geller

If you look upthread you'll see there will be BBO coverage. But if you could arrabge sponsorship (I suggest you contact the organizers before doing anything) I bet no one would be unhappy.

By the way, I've been informed that the WYC in Bangkok will have a broadband internet connection available, so everything will be fine I hope.

It would be particularly desirable to allow multi-language channels at the same table. For example, the finals of the FIFA world cup are broadcast in every country on the planet in each country's own language. Be nice if the same could be true for the Bermuda Bowl, etc. In that case there would need to be vugraph coordinators for each language. (For example, Roland does a great job but obviously isn't capable of doing coordination for languages he doesn't speak, not to mention the workload burden.)

Wow, a triple neagtive! Agree with what you say. Not sure if that's what you meant though.... :)

Agree. Let me add though that what's important is for the local organizers to get experience using BBO's VuGraph by first of all broadcasting one or more of their local tourneys. They will probably screw things up (at least a little) the first or second time, but after that they'll get the hang of things. VuGraph is obviously a good tool for promoting bridge in each country. For example here in Japan most members of our federation (JCBL) live in the Tokyo area or a few other metropolitan areas. By broadcasting national tourneys (with commentary in Japanese at one table) we are promoting bridge on a national level in Japan. In the case of Thailand, Thai is not one of the languages currently supported by BBO but if the Thai federation was interested in doing a translation then they should contact UI or FG. It's just a matter of translating a bunch of bridge and BBO terminology, and can be done a bit at a time.

Now that we're all friends again, I want to repeat my comment from upthread. I think this is very important. If VuGraph is regarded as an integral part of the requirements, high speed internet access can be included as one of the requirements to be met by the hotel in their bid. In other words, no high speed net access means you won't use their hotel. If that's done from the onset, the hotel will be reasonable. Whereas once you sign the basic contract they can gouge you to their heart's content. I wish all tourney organizers would keep this in mind.

This may depend on the country, but it isn't a problem these days in Japan. Other countries, even modern industrial economies, may be a few years behind. But this will probably change rapidly, so I suspect within a very short time it won't be a problem anymore. Also, once the organizers sign a contract with a hotel they are at the mercy of the hotel's standard (extortionate) fees for net access, but if this is negotiated with the venue before the contract is signed a much better deal should be available.

I don't know the bandwidth available in Sydney, but my home internet connection in Tokyo is over 10 Magabits/sec for $30 per month, so with any kind of decent high speed connection available on site the burden of a few PCs watching BBO broadcasts should be be negligible.

I join Roland in questioning why it should be forbidden to watch BBO onsite. (Of course if the players were using PCs provided by the organizers maybe one machine should be left free for other purposes like checking email). But the attitude of "you must watch VuGraph onsite only in the VuGraph room" seems silly. If the players want to watch on PCs what's wrong with that?

Agree with you completely. One other point worth mentioning is that for security reasons if wiFi is used it should be specified that serious encryption should be used. Obviously if there is a good internet connection the onsite VuGraph problem is solved.

The WBF constitution is at the following link: http://www.worldbridge.org/administration/...onstitution.asp Excerpts from a few pertinent articles] Excessive expenses for dining, hotels, etc., particularly for family rather than the officials themselves, might be in violation of the above. Full disclosure of expenses would be desirable to ensure that funds are being used strictly in accordance with the above. Broadcasting WBF events on BBO Vugraph (or other company's VuGraph) appears to me to constitute "promotion and development" of the sport of contract bridge, as specified in the above article. One would hope that the WBF would be more pro-active in organizing VuGraph broadcasts.

The PABF (Pacific Asia Bridge Federation, not PABC) is the Zone 6 federation (like the European Federation or ACBL). In addition to the Zone 6 countries (China, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia,....) Australia and New Zealand also traditionally have participated in PABF championships, even though they are from another zone for Bermuda Bowl purposes. The PABF junior championships in June were on BBO (lots of problems in the connection though, unfortunately). As far as I know, the World youth championship in August is a WBF event, and PABF has nothing to do with running it (I may be wrong about this). If the above is correct, VuGraph is not a responsibility of PABF, but rather WBF, as well as the host country. I agree that it would be desirable to have a BBO broadcast. In the case of Japan we have locally available operators. I would hope the Thai federation could similarly train local staff. Our experience suggests it's not that hard. You need one moderately computer-literate guy and a few people to key in the action at each table (ordinary PC users can be easily trained). Hopefully something can be worked out.

I don't understand this. It's true that Thailand is a member country of the PABF (as are Japan, China, Indonesia,....), but the World Youth Teams is a WBF-run event, so I don't understand why the PABF would be involved. If this is really the case maybe someone could email me the detals (rather than post them here--may be some sensitive things) and perhaps something could be done (no promises of course).

This topic is obviously of some interest to players from all over the world. If you post it on the BBO Forum you are implicitly soliciting comments of people not directly involved. So what's the problem?

Why not make him appear on BBO Vugraph while all his teamates comment? :-)

The commentators may sometimes say stuff that the commentees don't like, but the latter shouldn't get too upset, because, after all, they're still playing while the commentators are out of the event. :-)

105 minutes for 12 boards is 8.75 minutes/board, the same as we use in Japan.

In Japan the top flight of our "Japan League" (8 teams, double round robin over two wekends) uses screens throughout. Each match is 16 boards with 2hr20min (140 min), meaning 8.75 min per board. Almost all tables finish within the limit. There are slow play penalties in some relatively infrequent cases, but the pair that used to be the most notoriously slow has now split up, so lately there haven't been too many problems.

Yes, but the oppts can force you into a top or bottom situation at match-points. Say it's your hand for 3♥ and with both vul they push onto 3♠. If you think this won't be bid at most other tables, and if you think they'll probably be down you get a poor score for +100 versus your +140 in 3♥, so you have to double. Of course your analysis of whose hand it is could be wrong.... But the oppts have forced you into this top or bottom situation.

Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese have the same language code (0x04) but they have separate sublanguage codes (0x0804) vs. (0x0404) so maybe it would be possible for BBO to support both character sets (someone using the traditional char set might have to do a new translation. If there was enough demand it ought to be technically possible to do this, provided that each user's machine can tell apps which sublanguage is being used. Does anyone here know whether the sublanguage code is readily accessible to apps?

I don't want to trigger a further flame war, so I will refrain from making the obvious reply that this remark is begging for. :) Here's the problem (from pg 192 of Swanson's book, 'Inside the Bermuda Bowl', but originally reported in the Bridge World, among other places). You, West, hold ♠J84 ♥9 ♦A10763 ♣A986. You hear the following auction:South North 1♠ 2♥ 2♠ 3♠ 4♠ Pass Suppose you decide to lead a minor suit in the hope of giving your partner a ruff. Which minor do you lead? It seems obvious that the percentage lead is a diamond, since, all other things being equal, the chances of this being pard's short suit are higher than clubs. No sure thing, just an "eight ever, nine never" type of percentage-based decision. Well, cutting to the video tape, Pabis-Ticci, playing for Italy in the 1968 Bermuda Bowl, lead the ♣A, and he was right, as the full hand was (Swanson gives the ♠5 to both West and South, but I arbitrarily gave West the ♠4.) [hv=d=s&n=sk6haj632d8cqj752&w=sj84h9dat763ca986&e=sq9hqt875dj9542ct&s=sat7532hk4dkqck43]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] I agree with the various comments above about the dangers of drawing conclusions from small samples. It's a shame that ALL the hands played by this pair aren't available on "My Hands". If they were, someone could do a more systematic statistical analysis of this pair's opening leads. But as far as this one hand goes, I'm hard pressed to find a logical reason for leading a club rather than a diamond. Anyway, let's all chill a little bit in this thread. :)

In the case of B-L the ACBL (according to the Daily Bulletin) is basing its action on the adjudication made at Tenerife. Presumably B-L have the opportunity to appeal on the basis that the Tenerife descision was unjust, but in that case the burden of proof would be on them to demonstrate this. Otherwise the ACBL is probably justified in accepting the verdict of another federation or tourney sponsor. In previous cases, (ike the Houston Trials (in 1977?), there was apparently a deal, namely that the accused pair would resign from the ACBL rather than be expelled by a disciplinary hearing, in return for silence on the part of the ACBL. Some of the ACBL officials apparently then shot their mouths off in public about the alleged offenses, thereby violating the terms of the deal. Thus the litigation was not about whether or not cheating had occurred, but rather about whether the ACBL was in breach of its contractual obligation to shut up. This put the ACBL in a weakened position, so it's not unreasonable that the ACBL's insurance company insisted on a settlement. In the case of the Blue Team, all I know is what I've read, but there is a famous case (see old Bridge Worlds, or John Swanon's book, "Inside the Bermuda Bowl") where Pabis-Ticci (in the 1968 Olympiad?) was on lead against an auction like 1S-2S-4S with Axxxx Axxx in the minors and he led the ace of the shorter suit, which happened to be his pard's singleton. (There were no screens back then.) It's hard to conceive of a logical reason for this. Maybe he just got randomly lucky..... Incidentally, I have no first-hand knowledge of any of the above incidents; what I've written is simply based on stuff I've read over the years.

Starting with the Denver Nationals, the ACBL has announced a policy of videotaping National events (the old "eye in the sky"). http://web2.acbl.org/nabcbulletins/2005fal...prebulletin.pdf This should provide objective evidence for resolving future accusations of inappropriate conduct (in at least some cases).

Bob Hamman's classic book, "At the Table," is loaded with good advice. Maybe the best one is: "don't screw up the easy ones." In other words, keep your concentration and don't mess up easy hands, so you can afford to get a hard problem wrong once in a while, which everyone does (just that guys like Hamman mess up a lot fewer times than most of us).

Right now, the situation, as I understand it, is that the WBF operations directorate decides which matches will be on VuGraph, and then it's up to Roland to find the volunteer commentators. Right now though due to BBO suporting a large number of languages, many more countries are doing broadcasts in their own languages. We've started doing this in Japan (one table in English, one in Japanese) and it's been quite successful. If the WBF really wants to help promote bridge as many matches as possible should be on VuGraph (all you need on site is an operator and a PC). Each country could be asked to supply a volunteer operator for each match played by their team, or else to hire one locally, if they want to broadcast to their country. Due to the time differences though (the last match each day in Estoril starts at 1:30am, Tokyo time) some time slots are unappealing to certain countries. If the (hypothetical) BBO on-site coordinator was just going to arrange commentators for the matches the WBF decided to put on VuGraph, there's not necessarily a need for BBO to have an on-site person. But if the WBF was going to have a really ambitious program, then it's another story. I can see several levels of possible technical improvement, like being able to have an arbitrary number of commentary streams, with the user picking his/her own language. That way, the final could be broadcast in every language, just like the World Cup of football (soccer). But if the WBF wants to do this, someone would have to pay BBO for the software upgrade. Or, even more ambitiously, comment could be streamed in audio, not as chat. That would also cost $$ of course. The point is, this is a really great way to popularize bridge. If every federation could broadcast audio (or chat) in their own language, then that would greatly increase support from federations, as opposed to all English (or almost all English). But someone would have to coordinate all this, and there's a limit to volunteering. Anyway, before getting hung up on one details (should there be a BBO coordinator in Estoril) let's think about how Vugraphs can be encouraged and be used as a tool for popularizing and promoting bridge all over the world (including especially the non-English speaking part of it).