gentgiant

Last night (Monday, 21/9 @ 18:45 BST) I ran a vEBU tournament No:14898 It was plagued by disappearing table lists, messages of cannot load table list for at least the first eight boards of 18. No full disconnection just a poor display of the table list. I rebooted BBO a couple of times, no change. As a backup and trying to keep tabs on what was happening, I started BBO on another device under my player id to observe the tourney. Same issue, poor display of table listing. What was going on?

A BBO friend reports that she cannot see ops bids after joining a casual table and hence is unable to proceed with the game. any ideas? Everything appears Ok when invited to a table.

I'd interested to know why BBO seems to have acquiesced to an EBU request to embargo VC Pairs results on days when the EBU is running SIMs of its own. Yesterday something like 85 VC Pairs events (I was a non-playing TD of one) were suppressed to protect the security of ten EBU VC SIMs events. Since the 85 were not playing the same boards as the SIMs this seems to be a sledgehammer, not to say discourteous, approach to SIMs security. Especially as it was only non-playing TDs of those 85 events who were prevented from downloading using BBO Extractor. I know of at least one VC player who was able to extract the results of his Pairs event and see them posted with Hand Records on his Club's website, hours before the SIMs were being played. Presumably, a SIMs player could do the same and tip-off others playing later?

The problem appears to have been resolved now. Several of my club members have reported back that access is OK via their Windows 10 machines.

How naive. Have you seen the EBU communication? It does not refer to its own Team Leagues or Club leagues where charges are made. But Club Leagues that require, effectively, a TD who can run multiple Teams matches concurrently. A privilege that is not available to ordinary BBO members. Clubs that do not currently charge. BBO is obviously using the Covid-19 Pandemic to monetize every quarter of the site, they can manage. In a very short time, the opportunity will fade as the clubs go back to F2F.

My reading of an EBU communication to Virtual Clubs suggests Team Matches will be charged sometime from September onwards. Quite how much or how payment is to be made is not clear.

And does this new subscription arrangement for TDs extend to charging for Team Matches?

For heaven#s sake, the pair of you! I told the first poster, that it had been raised with BBO support. Neither of you know the circumstances (and there's no need to post them here) of the person involved. It was simply a genuine question. But if you are that sensitive about generalised questions of this kind, then it must be because you have some doubts yourselves. Support has answered, the player concerned is now satisfied. The matter is closed.

Your reply is offensive. The matter HAS been raised with support. Do not address any of my posts in this manner again.

Has anyone experienced an instance of multiple BB$ deductions for a single entry to Virtual Club Tournament? Last night a player saw 9 BB$ removed from her balance for a tourney with a 3 BB$ entry fee.

Once the pandemic has waned and clubs go back to f2f, this income stream will shrink to a dribble. And much goodwill lost.

I asked a direct question of BBO this weekend and received this answer: "As of August 1st you will be able host 1 team match at the time, as any other mature bbo username. Should you want continue with TD privileges, please contact your national bridge federation (NBO) and express your interest in running sanctioned games online. BBO cannot award masterpoints recognized in your country unless the Federation makes an agreement with BBO first, BBO already has agreements with several NBOs from UK." So the EBU has effectively stymied my tournaments for friends where we are not interested in Masterpoints and where nobody pays anybody to play or pays me to TD. The loss of ability to set two team matches running concurrently, also makes it trickier to run inter-club team matches. I've run one a week between various clubs and these have been very popular. Sad, not to say, an infuriating day.

When will the August changes be announced?

What is disappointing is the response to complaints. Prickly. Defensive, basically saying the user/customer is always wrong. And no accouof previous complaints about ads on the app. Rewrite would have allowed removal of ads with an option to purchase the app...free users still seeing the ads. On an iPad mini or iPhone too much screen space is wasted on the ads. And, as with many others, lack of landscape is the real deal-breaker.

It's noticeable, too, that many who self-describe themselves as expert or advanced, are very poor players of the cards and usually the rudest players around.

The board was played correctly at Table 9 between 9 N/S and 11 E/W. Either or both of these pairs then put the cards incorrectly back int the carrier to pass to me on Table 8 where we, unwittingly, played the fouled board. Our partner in this teams of 4 night played the board correctly at their table. So my score and our teammates scores (and our ops on my table) were voided and no other change made. As has been stated it seems we and our ops should have been given +3 imps for the board in question (and who knows what for our teammates) whilst Teams 9 and 11 penalised. If such had been applied, my team would have risen one placing and the 'guilty' teams unchanged in ranking. It was unsettling and rather unfortunate. My wife was on the team for the very first time being a player of only 6 months experience and very much a beginner. The rest of us are classed as intermediates in BBO language. That extra place meant a lot to us as it meant we outperformed our level. I felt my wife had been hard done by and had an unfortunate introduction to club bridge.

Last night we played teams at my local club (Kendal, UK) and as N/ in the middle of the evening I played a 2NT* contract to make 10 tricks and a good score of 690. A boost for the team. However, the Bridgemate would not accept the result and the TD called. Eventually, it was found that the board had been fouled at the previous table with N and E hands transposed completely. The board was declared 'No Play' and so no 690 for me! However, no penalty was applied to the N/S or E/W pair at the 'guilty' table and in one case a team made a very big imps gain. I understand why my team could not be scored for the board but I felt very aggrieved that the pairs from two teams that fouled the board were not penalised. Was I right to be annoyed?