JRG

Try the BBO Online Help. If you don't find the answer, send an e-mail to help@bridgebase.com and tell them the information is missing.

I'm not trying to be funny, but... A fundamental difference between a team match and a pairs tournament is that one needs to coordinate 4 people (not counting extra players on a team) for a team game and only 2 for a pairs game. This means that registering would require the software to be changed to support this (a changed or different dialog box for registering, checking that the 3 other players are online when the registration attempt is made, sending request messages to 3 other players rather than one, and so on). When the team match starts, the software would also have to grab the 8 players and assign them seats. Plus there are differences in terms of restricting members' participation. There is also another fundamental difference: Anyone can set up a team game, but you have to have special privileges set by an administrator to set up a pairs tournament. I think part of the idea was to allow team matches to be set up relatively spontaneously. I imagine Fred and Uday could handle the programming changes. I don't know whether they want to (and if they are willing, what priority it would have). My thoughts, for what they are worth. John

Actually, rather than highlighting the CC button, I'd like to see an indication in the box displaying the auction. After all, that's where I'm looking to see the bidding progress and watching for alerts. John

Everyone seems to have an opinion! (Which is good.) My partner and I have used Pearson Points for years. As a couple of posters have pointed out, you apply Pearson Points in 4th position after 3 passes. You also ONLY apply them when you are not sure whether to open a hand or not. I'm with Richard. I didn't even count my Pearson Points with the West hand -- it was an automatic 1D opening for me. It's not marginal. If you decide to pass this hand because the opponents' might have the spade suit, you will win some of the time and lose some of the time. I suspect you will lose a lot more often than you win. First, as here, there is no reason that partner cannot hold the spade suit (yes, I know there are two opponents and one partner). Secondly, just because the opponents hold spades does not mean they can make a contract. The concept behind Pearson Points is that when the "values" in a deal are divided roughly evenly, then the side that holds the spade suit wins because they can outbid the other side at the same level. Hence adding values for holding the spades. However, to apply the guideline, you have to judge that the strength (points, high-cards, however you value strength) is roughly evenly divided. Since I would open the hand in 1st or 2nd position, I also open it in 4th. Cheers, John

After Claus's eloquent response, what more is there to add? John

I'm sure the collective membership of the Bridge Base Forums could come up with good feedback and ideas for improvement to the Online Help. I have started this thread in the hope you will post them here. Some topics I would particularly like to see people post on are: - The Index: Is it useful or useless? If useful, are there errors or omissions you know of? - Tournaments: I know this is a weak area. Constructive criticism would be appreciated. - Topic headings in the Table of Contents: Do you have ideas for improvement? Are there topics which are misleading? - Information: Is there anything specific you know about the BBO software that isn't documented? For example, a post elsewhere indicated one can paste into a Chat dialog as long as the text was copied from some other application into the clipboard (I had never successfully pasted into Chat, though I had tried -- so this ability isn't documented in the Online Help). As Ben pointed out, negative information is generally not included in the Online Help. There is nothing in BBO connected with the Costa Rican rain forests ???, but this omission is not documented in the Online Help B)

I am sorry to hear that you find the online help not to be much help. It was designed and modified by a "volunteer". I find it quite useful, and when you realize that of the tens of thousands of BBO members, few have probably even clicked on it. Certainly it is not totally extensive, and it certainly would not include things you can not do (like specifically stating that each player does not have a right to accept/reject some one from joining as their parnter, only the table host can put that requirement into place. And certainly not all features of the software are encoded into the help system. The help system gets modified from time to time, and as good as I think it is now, no doubt it will get better and better as users (such as you) point out areas where the help system is deficient. The deficiency is caused by a number of issues, 1) the software is changing (note Uday's recent post about new tournments...someone will have to describe these changes in the help file, 2) people point out deficiencies (need more on table permission options). Let me give one example. I started a post about teaching old dogs new tricks in which I told of a method to get a text file of all the hands you bid and played on line. The volutneer who works on the help file emailed me and said that was cool and he was going to add it to the help file. This needs to be a community effort. Ben Thanks Ben. I've tried to encourage feedback about the Online Help, but I've not wanted to make a big deal of it. So I have kept the soliciting to a note in the Help itself and responding when someone mentions something about the Help (as long as I notice the post). Perhaps what I should do is ask Skrshawk if we can set up a specific BB Forum about the Online Help (I could be the moderator). That way I could post polls, announce updated versions, and maybe get some constructive feedback. The only reason I am reluctant is that I've wanted to remain behind the scenes and not detract from Fred and Uday's publicity. I believe they deserve all the credit for BBO (along with Sheri, of course). Let me know what you think. I'd appreciate your opinion. I did respond by BB Forum's e-mail to the posting and asked for feedback. In that e-mail I mentioned I thought the greatest weakness was in the area of Tournaments. This is because I have only played in a few and I don't host or direct tournaments. I have asked a couple of people to make me a director for the sole purpose of taking screen snapshots and working through score adjustments, etc. However, this has not happened yet. The other item I would love to have some feedback on is: how easy or difficult is navigation? Can you find "stuff" you are looking for? In particular, I thought having an Index was a good idea, but it is quite painful to update and is getting quite large. I don't mind doing it, but if it is not really useful, the effort could be put into other aspects of the Help. I will be away visting our children over Christmas and New Years (Dec. 15 - Jan 8). Perhaps when I get back it will be time to put some more concentrated effort into the Help. Fred had said he was going to send me a preview of the new client, but that has not happened -- I assume he has simply been too busy. Again, thanks for your even-handed posting -- much appreciated. John

My two cents worth (FWIW!). I rather like the self-alert mechanism of BBO. I think it allows achieving the "full disclosure" spirit of the laws without passing unauthorized information to one's partner. So I simply alert all artificial bids, whether Kickback RKCB or Stayman; and I alert natural bids that I think might be misconstrued as forcing (or not forcing). I play what I think is a basic 2/1 system, but it has a few wrinkles (example: Truscott versus strong 1 club opening). I always fill out the explanation (though I wish the opponent were prevented from bidding until I have completed the explanation). Now, on the other hand, not many of the conventions I play have multiple meanings, so I rarely have to type more than, for example, "Natural, non-forcing", or "3-card limit raise of spades". There is one exception which always bothers me. I think that in the part of the world I played the most bridge (Canada), 2/1 is relatively common and most people seem to understand the alert of a 1NT response to one of a Major as "Forcing"; however, it bothers me that it can conceal so many different hand types (a weak raise to two; a 3-card limit raise; a weak hand with a long suit; a balanced 1NT response; an intermediate, but not game-forcing, hand with a suit of its own). I've never seen that alerted fully. At the beginning when I first started to play 2/1, when asked about the alert, I'd say "Forcing for one round, may be ...". At which point partner would interrupt and say "You don't need to go into all that, it is confusing -- just say it is forcing for one round and may be one of several hand types that are not forcing to game". That bothers me. So, I don't know what to say about alerting multi-meaning artificial bids. I do think any artificial bid should be alerted and some explanation provided without the need to ask. John

That would only work if you didn't get to see any hand(s) until after the auction was over. For example, if you were watching West and South became declarer, then you would already know West's hand. You did get me thinking though. What would be nice is a short-cut to indicate which player you want to kibitz. So rather than having to go into one's User Profile and set it by direction (N, E, S, or W), it would be nice to (for example) right click on a player and have the choice of kibitzing that player show up in the status popup. Maybe I'll suggest this to Uday Oh yes, I like to kibitz a lot as well.

I don't think Fred's personal feelings about complex systems has anything to do with not updating the CC software. I think it is purely a matter of he and Uday needing to budget their time and set priorities on what improvements they make to BBO. It seems to me they have put a huge amount of work into Tournaments. They have also had to make programming changes to get the server to handle the much larger number of members online (especially during the live broadcasts). I suspect the latter item (the much larger number of members online at any one time), will be consuming much of their time over the next while. I'm sure they don't want BBO breaking down or becoming unstable just as it is reaching new levels of success.

No, an opponent can click on the bid and then you receive a request to explain (the dialog box in which to type the explanation pops up). I tend to fill in the information to save them the trouble (also, if I don't, I find that I start to fill in the dialog box and it pops up again as the other opponent asks!).

Yes. Then after you have made the bid, click on it in the bidding diagram. You will then get a small dialog box into which you can type an explanation. If you forget to click Alert before making the bid, click on it in the bidding diagram to create an alert and the opportunity to enter an explanation. If you make a mistake in the explanation (leave something out, for example), click on it in the bidding diagram and update the explanation. If there is insufficient room for your explanation, use the Chat to Opponents button (the double arrow) to send the opponents an explanation.

Out of all 8 times this happened, you didn't have a running suit against them? (Diamonds on your example hand?)

Maybe. I'm not sure I agree with your "then the other systems are..." bit though. I do think education is probably the best answer. For what it is worth, many years ago, before I had even learnt "Standard American" properly (hmmm - maybe I never did), I learnt a very simple strong club system called "Schenken" (after the famous American player who devised it). It seemed to me and a couple of friends that played it, that it was easier and simpler than "Standard American". Of course, dealing with interference was hard. Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that I played at one of the largest bridge clubs in North America and the atmosphere at the time was very tolerant of other systems (we eventually moved on to Roman Club and Neapolitan Club somewhat later). It's strange to think back to that time. A few years ago, my Toronto partner and I started to play a minor variation in our 2/1 system (switching the meanings of 1S & 1NT over a 1H opening) -- turns out we were not allowed to play that at the club level (only in tournament events of some level or other). So we dropped it as it wasn't worth our while to play two different systems (I have enough trouble remembering the one we do play!).

Actually, if the ruling had gone the other way (or Lauria had played the Spade Queen), they would NOT have won -- just tied. Then there would have been an 8-board playoff for the World Championship, which Italy might have won, or might have lost (or perhaps they would have tied again). Nobody knows.

Ah <light goes on>, that's what's happening. Thanks for the information. I was sure it was something to do with my dialup connection. I could certainly see that there was a lot of communications going on.

I agree to an extent with both Luis and Claus. When I first started playing bridge, a group of us got very interested in the Italian bidding systems being used by the Blue Team (that is, the Roman Club and Neapolitan Club systems). We memorized the system (I was the worst, as I've always had a bad memory :-( However, when there were systemic choices, we tended to be guessing. We did not have the experience and judgement of expert players. It is quite possible that Word Class players sometimes make inferior choices ("mistakes") as well, but I really doubt they do it as often in the bidding as us lesser players. On the other hand, it is amazing how often they still arrive at the same contract as is bid in the other room, despite making choices that knowledgeable commentators point out as inferior (when they do know the bidding system). I do agree, quite strongly, with Luis's comment about the play and defense of the hand. The World Class players squeeze more tricks out of a hand single-dummy than I can double-dummy :-( An aside: When we played the exotic systems, we were lucky to play at a bridge club where the general calibre was very high (sometimes playing against the likes of Eric Murray and Sammy Kehela) (which is probably why they allowed us to play the systems). So the "unusual systems" did not give the edge people tend to think (Note: we were playing them for fun, not to try to get an unfair advantage). For the most part people just bid their hands against us and doubled us when they thought we had overreached.

I wouldn't call the last hand the one that won or lost the match. We have a natural tendency to do that, but there were lots of other boards. I think the hand the Italians will remember is the one in which Duboin played 6S redoubled and went down one when he could have made it. Rodwell & Meckstroth played in 4S making an overtrick. That was 12 IMPs. Having said that, the last board was a pity. I'm sure Soloway will dream of it often, wishing he had led the 10 of hearts. All the players were tired by that time.

I would guess the problem is elsewhere. I run Fred's products under emulation (Virtual PC) on a Mac and the speed is fine. HOWEVER, the "fake" PC is running Windows 2000 Pro, not XP. I would also have made the same guess as Peter. 1/2 gigabyte of RAM sounds good, however, you can never have too much! Are you running a lot of other applications at the same time (Internet Explorer, a Music program that plays MP3s, Mail program, Microsoft Word, etc.)? Do you have a really fancy desktop picture? If you tend to run a lot of applications at the same time and just leave them minimized, try this experiment. Shut down all other applications but Windows Explorer and then try BridgeMaster 2000. If it runs fine, then memory undoubtedly is the problem. In this case, you can experiment further by starting up your regular "suite", one application at a time until BM2000 turns into a snail. That will give you a rough idea of how much can be run at one time.

You are joking, aren't you?

Ben made a good point. I have several educational bridge programs, for example, Lawrence's Counting at Bridge. From time to time a play a few hands. I have to admit, I don't "get" them all right. But I surprise myself by getting quite a lot of them. But I don't get nearly as many at the table. And I sometimes make horrible mistakes (went for 1400 at the bridge club yesterday -- must be the first time in quite a few years that I've gone for a number that big). Oh, well. For what it is worth, I support the opinions that say an expert: - shows good judgement (especially in the bidding) - rarely makes a mistake - that is, is very consistent - can count a hand when he needs to - can visualize unseen hands (I don't mean "knows all 52 cards") - has a good repetoire of play techniques

That's it. That's the answer! Once someone points it out, it's so obvious!

There is almost always some mistake a defender can make that will lose a trick or more. Yes, at some point in the hand it becomes vanishingly small and then that is a good time to claim. By the way, I finally looked up the Proprieties in the Laws. The only relevant section appears to be the 74 B4 that people have referred to. It says "As a matter of courtesy, a player should refrain from:" "4. prolonging play unnecessarily (as in playing on although he knows that all the tricks are surely his) for the purpose of disconcerting an opponent." If we look at the rest of 74, these proprieties are CLEARLY ones of courtesy just as it states (look at 74 B5 - "summoning and addressing the Director in a manner discourteous to him or to the other contestants"). As such, I don't believe for an instant that this says, "you must claim as soon as you can". In fact, for those who like to split hairs (and the laws tend to have been worded VERY carefully), there is a big difference between wording 74 b4 as, "prolonging play (as in..." and what it actually says, which is, "prolonging play unnecessarily (as in...". Anyway. I think this has been beaten to death. I'm not going to post to this thread again. It has, however, been an interesting discussion with several different points of view expressed. Thank you everyone for participating.

Let me second that. Suit symbols would be great. In fact, I'd give up smileys for any useful feature!

The problems of messing around with time zones is probably part of the reason for using a count-down clock for the start of tournament events.