mink

blackshoe and jtfanclub: I agree with both of you that, wherever possible, the ftf laws should be valid for online play, too; and you are right that when applying them here you have to award an artificial assigned score. However, prior to any TD action something has happened that should not happen according to ftf laws: The software has canceled the play of the board, and there is no way to resume it. When assigning an artificial score you completely disregard what has been going on during auction and play and only focus on whose fault it was that the board is not completed. In an ftf environment this only happens when a player suddenly encounters a health problem in the middle of a hand or when the director disqualifies a player - both very rare cases, so no sophisticated regulations for this are required in the laws. In BBO clocked tourneys, however, unfinished boards are very common, so there has to be a better way to deal with that. If designing an online law, there would be 2 possible solutions: 1. A software solution that cancels the play of a board when the timelimit for a round is reached is declared to be illigal, an no master point must be awarded in such tourneys. I would prefer this rule. 2. If the software is allowed to cancel the play, the director must have the power to adjust the board to a likely score. If there are more than one likely scores, the one most favorable for the side that did not cause the delay should be chosen. Only if the way bidding and/or play may evolve cannot be predicted at all, so that significantly different scores are possible, an artificial score should be awarded. Karl

yes, very likely, thanks for the $$ Karl

Meanwhile I managed to play in 2 tourneys without any BBO$. The first one was an Indy (#1080, host ASLIHAN1, unclocked). During the play of the first board the "My Table" display was in N/S-E/W mode. When the first result was displayed, it changed to the We/They mode and remained this way even after I finished the last board. I was perfectly able to access all the boards I had played. Then I asked the director to open the tables for kibbing. When I entered a table, the "My Table" display showed the results of that table (in N/S-E/W mode of course), and even when I moved back to the list of tables my own results did not re-appear. Before this tourney was finished I was sucked into another tourney (#334, host satto, pairs, clocked, swiss). Here, the display was in the We/They mode from the start, even when there was no result available while playing the first board. After I had finished the last board, it was still in We/They mode and I was able to access all my hands. When I kibbed at some table still playing, however, it changed to N/S-E/W mode, but still displayed my results and not the results of the table I was kibbing. I was kibbing at the last table when the tourney ended by an adjustment. The "Other Tables" tab appeared, but "My table" was still in N/S-E/W mode. I was able to navigate in the results list, but the display below the list showed board 7 all the time, and I found no way to get another board displayed, even the >> key did not work this time. When navigating in the list, it happened that the IMP score where I clicked moved from N/S to E/W. By the way, when kibbing in the indy I think I saw a board in the main display rotated such that the West hand was in the lowermost position. Another funny thing: during the last tourney I was dummy in the last board of a round, and felt I should google some non-bridge subject. When I returned to the BBO window, I saw that my partner could win all remaining tricks but did not play. After a while, I called the director, making myself a fool, because the board had been finished by a claim long ago, and this was indicated by the message in the lower left corner of the display as well as by the result in the "My Table" area. But the fact that all cards, played and non-played, remained in the same position after the claim, made me believe that the play was still in progress. Maybe it is better to display all cards or no cards at all when a board is finished and not immediately followed by another board. Karl

The issues in 10 and 12 are not intentional either and (unfortunately) my initial attempts to replicate these conditions have failed. Can you please tell me: It was tourney #1834, Host TOLGABF, pairs, MP, unclocked no I saw it all the time after I finished playing, before the tourney ended and after the tourney ended. I am not really sure if I saw it while I was still playing, but I think I did. Karl

Some more: 10. A tourney is finished. I click on "Refresh" in the list of the tables of the tourney, which causes the Home display to appear. However, results are still displayed in the "My table" area, and I now can also look at what happened at other tables. But the hand displayed below the result list does not show the hand belonging to highlighted result above. Rather, the hand that happened to be there remains there. The << button below the hand moves the highlight one result upwards, but still the hand displayed remains the same. However, the >> button displays the next hand alright, until the last hand is reached, which stays there until I enter another table. 11. When sitting at a table in the east or west seat, the vul and dealer indicaters in the upper left corner reflect the situation from the N/S perspective. I hope this is not intentional. 12. In a tourney where the movement places me on different compass directions in different rounds, it is confusing to see the "My Table" results from the N/S perspective for all hands, and nothing indicates where I was sitting in this round, unless I click on the result and (hopefully) get the hand displayed. When I later show the results with the "Recent Tournaments display, I see a "We" and "They" column. I really prefer the we-and-they display and suggest you use only this one whenever my results are shown. But when displaying "Other Tables", "We" and "They" makes less sense of course. 13. Whenever a hand is displayed that I have played, I suggest that it is rotated to show the cards I had in the lower seat, maybe even if it is currently displayed in the context of another table. I know that this was not the case in BBOWIN, but I still think most would appreciate this. If you are not sure about that, maybe make it an "Advanced option". Karl

Some new observations and suggestions: 1. About linux and special characters: I can see them all, and in chat I can successfully type most, but not the German umlauts ÄäÖöÜü. ü for example results in "ü" when I hit that key. 2. Just before writing this, I had played in the Main Bridge Club and had been South, host and dummy when I stood up from my seat. After the next board appeared, I saw the North cards only. 3. Text fits into the space assigned for it in this version much better than in the previous. 4. It is now possible to assign oneself as a sub to all tournaments, which is a great idea for sure. However, there should be a field where the user can specify the maximum amount of time he wants to play, in order to avoid to be sucked into a tourney that last longer than I can afford. Maybe there should be options to select only pair or indy and only IMP or MP. 5. For people with an empty BBO$ account, maybe the list of free tournaments should be displayed for default, instead of all tournaments. 6. I liked the option that profiles are shown when I hover over a name. However, it would be even better if the profile is displayed as long I hover there and immediately removed when the mouse moves somewhere else, as it was in BBOWIN. And maybe try to display the profile so that it does not cover the area where the mouse points to. 7. I would consider the "Be right back" button important enough to place it in the upper left button area that is always visible, instead of the "who's online" area, which is not visible when the hands history is displayed. 8. In the "my results - my table" area there should be a button that resets the hand to its initial state, after some tricks are replayed. If there are too many buttons then, maybe better remove the "previous hand" and "next hand" buttons, as it is easy to click into the list above. 9. In the "who's online" area, the navigation keys on the keyboard switch between the tabs, and it it not possible to use the page down key on the keyboard for scrolling in a list of names. I like all changes made in the latest version, and the GUI is now very well designed, both regarding functionality and look. Karl

As there was no post in this thread for quite a while, it looks like all problems with bboflash are solved. However, here are some new observations and suggestions (using Firefox 2.0.0.14 under Ubuntu 7.10): 1. When joining a table as a player, the destination for outgoing chat remains the same. Rather, I would always want to greet the other players before I continue some private chat, and therefore it would be convenient if the destination changed to "-> Table" automatically. In any other situation I agree that the setting should not change. 2. I understand that unlike BBOWin BBOFlash does not constantly get all information available about the current BBO state. However, I would expect, that all information that I con currently see is either up to date, or it is indicated that updating is in progress. This is working fine for the play at a table and for the partnership desk of a tourney, as far as I can see. It is definitely not working well for e.g. the list of kibs at a table or the results at other tables for a given board. Concerning the kibs, it occurred that I was playing after having previously kibbed at that table, and my name was still in the list of kibs after some time. Clicking on "My results" and back to "Who's online" did not change anything. I think the kib list is worthless if I cannot be sure if it is current or not. 3. Not long ago I saw that an icon is displayed left of a players name to indicate the host of a table. However, it is not always displayed. I saw it right it sometimes disappeared when the host changed, but I have no idea what made it reappear. 4. I was watching a table where one player asked some other about his email address, and the response was, "it is in my profile". However, I was not able to see it there. I agree that it is not necessary to have this field in BBOFlash profiles, but if it is a profile created under BBOWin and the contents of this field is not "private", it should be displayed under BBOFlash. 5. I like to have the BBOFlash-Window full-screen by pressing the F11 button. This works fine. However, I cannot revert to a normal window after I have done so, and I cannot close the window using the mouse - I have to press Alt-F4 instead. Consequently, I can never see in what bridgeclub or tourney I am playing, nor can I see my table number in a tourney. 6. When clicking on "Help", a small Firefox window with the BBO logo appears, but everything else in this window is blank. The address is http://online.bridgebase.com/v2/help.html 7. By now most time I click on a name in the chat area I can privately chat with that person. But recently, the error reported by Helene in this post occurred again, deleting the first letter of the destination name. I thought that the error was fixed already. Karl

It was in fact this tourney, and all looks like I got it wrong. Records say that there were 6 boards with 1 board per round, so this is consistent with the board numbers I saw. What is irritating me was that I was able to watch the same pair for boards 1 to 4 without having to switch to another table. When board 5 appeared, the pair that I was watching was not at the table anymore, and I had to go to another table in order to continue kibitzing. From the fact that I was able to watch them 4 boards in a row I concluded that they play 4 boards per round - looks like I just did not recognize that they had different opps in each board - it was quite late in the evening for me .... Sorry for causing trouble. Karl

Karl, are you sure 1972 was 24 bds long? #1972 Pairs Bridging Emotions Goulash around the time of your post. http://online.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands...972-1208467222- It seems to have been 6 boards long. Logs show you received 5 bds , 1-5 , maybe at tables 4,27 and 9. Well, so it looks like it was only 8 boards, but I thought it was 24 boards because it displayed I was watching round 5 and 6, and I saw that they played 4 boards per round. Karl

7) I have just watched the 24-board-tourney #1972, rounds 5 and 6. The boards I saw had the numbers 1 - 8, Karl

After having tried some main bridgeclub games and some tourneys using the latest version of BBOFLASH (under Ubuntu 7.10 using Firefox 2.0.0.13 and Flash plugin 9.0.124.0), here are my observations in order of importance for me: 1) Sounds: I can hear the sound of a card played, the sound of a new round in a tourney starting, and the sound of an incoming private message. But I cannot hear the sound that reminds me that it is my turn to bid or play. 2) Fonts and resolutions: My monitor is 17". Ubuntu by default suggests a 1280 x 1024 resolution, but I prefer 1024 x 768. As a result, standard fonts in many websites appear bigger than they normally do, which I appreciate. This forum site is an exception as here the fonts look normal. On sites where the bigger fonts are a problem, I can easily shrink them by the Ctrl-"-" key. However, this does not work in the BBOFLASH. There, at several places on the screen, some contents do not fit into the space assigned for them because the font is too big. Examples are the pass button where only "p..." is displayed, the contracts of finished hands where the number of tricks is often only partly visible or the cards of finished hands when I replay them. Maybe BBOFLASH should force the fonts to a suitable size like the forum software obviously does. 3) When browsing the partnership desk of a tourney, in the windows client I can use the vertical arrow keys and get the profile of the player immediately, while in BBOFLASH I have to click on each name in order to see the profile. When the profile appears, it overlaps with the list of potential players making it difficult to click on another one. 4) If I start typing while the chat line does not have the focus, nothing happens. I would rather prefer that the first keystroke moves the focus to the chat line and sets the destination to "Table" or "Kibs" depending on if I play or kib. Of course nothing special should happen if the chat line already has the focus, or some other place where I can type has the focus. 5) The table list of the main bridge club was very hard to use in order to find a table to play in the Windows client, and it is even harder to use in BBOFLASH because you constantly get the message that the seat is already occupied if you click on a free seat. I do not think that it does any good to invest into this feature as I cannot think of a way to really improve it. Rather, I think that Richard's idea of a permanent floating indy would be 67% of the solution, and 33% would be a function that somehow automatically matches players to partnerships, partnerships to tables or teams, and teams to team games, like Richard also suggested. 6) Sometimes I need to lookup what happened in my chat log, which is no more possible with BBOFLASH. Saving the chat with copy/paste is not always a solution, because maybe I am not aware that there was something in the chat that I want to look up later. I can understand that BBO has no desire to log individual chat on their servers. However, maybe it is a solution to store it for only 8 days or so for those users who check this option in their settings and allow users to download their chat once a week. Karl

I have made the same observations long ago, and would also prefer this issue was solved. Karl

Sounds interesting. So 1♦ 1♥ 1♠ 2♣ would show 3 Diamond cards? Maybe you can give us an URL where this concept is explained more detailed? Karl

Each prisoner can see only one of 2 different situations: A: All other hats have the same color B: One of the other hats has a different color than the other 2 If the distribution of colors is 3-1, they succeed if they guess the other color in A. They also succeed if the guess the majority color in B. Only one of these strategies is needed; they could well pass in the other case. If the distribution of colors is 2-2, they succeed if they guess the minority color in B. If one sees A he knows it cannot be 2-2. If the distribution is 4-0, the succeed if the guess the same color in A. If somebody sees B, he knows it cannot be 4-0. The last 2 strategies can be combined, thereby winning in all 2-2 cases and in both 4-0 cases. But they can also agree on one of the 3-1 strategies. No matter on what they decide, they have always a 50% probability to get it right. If the 3-1 strategy and the 2-2 strategy could be combined in some way, they might achieve a success rate of 87.5%, but I doubt that that is possible given they have to guess simultaneously. Karl

Fred, did you remember that I wrote that the old BBOTV worked alright with the German keyboard under Firefox, and still does - I just tried it. So this cannot be simply a Firefox bug: Only the combination of Firefox, new BBOFLASH version and German keyboard creates the problem. About the IE6 problem, I tried to run BBOTV and BBOFLASH under IE6 on another computer, and got the same result: an all blue IE window. When I right click on that blue space, I can retrieve the Flash version no., which is 9.0.47.0 (the newest). So unless this problem is connected with my security configuration, it seems that Adobe does not fully support IE6, but I doubt you find this information in their web pages. At least, I was not warned about that when I installed Flash under IE6. Up to now I successfully managed to prevent Microsoft from installing IE7 on my computers, because I do not like the look and feel and because I am afraid it might use too many resources on my relatively old computers. Karl

I have only IE6 on my computers. There, I installed Flash successfully and tried all 3 links to start BBOFLASH, but all I got was the "Loading" message, which disappeared after a short period of time, leaving a blue IE window. Karl

Sorry about the German problem. I have no idea how I managed to screw that up, but I will try to figure it out. This may be easier said than done since I do not have a German keyboard. If you can provide some more details I would appreciate it. In particular: 1) What keystroke(s) do you use to type the characters that are not appearing properly? Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but I have no idea how a German keyboard is layed out or if more than 1 key is required to type the characters that are causing you problems. 2) Does this happen regardless of where in the program you are trying to type? 3) What if anything do you see instead of the characters you are trying to type? Windows XP allows you to have several keyboard layouts, and to switch from one layout to another. This can be done in the "Options for Regions and Languages" (or whatever this is labeled in the English version of Windows XP). This way, applications need not deal with the keyboard layout, but can trust that pressing a key produces the symbol that is on the key provided the correct keyboard layout is active. This works very well with all applications including the old BBOTV, and I never imagined that there might be a problem in this area, and I have no idea how a programmer mess this up. I am typing this using Firefox, and the BBOFLASH is running under Firefox in another window. Here in the forum, the keyboard works as expected, and there in BBOFLASH it does not work. I tried it both with the cc feature and the chat and the login on 2 different computers. Numbers and letters are nearly the same on English and German keyboards, only y and z are exchanged. But this works with BBOFLASH. The layout of the upper row of keys is with shift: °!"§$%&/()=?` without shift: ^1234567890ß´ What I get in BBOFLASH is with shift: Ü!@#$%^&*()ßÝ without shift: Ü1234567890ßÝ The key next to the left shift key should produce <>| without/with shift/with Alt Gr but in BBOFLASH produces < only. The keys between m and the right shift key should produce with shift ;:_ without shift ,.- but in BBOFLASH produce with shift <>_ without shift ,.- The umlaut keys produce the right umlaut characters üöä, but only in lowercase, the shift key has no effect there. The same is true for the 2 special character keys between the umlaut keys and the return key: They produce +# without shift as they should, but with shift they produce the same, and therefore * and ' are not available. For me all this sounds like some Flash code you use has decided no to read the characters from the keyboard the normal way, converted by Windows according to the keyboard layout, but rather instructs Windows to deliver raw keyboard codes and do the translation to characters itself. Karl

While there was no keyboard problem with the old BBOTV, this new BBOFLASH does not support my German keyboard very well. Though the umlauts and some special characters are at the right place, a lot of them are not where they should be or not available at all. Improvements that I consider essential: sound option to switch off card animation Karl

bid_em_up, in both of your examples, even if I was a defender, and aware of the misconcession, I would tell the declarer about it and accept the cancellation of the concession by the director, because it would be irregular to let this concession become effective. And because it would be irregular, the dummy is also allowed to draw attention to it after the playing ends. Maybe reread the first paragraph of my previous posting. Karl

Let's assume the director is there, no matter who called him. What he is told is that the declarer party wishes to undo the concession of 1 trick. Director applies law 71C and judges that the tick cannot be lost by normal play and therefore cancels the concession. The fact that the concession is canceled now implies that it would have been an irregularity if it was not canceled. So it was ok for the dummy to draw attention to this irregularity after the play had been ended by the claim/concession. And if the director judges that there was a normal play that causes a trick to be lost, I hope nobody will blame the dummy for his different opinion. Looking at the story this way, we do not need to interpret details of law 68. Frankly I am a bit puzzled by the idea of law 68D that any player may dispute a claim or a concession. What I would have expected was that the opponents of the claimer maybe like to dispute a claim, while the conceder's partner or even the conceder himself might find a reason to regret a concession. But in the latter case, I would not call this dispute, because a dispute implies different parties, but partners should not be different parties, or should they? Considering this, I tend to believe that when the dummy is mentioned in law 68D, the idea was that a defender had claimed and the dummy now is allowed to dispute that claim. Being declarer I would be rather annoyed if the dummy said, "partner you claimed one trick too many, because opps maybe find a cute way to endplay you". Further evidence to believe that the lawmakers did not intend to enable the dummy to "dispute" a declarers concession is that in case a defender concedes a trick his partner is explicitly allowed to disagree, thereby canceling the concession (law 68B). And, while law 70 deals with a contested claim, law 71 starts with "A concession must stand, once made, except ...". The words "dispute" or "contested" are not mentioned in this law. Karl

On of the fundamental principles of bridge is that I should be able to know everything opps know, except for what cards they hold. If there was some secret, I cannot judge opps' bidding and play correctly. If it was unlawful for me to know that my opp knew that my partner is probably a little stronger than his pass suggests, and that my opp knows that therefore the likelyhood that my partner bids 4♥ is greater than without the hesitation, this would be a contradiction to that principle. Law 16 requires me to avoid any action that might be suggested by the UI that I received from my partner. But it does not require me to ignore the UI and pretend that opps have not noticed the UI. Clearly opps have noticed the UI, and maybe used it in their decision process. If I ignore that factor, I cannot fully understand their decisions. So clearly knowing that opps know about the UI must be allowed. However, in the present case, the UI suggests both double and 4!H. Therefore, I can only double if pass would be no logical alternative. So regardless of what I think about RHO's reasoning for the 3♠bid, if I do not have a clear double over 3♠, I cannot double. But if my ♠ holding is so nice that pass is no LA, then nothing can stop my double. Karl

My observations: Bidding list does not scroll automatically when the 4th row of bidding is used, but instead new bids appear below the old bids and you can see only the upper few pixels. In the bidding list there are not the players names but only the compass directions. I am currently watching a vugraph where even below the cards are no names but only compass directions. I have to click on played cards rather than just hover over it in order to review tricks. I see a lot of blue space at both sides of the table display. However, the buttons are above and below the display, causing it to be smaller than necessary. There is yet no option to control the speed of the animated cards, or to switch off animation, which I would prefer. My suggestions: Currently I can see either the table view or navigation. I would prefer to be able to switch between these views. Of course this makes not much sense currently, but makes a lot of sense when most of the functionality has been added. If you think this might confuse some users, maybe make it available only if the "enable advanced user interface" option is checked. I would also prefer that navigation, table view, hand browser (myhands) and chat area are all the same type of window like currently only the hand browser, but they all do not stay on top like the hand browser currently does. Maybe a title bar is not necessary, or at least it can be smaller. When transferring data about some other player to the client, this should include the information for which tourneys that player is registered and for which tourneys he has entered the partnership desk. This would make it much easier to find a partner among one's friends. Just curious: I guess that unlike the windows client the flash client does not automatically receive a message when the state of any player changes. Right? When I click on a card in the windows client and in the flash client, how many milliseconds elapse until the message departs from my computer to the internet. Is this time significantly different for the windows client and the flash client? Will the flash client be more robust as far as connection problems are concerned? Will the reconnection time be shorter? Looking forward to more functions of the flash client being activated. Karl

I would start with ♦A and ♦Q. If ♦ split 3-2 and RHO has the ♦K, I am home. If not, I can still try the ♣ finesse and hope clubs are 3-3. Karl

If I have a responder hand like [hv=s=sxhakqjxxxxdxxckx]133|100|[/hv]I would bid 3nt over 2nt by opener. After all, the 2nt promises a ♠ stopper and not a balanced hand. Karl

About transfers: They are not only standard in BBO, but also in bridge-clubs of Germany and many other countries, so as soon as a beginner meets more advanced players he needs to know about it, at least in order to understand opps' bidding. Of course, for beginners the transfer concept is not easy to understand. But this is true for stayman, too. So if the goal was to make it most easy for the students, you should also drop stayman: Any level-2-response to 1nt is to play, and any level-3-response is forcing. If responder has no 5 card suit, he can only pass or bid nt. Obviously, this system can only be used for the start to make it quickly possible for them to bid any hand. But even this seemingly simple system has a difficulty: the 1nt opener must know he has to pass a level-2-response even if he got 4 cards in the suit. For sure, before the class is finished, stayman and transfer need to be taught. I believe that this way is superior to teaching stayman at once but delay the transfer. But delaying one or both of the concepts has a real disadvantage: you teach something that needs to be forgotten later and replaced by something new. In my opinion, this is much harder for the students than learning the complicated stayman and transfer right away. It is a new concept to have artificial bids, and it will be new to them no matter if you teach it near the start of the class when introducing the 1nt opening or at the end of the class. Rather, maybe it is not a bad idea to teach stayman and transfer as the first 2 lessons of a bidding class, when they not yet know the concept of natural bidding and therefore not expect everything to be natural. Karl