mink

To replace an unresponsive player ( who may not be RED) , we need to enter the player's name in the Window to effect a substitution. This takes time. If I can right click on the player and make the subsitution ( should be able to select the sub without entering the sub name in the box) , this make the substitution a lot easier. Maybe you already know this: Even today you can right-click on a player's name and then click on the substitute menu item. Typing in a player's name is only necessary if you want to replace him by a specific player. Karl

In online bridge, I see no reason why I should alert anything since the version arrived where I can type in an explanation together with the bid. Since then, I always explain if I chose a call which is artificial or unusual enough that is reasonable to think that opps probably assume a truely different meaning if not explained. Some calls, that have no widely-agreed meaning, like 2♠ after partner opened 1nt, I would always explain no matter what it means, as opps would reasonalby have to ask anyway, because it would be no good policy to assume that this 2♠ is natural - in most cases where such a 2♠ is not alerted it is artificial, and the alert has been forgotten. On the other hand, if I encounter a 2♥-bid by an opp in response to his partner's 1nt opening, I assume that this is a transfer, simply because this is true most time and asking always would slow down the game too much, especially in tourneys. Consequently, I would expect that anybody who does not play tranfer to majors alerts his 2♥, even if it is natural. Those players should be aware after a short time playing at BBO that their natural responses to 1nt are very rare and that their opps assume something wrong if this is not alerted. It makes no sense to discuss some alert policy here, if you are really considering to implement it. The reason for that simply is that you would not succeed with the implementation. Even if Fred would try this and work hard to advertise some alert policy that is better defined than today, he would probably fail because most people just play in BBO and do no read anything. So the only solution is to expect no alert for treatments that are really wide-spread like weak 3-level-openings with a 7 card suit, stayman, transfer to majors and takeout doubles (yes, this is artificial, the natural meaning of a double is penalty). All who feel that some of this should be alerted are free do so and explain, but I doubt they achieve much by doing so (e.g. I explain my tranfers). Roland, your repeated posts stating that natural calls should not be alerted sound like an ideolgy to me. In the first place alerts where invented in order to alert opps about the fact that the agreed meaning of a bid will probably be different from what they expect. In early days, what they expected was the natural meaning. Today in many sequences this is not true anymore. Karl

For Germany, I would think that all who might enjoy the vugraph know English reasonably well so that there is no need for a German commentary. Maybe this is different in France, Italy or Poland. Karl

The "15+" in both alerts sound like the 1!C opening ist some kind of strong club. This should be alerted earlier of course. But the alert of 1!C is obvoiusly not what they could possibly agreed upon, so I rather think the player did not realize what alerts are supposed to explain. Maybe even the bid was only explained because North or South asked for it by clicking, and East felt obliged to write something, which was more a description of what he actually held than a decription of what they agreed upon. From North's point of view, being vulnerable, I see opps have a misfit if I assume that all bids are natural, without the alerts. This is enough to convince me that the only possible call is pass. Double is truely irrational, heading for desaster. The main information I can get from the explanations is that there are 15+ points in the East hand. But this is not really new to me, as I do not expect that they bid the missfit to this level without some extra values. So I cannot see why North, issueing this irrational double without the explanation, would not do so if he received the explanation in time. It is irrational in both cases. I would give East some advice concerning alerts and explanations, but not change the result in any way. Karl

You can go to a chatroom or table where nobody else is, or you can kib at a table where you are the only kib. Typing somethink then will find its way to the chatlog, I think. Karl

If a player is removed without having done anything wrong in the current tourney, this should be enough reason for abuse to act. I do not think that a special rule is required for this - it is obvious to me that a player who has entered my tourney is allowed to finish it as long as he behaves and does not lose connection. In the last tourney I directed (I was not the host) there was a player whom I had blacklisted some time ago. All I did was watching him at times when I was not needed elsewhere, and I finally subbed him and his partner only because both lost connection. I even do not think that the whole issue of tourney director qualification is something that can be handled by the free market, because as a player in 9 of 10 tourneys the director is not needed at my tables, and when a director happens to acts, even a bad director usually succeeds in subbing non-responsive player (really easy since right-click was implemented) - so most time I cannot judge if he does a good job or not. This way, it takes a long time until a bad tourney director is identified by a significant amount of players. But even then he can continue, just with a few tables less than he would have if he was a good director, or maybe even with the same number of tables if the tourney is scheduled at a time when many like to play and therefore the tourney is full anyway. Karl

For his last comment I put the objecter on my enemy list if this happened to me. Karl

I do that, too, but i cannot remember or write down all players still playing :-) True - you have to remember names if you are playing yourself, but one name per table is sufficient. I agree that life is harder for a playing directory, and this is why I usually do not play in tourneys I direct. Karl

Here is my approach to convention cards: There is a predefined list of systems/conventions, implemented in software. Conventions like capp and dont that cannot apply at the same time are grouped in this list. All systems form a group of course as you cannot play 2 systems at the same time. Everybody fills a profile once - just by clicking on options, no typing - where he states which systems and conventions he loves, likes, knows or will never play. So for every System/Convention one of these 4 possible settings can be selected. For those who do not bother to fill this profile, the default system should be 5 card majors, nt 15-17 and conventions stayman, transfers and backwood. Including transfers will create fewer problems than excluding them, I think. There should be a message for new accounts that encourages to fill out the profile, or maybe even the profile dialog should pop up immediately when a new account logs in for the first time. It should be possible to copy the profile from another account, or even simply link it to another account, which causes changes in that other account to be effective in this account automatically. When a partnership is formed at a normal table or for a tourney, the software automatically compiles a cc from the profiles of both players. Of course, a convention one of them will never play is off in the cc, no matter how badly the other loves this convention. If one player loves a convention, it is on if the other at least knows it. And a convention is also on if both like it. A convention that both just know or one likes and the other just knows is off. If there are 2 conventions of a group that are loved by one partner and know by the other, the one loved by the player with the lower self-assigned level should be selected. Both players should take a look at this automatically-compiled cc of course immediately after the partnership is established. It should be possible to delete or add a convention. Deleting is easy: just right-click on it and select delete, and it is off - partner is automatically notified. To add, there is an add button that displays the whole list, and by a click the convention is automatically suggested to the partner, who can either accept or reject it. Of course, in the add list you will find no convention the partner will never play, and the others are marked with the level the partner has assigned to it (love, like, know). If a partnership decides to change an automatically-compiled cc, it should be automatically saved on the server and restored when these partners meet again. Of course, only the changes made need to be stored, reducing the storage space needed for this. For opps, the contents of the cc should be displayed in a window that still displays something useful if its width is set so that it fits left or right the main BBO window on a 1024x768 display. Common abbreviations (like capp for Cappelletti) should be used in order to save space and make all conventions fit in a small window without scrolling. Like today, it should be possible to switch to your own cc. A left-click on any convention should open a browser window that displays an explanation for this convention. This window should have a meaningful title, so that it can be minimized and reopened with one click from the taskbar, as loading the information again might take some time in case of a slow connection. An enhancement: There should be a formalized language that makes it possible to define when a convention aplies. To each convention such a definition could be attached, and the BBO software could recognize that a call fits the definition and auto-alert and explain it to opps. Karl

Yes, of course, it should be possible to reward penalies to a pair indipendently of a specific board, and to assign different scores for N/S and E/W. In the meantime, many directors, including myself, look at the tournament status frequently at least during the last minute of the round, and remember which tables are still playing. Easy to do the adjustments then. Furthermore, you can visit the the playing tables say 2 minutes before the end, and, if you see a board where they could claim but instead keep thinking, do the adjustment even before the round finishes, thereby enabling the software to compute the correct seating for the next round if it is swiss. If you adjust the last playing table this way, you also trigger the next round by doing so, making everyone else happy. Karl

I go to the lobby and right-click on the navigation arrow in the upper right corner. Then I can select the first letter of partner's name and usually no more navigation is needed. Of course it would be much more convenient if I could click on partner's name on the tourney page. Karl

So a cheater needs 2 computers I guess.... So a cheater probably has to find a table to "self-kib" that plays in about the same tempo,being on the same board as the cheater I guess.... There is no such problem for the first board of a round where the hand appears for all players and kibs at the same time in a clocked tourney. Then, the self-kibber can make a screenshot and look at that any time he likes. Of course, if he plays too fast, maybe when he starts to play the second board it is not yet displayed at the table where he is kibbing - but easy for the self-kibber to change tables in such a case. So I consider this a convenient way to cheat if you have 2 computers, and the only way to cheat in an indi event. But - this would never be an argument for me to ban kibs, as I think only very few are cheating this way, but many like to kib. Instead, we should find cheaters by the strange bidding and play they make which is always successful - kibbers can help to find this. Karl

What North said about the law was rubbish, others have commented on this. When considering if East submitted an unauthorized information (UI), we should first ask ourselves what the normal tempo in this situation is. When seeing partners double, East was prepared to bid 2♣ as a relay. The 4♥ bid by north is surely surprising, and time is needed to consider what to do now. How much time this is depends a lot on the skill of the player. Beginners tend to ask themselves if they are still required to bid some sort of relay though opp did not pass. I would not object 20 seconds here, but 40 seconds seem quite long. But: How did North measure this time? Did the other players agree to this? If you do not look at a clock the feeling of the time elapsed is quite subjective, and different people or even the same person at differnt times will give differnent estimations of the length of a given period of time. Ok, lets assume by some means it was possible to prove that East needed significantly longer than "normal tempo" for the pass after 4♥. What conclusions can West draw, and what bids are suggested by those conclusions? Maybe East thought about bidding a long suit of his own. This would not make bidding !D more attractive, as East tends to have fewer ♦ cards then. And if Easts suit was !C, bidding anything else will probably be too high. Or maybe East thought about a double (not very likely, but anything is possible if you do not know North). In this case, bidding 5♦ would be stupid. Or East just has some points and did not know what to do. Here, too, I would not try 5♦ and fail, while 4!H might be down already. You can add the possiblity that East was not thinking at all, but it was an internet problem or East was distracted in this moment. Conclusion: Nothing what East might have thought about made the 5♦ bid more attractive for West, and this means he did not make use of the UI, if there was one. But I doubt that we can call it "information" as there were so many different possible reasons for thinking and West had no way to tell which was the one thay applied here. UI by bidding out of tempo should apply online, too, but there are more uncertainties here than in f2f. "... at your own risk" does apply for the innocent side. But this was not the problem here; we were discussing if it was legal for West to bid 5♦, assuming there was an UI, which is not sure. Jillibean, you should have stated in your original post what the result of the 5♥ contract was. I assume it was -1, but if it was made, then we have no case at all. Karl

When I have finished a round I sometimes like to discuss the boards immediately with my partner, or chat with him about something else. This kind of conversation can become very disturbed by tons of tourney chat. And I have not yet figured out why tourney chat is important to me. An exception are tourneys with playing directors of course, where tourney chat is the best available means of communication with the director. But also there I would prefer private chat with the director if it was available. Karl

At the point when the 2♣ is alerted as "forced", it is clear that the redouble must be some kind of takeout, because if the redouble was strong, it should be allowed to be passed. If either North or South was unsure what to expect, they could have asked both opps by private chat. Of course, the redouble should have been alerted even though West did not excactly know what it should mean, but at least he was sure that partner would not think he is strong and pass. But fortunately for him, North could not make any use of this information immediately after the redouble, and after the next bid and its explanation N/S should be aware of what was going on. If they were not aware, I doubt that they would ever have reached 3nt with all alerts. Karl

It would be sufficient that the main window is moved to the foreground and the movie window is moved to the background when a new round starts. I would dislike the opportunity to access the movie while I play, because there are frequent opportunities to do so while some opp is red or thinking. With sound on, it is no problem at all to notice when it is your turn. Karl

Even fast players have a problem with unclocked if they happen to play against a slow pair or against a pair where the substitution took some time. The fast pair is dragged down into the slow group and cannot escape anymore. This happened to me a short while ago, resulting in waisting half an hour for waiting. And even if you finish an unclocked tourney in a shorter time than you need for a comparable clocked tourney, you have to wait very long for the result. Running 7 min/board clocked tourneys I would not recommend as this creates too much work for the directors doing the adjustments. But you could easily run 7 or even 6 min/board tourneys if the suggestions presented here 11 months ago were implemeted. Karl

The information that he is playing lavinthal, was this public or private chat? Did you or your partner asked him about the carding or not? Assuming private chat and information given without being asked along with the ♠2, this is not ok. There is no obligation at this point of the game to inform opps about carding if they did not ask. So I interpret this as actively misleading opps - a severe foul. No problem of course if it was given in response to a question by North or South. About a director: he really should inform the participants about his decisions, and he should be available for questions after the tourney, especially if he directs a paid event. Karl

The checkbox should be named "director might be playing", and it should not be possible to set this after the first pair has registered to the tourney. Consequently, if the box is not checked it should not be possible for the director to register. Reason for the naming is: Imagine I want to run a tourney for the members of my local club, which results in a very small numer of tables. As I do not exactly know how many pairs will be there, I wait until the tourney has started, and if there is a sitout pair, I sub in a friend and myself. So when I create the tourney I am not sure if I will be playing or not, but I should be forced to check the option if I am considering to play as a sub. If this box is not checked, everybody who registers should be sure that a non-playing director will be available. Therefore it should be possible to change it to playing director only as long as the tourney is still empty. Karl

I would not go that far. As "no pyches" is stated, maybe the td was eager to find and punish psyches, even if they are not there. No special relationship to the NS pair needed for that.

Hi Fred and Uday, the bug I am going to report has been there quite a long time and is easy to reproduce, but I did not bother to report it until now, sorry. Maybe you already know about it, but I never saw it mentioned in the forum, and maybe it is a good idea that others know about it and are able to avoid it if it is too difficult to fix it. When a hand is finished at a teaching table, a message is displayed in the lower left corner of the table area saying "klick here for lesson text" (maybe this is a little different; re-translated from German). When you klick there, the hand is displayed in another format, maybe accompanied by some text if any was entered along with the hand. Lets call this display "lesson display". You have to klick again in order to return to the normal table display. While the lesson display is there, if the teacher klicks on the "Send" button in the movie window in order to restart the hand from the beginning, BBO displays both the "subsequent hand will be randomly dealt" dialog, and at the same time a message that indicates that the hand is being loaded, along with a cancel button. You hear the ticking sound indicating that BBO is busy, but you hear it forever - until you click the cancel button, thereby exiting BBO. I have a screenshot of this, please ask for it if required. When I tried this, I also tried to send the hand when the lesson screen is not yet displayed because I did not yet click after finishing the hand. In this case, I accidently exit BBO, too, as the offline movie display functionallity of netbridgevu is activated. Of course you can easily avoid this bug by not sending a hand while the lesson display is about to be displayed or while it is being displayed. At any other time sending a hand works just fine. But if you send at the wrong time, it is not nice to lose the teaching table, and none of the students is aware of what has happened. There is another little bug in this area: When you start to type while the lesson display is there, the message is directed to the lobby and not to the table. Karl

I like the old font more than the new one. About the format, I dislike that there is a different leaderboard for each section. This would only be justified if the overall strength of the sections differs significantly, but as the players cannot control in which section they play, all sections should probably have the same strength. The only valid reason for differen leaderboards are tourneys where half the plairs only play North/South and the other half only play East/West. There, we should see a North/South leaderboard and a East/West leaderboard, and there should be no overall leaderboard at all. Karl

An adjustment should not depend on what others did with that board. So as a director, I do not need this feature. But for the players it would be nice if results from other tables appear in the movie like they do in the main bridge club. Karl

If I switch the language to German, the suits are German with English pronounciation, but the numbers are still English. If I type something in German it just sounds horrible. Maybe the software should analyze what language is used in chat, and if it is not English, better refrain from talking. Karl

Hi Helene All what you say is true. However, in bridge clubs usually there are players with significantly different skills, and they are played MP everywhere. Why? Because outstanding results have a much greater impact on the scores of the others at IMP than at MP. This makes everything more random. And this is true for the IMPs at BBO, too. So in my opinion, MP results tell you more exactly what you achieved than IMP results do. I agree that MP is also more challenging. Karl