Echognome

Playability is good. If I went on and simply played without chatting, it would be workable. Chatting is pretty difficult, but that is not so much BBO as it is that typing is generally slow on the tablet. I think it would suffice for alerting, but not for chatting. It is fantastic for VuGraph for what it's worth. I think a few small changes may help. I think for tablet play I would want very little area for chat, since chatting is just not something I'd want to focus on while playing on a tablet. I would want more area for bidding. Even with the 10 inch screen, the area for clicking on the bids is pretty small. Clicking on the cards is also relatively small. All that being said, using a stylus would go a long way. I think for chatting, an ideal item would be a clickable list of common phrases, even more ideally an editable one. That way, you can handle a lot of your chatting by clicking rather than by typing. As an example, some common items might be: Good luck partner Well played Alert - Artificial Alert - Transfer Alert - <Whatever> Be right back <Create your own>

Trying again to attach the files. The first set were too large. Landscape view with pictures of the cards Portrait view with hand diagrams Another portrait view with hand diagrams

Update. Now able to bid and play. Can resize the windows easy enough with the "pinch". Wish we could make the bidding box slightly bigger relative to the rest. I only played against robots thus far. Got four boards in. The play is pretty slow. Hand diagrams look a lot better without pictures of the cards. I'll try to upload some screenshots.

Sorry for the delay in the review. Took me awhile to figure out where to find the app on the Android Market. I also looked at the App Brain and it didn't show up on the popular downloads today. Weird! So far, I've been able to log in and sit at a table. Haven't been able to figure out how to bid yet. If I can figure out how to upload photos, I will let you know. So far, I've tried on the Dolphin Web Browser, but it wouldn't pull up the keyboard to let me login. I then tried on the native browser and got to where I could sit but not bid. I will keep trying. I did manage to chat, but it's not going to be a strong point of the tablet.

In third seat, I'm opening 1♦. I will pass partner's response (even 1♥) and take my chances. I feel like we have one bite at the cherry and I want to get across my diamonds. I would rather pass than open 1♣.

Gonzalo's answer to the question is a lot more fun than mine. ODR = Offense to Defense Ratio. Our hand has 12 points and shortness in the opponent's suit, but the points are more defensive in nature. If the hand were instead xx QJxx AQxx KTx, I think you would get a lot more "Double, WTP?" answers. Edit: Just in case, WTP? = What's The Problem?

If you are not memory constrained, then why not take a page out of most relay systems? You can bid according to your usual scheme and decide what "track" you are willing to continue your constructive relay with. I would think bidding up to "2 UP" should be ok. Since you have a forcing pass available, you can decide whether you want to use it for one extra step in your constructive bidding or save it for the occasional penalty. At least you will no additional memory load except for the translation of bids. By the way, if you are not familiar with the terminology I'm using, please let me know and I can clarify. If you want to include memory constraints in your optimization, then I'd rather use pass and double to be more quantitative in nature. Why do I want to give more shape information if we are only going towards game. I would think a scheme such as: Pass - No slam interest (in context), but more offensive hand Dbl - No slam interest (in context), but more defensive hand Others - Various slam interest

Pass due to ODR.

Sounds like a perfect question for BridgeBrowser. Where are Ben or Stephen when you need them? :rolleyes: For higher quality bridge, it sounds like some people have mined the VuGraph archives. Might be useful to look at the major championships.

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 for Android will be available this Friday. That will allow for Flash on Android 3.0 "Honeycomb", including my tablet, the Motorola Xoom. I will let you know how it works out once it is available. You can see the following article for information. http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20110311/tc_infoworld/154302

I'm going to at least wait until Flash is out. I looked at a few vugraph sessions on the Xoom and it looked great. It's also going to be nice to have the video and tv show downloads from my Amazon Prime account.

Played a mindless game of war with the wife, which I haven't played since I was a kid. We have a ruling question though. One player is down to one card, which happens to be a 2. If the player happens to draw a 2, is that some sort of "stalemate"? We thought we'd let the pundits on BBF decide.

Don't know about the flash emulator. Definitely waiting for the flash player update, as I also want to take advantage of the movies and TV shows with my Amazon Prime account. The 4G does require an upgrade. I don't know what I will need to do, but am hoping I can just take it into the local Verizon store for the swap out of the radios.

I'm typing this message from my Motorola Xoom. The forums look great and the mobile website vugraph look excellent. The site seems better suited to portrait mode. Can't wait until the new flash comes out from Adobe in a few weeks, to try out the main site.

All of the discussion surrounds an unintentional revoke. I presume there are laws to deal with an intentional revoke made to get partner to do the right thing.

There are some legendary ones you can find here: http://www.bannedinhollywood.com/20-unintentionally-funny-news-headlines/ It's tough to beat "Keegan fills Schmeichel's gap with Seaman."

I'm so good at reinventing the wheel...

Or better yet, have a timeout for any host who is inactive for more than X minutes. No voting involved. Even in that scenario, you do not have to kick the player off the table. Rather just change the host to the next most senior player at the table (which may be the partner of the original host). I do not know the best setting for X, but I'm sure that can be reasonably generous too.

I would have doubled again. Our hand is still a takeout of hearts and has extra strength. If partner has a long suit (e.g. clubs), I want to hear about it. The fact that we anticipate partner may have difficult problem is just tough.

I will only add that "fair" does not equal "easy to adjudicate".

Stefanie - I think you are being a bit unfair. Businesses have force majeure clauses in contracts all the time. Who determines whether that clause is applicable in a particular situation? If the parties cannot resolve it amongst themselves, they litigate. TD's have to make judgment rulings all the time. I think it no less fair to have a TD make a judgment ruling with respect to whether something was an "act of God" or not. When I was a Lecturer and had to decide whether a student's late assignment was 'excusable' or 'inexcusable', I typically had to just make a judgment call. Of course a rule such that no late assignments were ever accepted would obviate any need to make such a judgment. However, I felt that it was "fairer" to allow for judgment than to simply deny all late assignments. I think it's a perfectly reasonable debate to discuss whether force majeure clauses should be in the regulations. Some people will feel one way or another about it. But just because it can be difficult to make a determination should not imply that we should not try. There is nothing inherently unfair about having to make a judgment call. If there was, then there would need to be changes to many of the existing laws in bridge.

Suppose the auction had gone: P - 1♥; 2♥ - 3♦; 3♥ - 4♥ Wouldn't we all be tempted by a diamond lead? Here we have responder cooperating with a slam try and opener only interested in game. What we don't know is if opener is messing with us to avoid a diamond lead or had a legitimate game try in diamonds. That thinking can make a diamond lead either totally spectacular or a total flop. I'm going to buy to let myself be psyched out and lead a diamond. Then I can be a hero or a zero.

I might have passed 1NT if playing (14)15-17 as my range.

I think I would play declarer for Jxx. It's close though. If declarer has Jx, I might have just let declarer make an impossible contract. By the way, if I took the Q, then I would play ♣A and then hope partner works out to unblock. Given that declarer will have played the J, it should be pretty obvious.

MUD is a "compromise" in my view of trying to lead high for attitude, but being able to distinguish between xxx and xx with your next card. Better yet is leading low from a doubleton and high from three small if you want to focus on attitude. However, I understand that leading low from a doubleton is difficult after being ingrained with leading high your whole bridge career.