Dealing_Don

It is nice, though, to have GIB there to be used as a second opinion. In the heat of battle when faced with adjusting multiple boards, it's nice to have a quick second opinion in simple cases just to make sure you haven't missed anything. If there is a discrepancy between what a TD determines the result would be and what GIB says it could be, it is usually pretty easy to discover the line used by GIB and see if it is more reasonable than the one assumed by the TD. Of course checking the line of play up to the point of cessation sometimes gives you a clue about which line the declarer and or defender might take. Often the line the defense takes is as important as the line declarer chooses. As a director, I do not feel it improper to conclude that a board cannot be fairly adjudicated with a result and assigning averages to both pairs. When I do this I usually explain my reasoning to the players involved. e.g. "I cannot determine the outcome on board 6 because it involves guessing on a two way finesse" or "There are too many variables in the line of play to determine a fair result." If it is an IMP game and we are talking about overtricks, I usually stretch try to come to a result rather than "average it out". It would be nice, though, to be able to assign NP (not played option) to the pairs involved so that it would not affect their percentage score for the game. This option would also be good for completely unplayed boards rather than assigning Avg= and pulling a pair's 60% game down to a 59.2% game (or if two averages from 60 to 58.3) . If we had this option I think there would be less "demand" for Avg+ boards due to "slow opponents". Until we have an objective measure of slowness, the requests to adjust unplayed boards to Avg+ will continue to flood TDs, especially in quicker games with low minutes per board.

Is this also the explanation for why sometimes the rightclick to join table isn't a rightclick option? Do you need to be "linked" to a tournament before the client can find the table of the person in question? It seems like sometimes, when a private message comes in, I have to view a player's profile to find the tournament and table the person is at and then use the table view to have full rightclick options available.

Since a player can only be in one active tournament at a time, I would think that Show Results for Current Tournament would definitely be an 80 for 20 solution. The system would have to look at the player, see if they were active in a tournament and then either before or after the click would have to check to see if the (clicking) member had permission to view the results. Don

Yes, the primary goal is showing the description with the listing of the TDs running the tournament.

Can a mouseover on the title of a tournament on the Director Pane Tournament listing be programmed to bring up the Identification information of a Tournament after a nominal delay? Currently the only way to find this information is to go into Edit mode which is time consuming, overkill and a waste of resources if you just want to view the information. Even a right click menu option on the title to bring up Identification box would be a step in the right direction. Don

Occasionally as a TD, I will get a private message from a player asking for a board to be reviewed. If this chat comes via private message, there is no easy mouse navigation route to the Results Pane via the chat window. I find I must either use keyboard entry to type in the player's name in the director screen or use rightclick form the chat window to join the player's table where rightclick then allows me to bring up the results pane. I suspect this issue might exist because the rightclick operation is not set up to recognize that you are a TD and this person is in one of the tournaments you are running and so the option to go to "Player's Results" would not exist on every rightclick operation. Another option I have used to get to the results pane is to find out at which table the player is playing and navigate to that table in the table list where full rightclick options are available. But finding the persons current table while straightforward it is somewhat cumbersome. If the rightclick menu could be dynamically changed to allow the rightclick of a name in the chat window to have the "Player's Results" option when appropriate, it would save time by eliminating that extra step on multiple occasions. Don

It is basically the same size as on a paper card. You either write in "F" for fast or "S" for Slow. What else would you want to put there?

Maybe adding the ability to Reseat a player to the TD Options when you right click a player would be an easily implementable solution. The system should "know" where the player belongs, so offering this option shouldn't be a big deal.

One of the challenges in directing BBO games that try to follow ACBL rules is dealing with bids that require announcing and delayed alerts. In face to face games a quizzacal look or an "ok...tell me about..." at the end of the auction solves these problems. On BBO, the closest equivalent is clicking on the bid to request an explanation. But this isn't a complete solution especially for delayed alerts where the non-leader is not in a good position to query the bids (private chat being the only ethical option at that point). For example, 1NT opening bid ranges are normally announced in ftf games. In BBO games, most SAYC and 2/1 bidders do not alert if playing 15-17, considering the range so common, the thinking is why should I. Then along comes a pair playing weak NT and the table gets all up in arms because they didn't announce (alert in BBO language). So how can you penalize one pair for not announcing when the same standard is not applied to all pairs? Cue bids are another issue as the thinking in ftf games are that cue bids are "self alerting" i.e. a bid of opponents suit is seldom "natural", so ask if you desire to know, and in fact only need to be alerted IF natural. But in BBO tournaments, players seem to feel entitled to penalize opponents if, for example, they are playing top and bottom cue bids rather than Michaels and fail to alert. Could a system of "auto alerts" be added as an option for tournaments? Any announceable bid (NT openings, forcing NT responses to majors, transfer probabliites [at least the more obvious ones]), cue bids, and delayes alerts (any bid over 3NT) could automatically pop up an alert box requesting an explanation. Having the box pop up immediately as an auto alert bid is made shouldn't add much time to the hand as it is not the bidder's turn anymore. Of course, alerting prior to bidding is still preferred as this eliminates the problem with "late alerts". This would also keep the bidder from being slammed with multipe alert requests from both opponents. Comments?

This would be a nice feature. Often a player asks, why did I only receive x% on board y. Being able to pull up the traveler during the tournament would make it easy to answer this question.

The list of tables after bringing up a tournament. Column titles of N, S, E, W, Kibitzers, More and Description. Would usually choose to allocate all the available real estate to the NSEW columns. Thanks.

The split screen concept is nice for TDs and I like the way that the screen can be resized to allocate more real eastate to one side or the other. The columns on the right side (the Director side) can be nicely resized, but it appears that the columin sizes on the left side (Table view side) are fixed, so that if the size of the left side of the screen is reduced, all columns are reduced proportionately. Can the columns on the Table View side also be made to be adjustable?

Is there a way to adjust a board "in play"? i.e. before it has been finished? I love the way TDs can adjust the boards after the play, but can't figure out how to make an adjustement before the board has been completed. This feature is sometimes needed to help a slow table catch up, adjust because a player has left the table, or adjust the final hand of a tournament as time is running out.

I too would like to see a variation of addion option 3 (see below). Sometimes the person sending invitation is not available via chat, because they are currently in a tournament. To explain immediately would require sending a mail message. Also, there is no way to find out after declining exactly who it is you declined. I suggest that a text box be put there to fill in. If filled in, then it goes with the decline, if not filled in, then nothing goes with the decline.

I would not see the "tournament" scored overall as much as just giving the pair their scores for the boards they play. Maybe one could see a "current ranking". Also, there could be a posting of the day's "tournement" results where pairs who have played a minimum number of boards are ranked in order of percentage (if MPs) or IMPS (if imps). In concept, the scoring would not be much different from that which a pair receives in the main bridge club. The differences I see are: 1) Scores are never reset 2) Pairs are automatically moved and so that a pair always has compettion 3) The boards are only played by the tournament, so they have their own boards rather than sharing them in a pool with other players in the main bridge club.