paharry

Unfortunately as I predicted back in November novice, weaker intermediate and social players are losing interest in playing online bridge because without a viable handicap system they think they have ZERO chance even on a good day. I requested a simple handicap system where a players % handicap system could be preloaded {rather like pre-loaded hand}s during tournament creation process and applied as gross and nett scores at the end of the game. The handicap file format could be taken from a spreadsheet or a simple CSV file but open to other formats. Please, non software developers do not reply trying to tell me how hard it would be! I have been a professional SW developer since the mid 1970s. I suspect it would not take me long to code this small addition assuming the code is in a reasonable state as it only applies to one window and post game processing modules. Please do not reply with BBOXML can apply handicaps. Yes in can in absolute mps and depends on number of boards/players in the tournament not as absolute percentage. The weaker players are also weak at IT and do want to go on bridge webs to see their handicapped result they need it immediately at game end. In our club I have we have had over 520 players try out BBO. The majority of these were not computer literate and had to be hand held at first click by click. A lot of these now regard the internet as their best information source ever and now wonder why they never used the net before! A lot of these people would be playing bridge still if we had the handicap system I proposed back in November. Facetime bridge is cute if you have decent stable internet . We in rural Ireland unfortunately do not as many other countries. Core functionality of game management is more important than presentation to most players who are not IT competent {the majority}. Please inform me if you no not intend to add this functionality so I can move on from banging my head against the BBO wall and stop wasting my time introducing new customers.

Sorry forgot to say after the tournament playing for e.g. grand master or solitaire works at normal speed

Since I attempted unsuccessfully to join the video on 4g internet connection the performance of BBO {even with video disabled tournaments} is like playing in slow motion! Before you start BBO is fine other on all machines on the same 4g connection via my phone 1. on ancient HP laptop 2. my 3 mini touch screen laptop {2g main memory, 32g disk!] 3. my phone. I have cleared the chrome cache, restarted laptop etc to no avail. Video would be nice but BBO intolerance to internet latency is very poor and needs addressing. Being able to applied handicaps to the results for a mixed ability tournaments will keep weaker bridge players interested

BBO software is intolerance to latency of interconnections . No mater how BBO try to talk people about their setup, HW etc. It clearly only has been tested in an lab with very good internet connections of high bandwidth and low latency! I run BBO tournaments in rural Ireland where often the only internet is either 2nd rate land or more likely 4G with inherent high latency. Unfortunately this is even worse in the evening when phone usage is at its peak and we want to play bridge! We just had a 47 table charity event and there was nearly continuous connections being dropped in, being logged back in etc. We also lost 1 pair in start-up {bbo decide they were there on startup but not their by time the server had actually started} It is possible to program with reasonable away of tolerance. I suggest test BBO and willing to help a real world in less that perfect interconnects!

admin reply is very shocking and ignorant of their end users. A lot of users do not complain, just get on with. They are use to :- 1. As BBO is starting the tournament the player has to click and move between different tabs to wave at BBO - look i'm here please do not drop me 2. BBO dropping their internet connection. The TD then will make sure they get re-seated as soon as BBO picks up their connection again. They may have to log in and and out to get BBo attention again. This can happen several times a session. All because these folks are either using 4G or have 2nd rate home internet with contention and occasionally longer than latency than the BBO servers tolerance! All you testing is obviously in a lab with lightly loaded networks. Try it in the real world in less than ideal internet connections! Be careful when you make adlib comments ! Now we have new features like voice and video. May i be so bold as to suggest to get the main part working first! Also allow a separate CSV file of handicaps to be apply to the results for mix ability clubs

To keep members interested to playing BBO online it is vital everyone feels they have a chance of winning! In smaller/mid size social clubs it is not possible {or desirable] to have separate tournaments for players of different abilities. Many clubs in offline bridge employ a handicap system [many different methods] to results to produce a level playing field. We would like to be able to preload a handicap file [spreadsheet or csv] rather like pre dealt hands per tournament and this to be applied to the results pop up window are the end of the tournament. The result should be sorted by net scores but should also display the gross score before handicap. This would be a option in the tournament to use handicaps. Master points still to be rewards on pre handicap [gross] scores. I think unless virtual clubs can offer this feature we will see lessor ability players and the social players will stop playing. I am not asking for the ability to set handicaps as it opens up a big can of worms of methodology! So instead I have requested the ability to load up handicap values for each player and apply these values to the tournaments results.

I am not in the USA so why should have ACBL be on my side or otherwise? I have highlighted a significant problem for all small clubs of mixed ability and proposed a very easy solution and if I had access to the code I would do it myself in a few days. I do not think if you do not understand the issues or the simplicity of the solution. Do I need you blessing or the ACBL in making this very modest request but very useful powerful ability. As for others making this request or not, maybe is because we were one of the first virtual clubs and come across the issue early. All others small mixed clubs will now or soon have the sane issues. I am already looking at alternatively bridge platforms and I am sure others will also do the same. BBO now they this new online membership would be wise to keep them. During this summer I have managed to persuade nearly 150 players to come online with less than 25 previously online. After all this immense effort it would be shame for them to drift off and lose interest. It is up to BBO to adapt to its market and perhaps these new online players are worth looking after or not. How do I make a formal sw change request to BBO. Here or by email to someone?

So you have never gone through the torturous process with multiple pairs with robots? It does not work very well My request was for simple process. Not a work around involving multiple stages with manual intervention that does not always work! I want a simple modification to BBO that allows a csv handicap file to be applied to the results as a option. The players handicaps could be preloaded like how pre-dealt hands are handled DO you think players want to wait at least 30mins or more liekly for the following day for their results? BBX does not work when the BBO extractor is under heavy load! My request is for a serious problem for my club and every other mixed ability club

Yes and No, I am aware about using ScoreBridge as that is our real world scoring system. However there are 2 problems. 1. Players want their results immediately and do want to wait until processing via bbx/bbo to xml / import to ScoreBridge and finally posting to BridgeWebs which min would take 10-30 mins 2. The process described above cannot handle robot(s) or substitutions

Our club have been successfully using BBO during the Covid period as a virtual club. We have one problem as time marches on of keeping our weaker and improving players interested. Why should they play only to see out top players winning all the time? In the real world we do not have this problem as we use handicaps. We would like to able to apply an handicap file (say CSV format output from a spreadsheet) to our BBO results and display the net handicap score. Please can this or something similar be done or is there any plans to do so? Please note this problems exists all smaller clubs where numbers do not allow separate tournaments of different abilities.

Hello I have been unable to find a thread with using handicaps with mixed ability virtual and want to know is it possible. In our club we have successfully used handicaps so mixed ability players can fairly complete against each other. We applied our handicaps via scorebridge and uploaded results to bridgewebs. Now we playing in BBO and would like to use the same handicaps. Is it possible now or are they any plans to make this possible?

Hello and sorry if this has been discussed already. Love GIB and definitely the best Robot I have played with. But it uses a different system that we play in Ireland. I love to use it to practice and develop a bidding system. Is it possible to change/modify the bidding system ? I have programming background.