like 'go with the flow' is the way to go... There have got to be some exceptions, of course. If someone loses a finesse, or suffers an unexpected ruff, I wouldn't expect an UNDO... :blink:

I post this with trepidation, I accept that I may get some stick for what I'm about to say! I recently rejected an opponent's UNDO request and was promptly booted from the table for my 'sin'. Not a pleasant experience. My judgement was that the situation arose out of careless play, not a mis-click as the opponent afterwards claimed. Is there a difference? Was I mistaken? Should I allow all UNDO requests, no matter what? Maybe BBO is not the place for me. :(

I thought that what I was getting was the same as what others have reported. But no matter, please bear with me. I'll stick with Chrome and wait to see if it happens again, then I'll try to grab as much info as I can and send it off to support@... Thanks.

I'll try running BBO with firefox for the next few sessions, see if that makes any difference, then maybe IE - or perhaps on another computer: but I'm not convinced it's my end. If so, why are so many other players getting the same problem?

+1 Do I sense a quantity of effluent from a male bovine here? :lol:

Hi, I know this is a perennial problem and probably already reported many times: BBO locking up often in the middle of a hand. If it's another player I see the message "XXX has lost connectivity..." and all we can do is wait or get someone else on table. But if it's me, I don't realise anything until I get the message from Chrome saying 'page no longer responsive' or something. I'm sitting there waiting for another player to bid or play, not realising that it's me with the problem! Earlier today this happened twice to another player and once to me, in quick succession. So I'm asking, is there anything - anything - I can do to reduce the risk of this happening? I'm using a desktop, with Win XP and Chrome. I don't run any other apps while on BBO, and I can categorically state there's no problem with the internet at my end. It's just - it's really annoying when it happens in the middle of an interesting deal...

Would it be possible to arrange it so that, when playing at a table, chat messages tagged "->club" or "->lobby" can be filtered out, leaving only the chat messages "->table" (and private messages) shown? Many table hosts persistently canvas for players to make up an open table, but this is hardly relevant when one is already playing (unless one has a habit of jumping ship, which I don't...). I like to follow the chat at the table, and I find these inappropriate intrusions annoying.

In that case, I'm done with this forum. Can't argue with the experts.

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Even Yarboroughs can be interesting, occasionally! There's always the remote chance you might gain the lead, and then have to figure out what honours your partner holds (especially if you haven't been paying attention). :D

I haven't enabled the 'autoplay singleton' feature. Indeed, after reading through this thread, I don't feel inclined to. I'd even go so far as to say, could this feature be withdrawn please, seeing as it seems to serve no useful purpose? The only exceptions I'd admit are (1) cards played from dummy, and (2) when playing the very last trick. In which cases, of course, there should be no delay. The number of times when, as declarer, I've forgotten to play the final card from dummy, and wondered why the score doesn't pop up! (In live bridge, of course, my partner would normally play the card...)

Ah well - so be it then. I simply thought, having been brought up on a diet of virtually pure Acol, that it was an almost entirely 'natural' bidding system. And that cue-bids and takeout doubles were indeed part of this natural process. Indeed, the only completely artificial bids that we used to use, back in those days, were 2♣ and 4NT blackwood. But it seems we have to live and learn. Certainly I've needed to learn quite a lot of new stuff just to keep my chin above water, here on BBO. But I didn't realise just how much stuff I also needed to 'forget'.... OK then, just for info, tell me how to bid this. [hv=pc=n&s=sha92dakjt932ckq7&d=e&v=b&b=10&a=1s]133|200[/hv] It's too embarrassing to explain how the bidding actually went - and how we landed just about the worst IMP pairs score (almost -16) I've yet had in BBO! :blink: Happily, my partner was very understanding and sympathetic about it, which meant a good deal to me.

Thanks. Wish I'd known that. Why does Bridge have to keep changing, becoming more artificial? It merely serves to make it more difficult, especially for us older players, to keep up. Maybe I should put in a request for an 'over-60s-only' section of BBO. Or has that been asked for already?

I thought such a sequence as 1♠ 2♠ i.e. immediate overcall of opponent's suit, indicates first round control and game-forcing. At least, that's what I've read in the Acol books in the past. But it seems to be not understood by some players in the Acol club. Could someone explain?