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My frequency of connection problems is about 3 times per year. Main reason is an internet connection problem that affects all Germany or even all Europe. I do not count the cases of course when the BBO server crashes and is rebooted such that all connections are lost, but this is rather seldom, too. Therefore, I conclude, the source of your problems is probably your computer, you ADSL line or your internet provider. Because if the problem was the BBO server or the client software, I would experience this, too. Karl

As far as the BBO Main Bridge Club is concerned, I am quite sure that there are no system regulations in effect. And I am very sure that nobody requires you to supply a suggested defense against your system when playing there. The same is true for tourneys unless stated otherwise in the tourney description or in websites the tourney description is referring to. Karl

For me the new way is easier - color indicates if the contract makes or not. My only problem is that GIB is slower than DF, and often I see nothing at all for the current trick just because my computer is too slow. Karl

If you save a deal from the movie window of any talbe and later load it at a teaching table, or if you create a deal from scratch using the movie window, everything is fine with dealer and vul. But if you download a hand from myhands or receive a hand via chat and then load it to a teaching table, it usually will have a different number than originally and therefore different dealer/vul settings. Karl

By the fact that one trick was played when the td arrived you cannot know when he/she was called. If I was South and the alert was issued during or after the bidding, I would call the TD and continue bidding/playing as pausing only may lead to an unfinished board but help nobody. Maybe the td is busy somewhere else and we wait a rather long time if we start waiting. About the decision, I strongly support david_c. Karl

hi Uday, about 18 months ago I suggested that a normal main bridge club table should be taken to form a team for a team game. The request for an opponent team should be implemented by a table option. Karl

It would be nice if I could select some disposition when defining pass, double or redouble. When I tried last time this was not yet possible, and "no agreement" was selected as the default. I also have not figured out what the "copy" and "paste" buttons really do - I am quite sure that they do not do what I expect, and most time I tried I got the impression they simply do nothing. I wonder why nobody has asked this yet, or did I overlook the question? It looks like that the "System name" is not stored into or retrieved from the bss file - it is always empty when I load it, while the system summary is stored. Karl

A possible implementation of this would be that when clicking on one's own name while playing, there should be 3 options - stand up immediately, stand up when the hand is over, remain seated. And yes, a new hand should ony be dealt if there are 4 players sitting with all connections ok. This way, it would be possible to leave without any problem if it takes too long until the table is complete again. Dummy standing up of course should be totally legal, as this reduces the time the table has to wait for some other player to sit there. Karl

Is there any reason why the German Bridge Federation has decided to corrupt standard vocabulary? The expression "HUM" has an explicit definition. Its quite annoying when a WBF affiliated organization decides to recycle the same expression... The term used is "Hochkünstliches System", which translates literally to "highly artificial system". I called it HUM in my post, as this is a term well known in the English speaking environment, and I thought it means the same. Your post suggests that it is not the same, and probably you are right. I am sorry for the confusion. Karl

In the German system regulations, the rule of 18 is used to define HUM: if your system states that a 1-level opening maybe will not comply to the rule of 18, this is a HUM system and may be only used in high-level tournaments. However, this does not say anything about psyches, which of course may break any rules as long as they are neither implicity or explicitly part of the system. Only for club-level tourneys psyches are prohibited in first and second seat, and here again the rule of 18 is used to define what a psyche is. Psyches are not restricted in any tourneys above club level. Karl

Thanks Fred! This will be great for opps when playing against a pair who has defined their system very well. I found one bug so far: when trying do describe a double I was not able to click in the first column - it always remained "no agreement". And an inconvenience: When saving a file the default directory is "my documents" (or whatever it is called in English, it is "Eigene Dateien" in German), but when opening a file the directory where the program is located is displayed. General remarks: I doubt that many will undertake the effort of defining their whole system using this tool. Rather, I expect that there will be a library of systems and conventions from where I can pick what I like and compile the definition of what my partner and I play. Of course we might change some of the meanings of system or convention bids. Very nice when we do this the first time. But when I plan to play with the same partner after a break of some weeks, I will surely want to review what we changed. But if this involves going through all these bids, I will probably overlook a change and never remember it. My suggestion to resolve this problem: When defining a system or a convention that is going to be stored in the Library, it should be possible to attach a name to this. Associated with this name, it should be possible to give a link to a website where an informal description of the system/convention can be found. When compiling an individual system by merging definitions from the library, each bid should retain a link to the name of the conventions it belongs to. When displaying the description to opps, this system or convention name should always be displayed with the bid, and a click on this name should display the associated website. So, when playing and looking at the description of one of my bids, you will always see that it belongs to this or that system or convention and therefore is nothing unusual provided you know this system or convention. In contrast, if you see a bid where no convention name is displayed, you know that this must have been individually designed by opps and maybe requires a closer look. Maybe such bids should be highlighted, but in a different way than an alert. Consequently, in the Full Disclosure editor there should be a command to browse through all the bids that did not come from a library. And there should be a list of the system/conventions included. I believe right now the Full Disclosure Edior cannot be used to define carding; this should be added in the final version. Regarding pickup partnerships, I still think that my suggestion dated mid July is still worth considering, and it would combine nicely with this Full Disclosure concept, provided the standard library for the common systems and conventions is located at some defined central place. Karl

1♥ shows at least 4 cards in ♥, maybe more. If partner's pass really showed a hand that is suitable for 2♥ doubled, with no idea how many ♥ card I have and with opp's ♥cards behind him, then I have no idea why he did not overcall 1♥ in the first round of bidding. Therefore I do not think that Bens interpretation of partners second pass has any merit. Rather, assuming that partner takes the 2!H as showing the back suits, the meanig of the pass should be equal length in the black suits, and therefore it is perfectly reasonable to bid 2♠. He should stick to his first explanation and "no agreement" regarding the 2♠ bid. Never. It is legal to call the director at any time, but anything he say is UI for his partner. Not at all. First error was to assign an artificial score. If he thought the way Ben did he should have assigned 2♥ double down x. It is wrong to assign an artificial score when a result was achieved at the table. But here, I would let that result stand, reasons see above. Karl

sceptic, I think this is not a good idea, because the number of tables a playing or non-playing TD can handle depends greatly on the kind of people who are playing there (e. g. if they are all German and can communicate in German there are much less problems) and the reliablity of the players' connections. And if all players belong to a community such as BIL or Satto there is not much work for a TD - except when BBO crashes while the tourney is running as it happened during the last round of my last BIL tourney. Maybe there is an upper limit of tables a playing TD can handle, but this is fairly high if all other conditions are very favorable and can be found out by experience only. It also depends a lot on the TD's abillities. Karl

not today, maybe in future

shoeless, I like your idea. But it should be carefully considered what makes a runner a runner. Examples: I have just passed initially and one opp does nothing for some minutes - am I a runner if I leave? - We are in the middle of a board that started 15 minutes ago, and one opp has lost connection 10 times during this hand, but the host, his partner, always waits for him to return? - I was insulted by an opp? - One opp left after I had started to bid, and we have waited 3 minutes for somebody else to sit there? - I have a personal emergency and tell opps I urgently need to leave immediately before I do so (e.g. I cannot play bridge if some other person is in the same room and shouting at me)? All this, I think, should not be counted for my unfinished hands, but difficult to do so, if possible at all. Karl

hi coyot, recently I suggested something quite similar to this. Karl

Just curious, what do they write when they go down? 4S +3 means one down??? I really prefer the method used here in BBO or the one Roland described. Karl

Is the 2♠ bid alertable? The problem with this bid is, that it is alertable no matter what it means. It would only be not alertable if it really showed spades, but not even a beginner would bid something like this if properly educated. This way, the alert carrys no information; if you are interested you have to ask anyway. As a matter of fact, if I sit in the West seat and see the 2♠ bid without alert, and I know that partner bid Michaels, I cannot reasonalbly expect that South just shows spades with this bid. Therefore, EW are never damaged by the failure to alert. A good solution of this kind of "problems" would be that a bid in a suit where an opp showed at least 5 cards is only to be alerted if it is natural, and not alerted if it has any artificial meaning (but still should be explained). But of course I am not suggesting this, as it would be almost impossible to communictate such a rule to all the bridge players worldwide. About the tourney rules concerning alerts: I would clearly not require the players to alert all artificial bids, as we can see that some artificial bids are nearly never alerted: various kinds of doubles stayman transfer to major blackwood or rkcb responses to the above If you really insist that all this has to be alerted, you create a lot of cases as a lot of people do not alert this, but the others really should be used to this. Of course it would be better if there was an alert policy that is followed by everybody, and personally, I alert and explain all this except for the normal non-penalty doubles. But it is not reasonable to expect that when you state that these things are to be alerted in your tourney, that a significant number of players will change their habit not to alert. So rather, if an opp bids 2♦ responding to 1nt and I like to double in order to show my diamonds, I shall ask the meaning of the bid first, if it was not explained. Karl

Only duplicate Hands are stored in myhands. So if you open or join a table that is labelled "Rubber" or anything other than IMP or MP, nobody not at the table will be able to see what you played. Karl

Candybar, I liked everything you wrote in this thread, but here I think you are wrong. First of all, there are boards where the outcome is clear even before the first card is played, or after 2 tricks are played. I guess you too would adjust to the clear result in such cases. But even if the outcome is not clear, I think resorting to an artificial score is not correct. Unfortunately, not letting players finish a board that they started to play is against the laws - Law 8B: So the notion of an unfinished board cannot be found in the laws, and when adjusting this, we should try to find out what we can infer from the existing laws. The most similar situation to a BBO-unfinished board is a claim. Therefore I would think it is appropriate to use the laws concerning a claim when dealing with unfinished boards. And a disputed claim is never resolved by an artifitical score. The difference between an unfinished board and a claim is, however, that there is no claimer with an unfinished board. Therefore, I do it like this: If I can determine which pair has caused the delay, I adjust as I would if this pair had claimed. If I cannot find out, I try imagine the most likely line and adjust accordingly. Of course I cannot be sure that this is the correct line. And if different lines result in making or going down, this makes a great differnence most times. But there are lots of cases where the different lines only differ in the amount of overtricks, and at least there - assuming IMPs - an assigned score is a much better solution than an artificial score. Karl

Deep finesse performs a double-dummy analysis of the hand each time you click to DF button. Eventually this may take some time. When finished, the player on lead gets his cards marked green or red. Green mean playing this card will win for this player and red means this card will lose for this player, as long as all subsequent action is error-free. You can access DF from BBO if you are reviewing hands offline, kiebitzing or at a teaching table. When reviewing hands offline, you can replay the hand, but this is not a feature of DF, but a BBO feature. As it is not possible to deviate from the original path these players followed, you cannot explore different lines. With the stand-alone Version of DF, however, you are perfectly able to try different approaches and undo cards or restart from the beginning, thus you have a tool to analyze a hand in detail. But you have to purchase it. Karl

A cheater needs 5 seconds to create a new account.

I see no reason why I should prevent my enemies from kiebitzing in my tourney. After all, kiebitzers are normally silent, so they cannot do any harm. Maybe there are clubs that dislike non-members as kiebitzers, but I think prioritiy for this should be very low. Karl

Of course it depends on some factors. Lets assume you have dealing machine that can reproduce computer deals and 10 sets of 30 boards each. You want to play 54 boards per day. Then it could be organized as follows: At day one, you have one big tourney. There are 9 lines of 9 pairs each. The good pairs are seated one in each line. 8 lines play a 9-Round Mitchell at 4*9=36 tables, 2 boards per round. The remaining line plays a 9-Round Howell at 5 tables, with a sitout at the table of the not-moving pair. You play 3 sessions with 18 boards each. In each session, the lines are placed at different sections NS and EW. This works perfectly with 81 pairs. If there are more pairs, the Howell section is extended, and the additional pairs take the pair numbers that stay at a table. If there are less pairs, you have no Howell section, and some or all of the Mitchell sections are extended by one table, and the extra pairs stay in their section for the whole day. I recommend 3 sessions with 2 boards per round as this way each pair plays against more opponents than with only 2 sessions and 3 board per round. But if you really have only 10 sets of boards, the boards for session 3 need to be produced during session 2. After day one, the tourney is divided. The top 28 pairs play at 9 tables Mitchell and 5 tables Howell, 3 sessions total. Each line plays Mitchell NS, Mitchell EW and Howell in one of the sessions, so each pair plays against each other. Therefore, the seating does not really matter, but I would place the top 4 pairs in one line each, and the forth is the Howell pair that does not move, so you you have one top-pair round in each session. After day 2, these 28 pairs are divided again. The top 10 play Howell all of day 3, either 3 sessions with 2 boards per round or 2 sessions with 3 boards per round. The lower 18 play an interwoven Howell followed by a Mitchell. This way you have to have 2 session with 3 boars per round. The lower-ranking pairs from day one play a single tourney for the other 2 days. This is organized the same way as day one, except that you probably have no Howell section if there are 53 or more pairs remaining. If you have at least 45 pairs maybe you want to play 5 sessions with 2 boards/round. But if you like you can play 4 sessions with 3 boards/round. If there are less than 45 pairs, you have to think of something else, but this is not likely. About carry-over: I would use the results of day one only to determine the top 28, and after that discard the results completely. This way you get rid of random results that occur when a top pair plays against a very bad one. For the top 28 pairs the results of day 3 should count twice and the results of day 2 should only count once when computing the final result. I hope you like that. Karl

True. But there are also disadvantages: if an odd number of incomplete pairs is removed at the end of the round, the worst-perfoming intact pair is removed with them. Maybe this is no problem after some rounds when the misfortune of that pair is evident. But unfortunately this can happen even after the first round, and if you have one board per round, even after the first board. This is really unpleasant for the players to whom that occurs. Rather, there should be the policy that no intact pair is ever removed if less than 4 boards have been played. The other problem with surviver is that a pair with a missing player is removed even if the player lost connection only some seconds before the round switch and this was has no chance to return. On the other hand, players who have red dot or simply do not do anything for a long time are not removed automatically. Karl