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.

This seems like an excellent Idea. It would also answer concerns expressed in another area of the forum dealing with formed partner rooms. How nice it would be to set a time to log in with your partner knowing that you could immediately join a tourney, play and be scored immediately, not have to deal with players coming anId going and be able to leave when you wanted/needed to. The only drawback I forsee is the waiting time between rounds, but if the tournament were large enough and the movement flexible, you should be able to pair up finished tables with finished tables to minimize wait time. Siince it's a continuous tourney, it really wouldn't matter if you played the same pair later as eventually that would have to happen if you both played long enough. I think most players are here to play bridge in a competitive environment with minimum hassle. I can see how this might just be the ticket to deliver the need.

Maybe a solution is to "recycle" MP hands. Or even better, create an "Instant MP Game". There is such a wide variety of hands that recycling hands from previous months or years would hardly impact the random nature of the game. But having these hands available to a table when they run out of "current" hands should answer the concerns that MP players run out of hands after a short period of time. This technique is used in youth games where the hands that were played at a regular game are recylced to the youth game where they can instantly matchpoint their results using the scoring from the regular game as a basis. I would think that creating an Instant Matchpoint game on BBO would be fairly easy to implement although the "storing" of hands and results may consume a bit of disk storage space.

I think both a rated games area and formed pairs area have merit. A player ratng would help in understanding a partner's ability when you are paired up with them. Currently the only objective rating is the number of points accumulated which probably says more about how often a person plays rather than how well they play. It is frustrating to play at tables where individual players come and go at will. I often want to play with a certain player for a defined period of time and as the table host find it frustrting to have to continually deal with "forming" partnerships for my opponents. I know the online interface now has a way for a partnership to find a game. If this feature could be added to the BBO client software along with a formed partnership area, I would choose to play there more often than not.

I like the idea of Robots replacing missing partners. It should keep the game moving. Partner should have the opportunity to make the request if P disappears and the system should insert a GIB after a defined period.

Invitations for pay tournaments are set so that you can inadverdently accept them by (I'm not sure which) hitting a "Y" or the Enter key. I guess the inviations automatically receive the "focus" when issued. It happened again today where I am typing along in Chat mode and all of a sudden I've accepted an invitation to a tournament I have no interest in playing and it's too late to cancel so I've just lost my money! On the other hand, always find it difficult to accept invitations to sub. No easy way to accept them other than to mouse click. Seems like the other way around would make more sense. Or if not switched, at least make it so a mouse click is required to accept an invitation especially where money is being deducted from your account. DonFree

It would be nice to have invitations generate a chat message notice in addtion tot the standard invitation. When you decline an invitation, you lose the history of who invited you (and you have to respond immediately). As a matter of courtesy, I like to go back later and thank the person and offer an explanation. There is often not time to do so on the spot and because there is no history, it is hard to later reply to the inviter (unless you have a mind like a steel trap).

The timed ACBL tournaments like Speedball are timed only per round and not per tournament. i.e. If a section finishes each of rounds 1, 2 and 3 of a 4 round tournament two minutes early, they still only receive 13.5 minutes to play round 4. This means that they could be stopped from playing their round 4, while others still have 6 minutes left (assuming other sections took their full 13.5 minutes in each of the first three rounds. It seems that there should be a way to allow carryover time to be added to subsequent rounds if a round finishes early Cell phone companies have rollover minutes, why not BBO? :( It seems like the rounds should be timed to end at the same time for every section, regardless of when they started the round (In speedball, these times would be 13.5 minutes into the tourney, 27 minutes into the tourney, 40.5 minutes into the tourney and 54 minutes after the tourney starts). Entire sections could "move" early (as is currently the case) if they finish early. If a section does finish a round early, they would still have until the stated expiration time to finish their next round, and the round after that etc. This should not affect the ending time of the tournament nor affect the fairness as each section is still only alllowed to play a certain number of total minutes for the tournament. They are just "choosing" how to allocate those minutes among the rounds. This should lead to a need for fewer board adjustments and result in an overall better run tournament.

Tyler, This is a result of the sections that BBO sets up. I argue that sections do not make much sense for BBO tournaments which are typically only rounds. If there are 15 pair in each section, you would only play 27% of those pairs in the entire tournament. Hardly a valid reason to be in such an arbitrary grouping. BUT...and this is a big BUT.... the way ACBL allows masterpoints to be awarded encourages sections--be they fair or not. Under the current rules if the tournament were scored as one large sedtion, there would not be many more awards in that large section as there are in each current section and the size would be approximately the same. So what BBO is doing is using the system to provide players with the maximum points allowed under the ACBL rules. This is an ACBL issue of changing the award "tables" to keep up with technology that makes super large sections possible.

Uday, can you shed some light on what the effect on distribution of masterpoints would be with awarding points as a single section versus the current method of awarding by multiple sections?

Interesting discussion about R/L bridge and players perception of fairness. So it begs the question, what is the downside to matchpointing and awarding points across all pairs in a 50 pair event?