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When a new table is created, the table settings of the last table where the creator has been are taken as a default. So, all people that just click on create table and then ok will probably get an IMPs table, as it is most likely they have visited an IMPs table before. As there are so few MP tables, you see less duplicate results in your MOVIE when playing MP. And after having played 16 boards, you see very few in the next boards as you probably generate a new board each time. Maybe it would help to make MP the default option when creating a table. All who do not care will have MP tables then, and the ratio IMP:MP tables will be more balanced this way. Karl

The most amazing thing about BBO is that although we have many more players and lots of new features, the system still runs stable and fast and the start has even become faster. Very few errors were introduced when issuing new versions, all were fixed quickly, and none of them ever bothered me. This is much much better than I would expect from a project like this considering how few people work there and how few cash they earn by it. Thanks a lot! Karl

You can only see players that are online and visible. You can also see invisible players that are currently playing if you happen to see the table in a table list. There are no means to search for real names. Karl

Find you tourney here: http://bridgebase04.bridgebase.com:81/tour...=All%20Tourneys Right-Click on it and save it to a file. Edit this file with any editor, or write a programm that re-formats it as desired. Karl

When designing an alerting policy, about bids that are clearly not natural but the meanig has not been discussed or forgotten, there are two possible ways to handle this: 1. Must not be alerted. But this is a problem for opps, e.g. if bidding goes 1♣ (maybe 2 cards in seldom cases) - 2♣ overcall not alerted, you cannot know if the 2♣ is natural or opps just do not remember what they discussed, but are sure that it does not show clubs. 2. Must be alerted and explained "not discussed" or "do not remember" or "There are 2 possible meanings, but I do not recall on which one we agreed". Now, if there is no alert, opps can be sure that it shows clubs and are not forced to ask and thereby give UI to partner. I clearly think that the second solution is superior. However, this is a problem in face-to-face-bridge only. Online, with self-alerts, I would expect that if I do not know what we agreed on for some clearly artificial bid, I simply do not use it. Karl

First of all, if partners play together the first or the second time, I would not expect that there is some understanding about the 4♣ bid, and consequently there should be no alert. But if this is an established partnership, it is not necessary to have discussed this kind of bid in order to create a partnership understanding. Rather, you have an idea of your partners skills and bidding habits, and therefore you expect your partner to understand that 4♣ is simply lead-directing and does not necessarily show a second suit. If you thought he might think this shows a second suit, you would have to worry that he competes too high in case he has Clubs, too, and thinks both sides have a double fit. Therefore, I would have alerted and explained "lead-directing". And as a director, if I believed that the partnership is not a very new one, I would assume a misinformation - no matter if this results in an adjusted score or not. The arguments that 4♣ is just bride do not hold. Nearly everybody knows and plays that a 2♠ overcall over a 1♦ opening is weak, but still this has to be alerted as it is non-natural. Karl

This is very true for my local club, too :)

I am against changing the behavior of automatical redeals as they are implemented. An automatical redeal occurs if any of the players sitting has seen the hand before, but the hand is kept if a player leaves during play and is replaced by somebody else. Karl

Thanks Julie, excellent suggestion. However, clicking on the name to leave the seat should still work immediately at teaching tables. If a new hand was dealt only if 4 players are sitting, we also would avoid losing a hand due to a kibitzer jumping in. This is especially of value if you play MP, because you will likely be the first table to play the new hand nowadays. Karl

About alerting in an indi, I would rather suggest that there should be no alerts and explanations at all. The exception of course is that the partners happen to be familiar with each other. In this case, they should state this at the beginning of the round and then alert and explain whatever their system is. This policy should be officially announced. This is different from playing with a partner for the first time, but in a pairs event. There, opps cannot know what was discussed in previous rounds or before the start of the tourney, and therefore I would alert e.g. a transfer even if not discussed. Karl

kgr: I usually do it like this: I tell my partner sit down at a table with 2 empty seats. I change the main bridge club view settings to only show tables with friends. This way, when my partner sits down I immediately see that table and can click on the other seat. There are only rare cases where this method fails, mainly because at a permission-required-table I do not get permission. But no problem if it fails - just try again. Finding a table this way ususally is faster than opening a new table and wait for opps. Karl

Hi Fred Sorry that I did not use the correct term. What I meant was that I unchecked the "Show full tables" option in the "View" popup menue in the main bridgeclub before I entered a table by clicking on an empty seat. There was no right click involved. This has never happened before, nor has it happened since. There has been no right click involved. I would guess that this occurs under very seldom and is not a big problem as it was self-repairing after leaving and entering the main, but I just felt you should know about it. Karl

A solution to this would be to play it the following way: Round Boards 1 1&4 2 2&3 3 5&6 4 7&8 5 9&12 6 10&11 7 13&14 8 15&16 This way, in each round there would be 2 boards with opposite vulnerability, so it does not matter if you are N/S or E/W. Karl

Nobody can really know what South's original intentions were. All we are told is that there was a misclick. There is no reason to believe that this information was wrong. Everything else is an interference by us or by West, and if this finally turns out wrong, Law 21A should be applied. But anyway, the double by West is not something suggested by the information "South made a misclick". Rather, I would always pass now because I would think that opps maybe just failed to bid their game. As there is no logical connection between the information and the double, Law 21 cannot be applied at all. Karl

I cannot believe that South's explaination was intended to mislead opps. This would be really ridiculous, you cannot forsee what advantage you might have, but it is likely to cause trouble. So I believe that South really misclicked in some way, and felt that he should tell opps about this. If I had to judge if this would help opps or mislead them, I would rather think that it would help them, so Law 73F2 cannot be applied. Of course, South should not tell anybody, but as long as he does not tell his partner, no harm has been done so far. East/West are allowed to use this information, but at their own risk. Now West, knowing this is a non-undo tourney, likes to change the rules and makes an absurd call in order to help South. This can never work, of course, and West takes the role of the host here, granting an "undo" that is not intended to be allowed by the host. What do you expect North and South to do now? West has done something absurd, and tells opps that he has done something absurd. This is a legal information for North and South. I am quite astonished that some think North and South should do anything else than trying to find the best contract in the given situation, as one always should. The word "sportsmanship" does not not appear in the laws, and it is good so. There is no obligation for anybody to protect opps after they made an error. If you just bid and play, give correct expanations and try not to use any UI, you can never do something wrong. If there was any obligation not to make the best calls if opps make some kind of mistakes, it would be very difficult to draw the line between when is this required and when not. Therefore the best solution is the existing one: it is not required at all. As far as the director is concerend, he could be called by South after the misclick and would tell him just to do nothing, not tell opps about it and live with it. Or the director could have been called by West when seeing the information about the misclick, and West could ask the director if he should double in order to give South a second chance. The director would say, "no, just call what you think is good for your side". But after both sides chose not to call the director when errors could still be prevented, I see nothing what the director should do now after all happened like it did. Karl

Problem 1. I experineced, too - see my post in the "BBO Support Forum" - sorry I posted that one before I read this. Karl

Yesterday in my tourney when I went "BACK" from a table to the list of tables and used tourney chat then in order to make some anouncement, the chat dialog worked but the messages did never appear in the chat area. I tried to leave the tourney and re-enter it, and after that tourney chat worked alright again. This happened several times during this tourney. Last time when the tourney had finished and I was trying to announce the winners. Today in the Main Bridge Club I had switched off the full table. I played at a table and returned to the list of tables. but the list was empty, though I had empty tables, friend and champions still selected. After some seconds, one single table appeared. I used "BACK" again and re-entered the main bridge club, and the tables were displayed again, with the desired filter in effect. Karl

These 26 seconds are too much in my oppinion. And I doubt that you would catch a significant amount of misclicks by this procedure. Karl

I also experienced today that after an installation of 4.2.0 on a machine with no BBO installed before the language was German, but it changed to English when netbridgevu was closed and opened again, even the login dialog was already English. It was no problem to change it back to German with the geared-wheel-dialog. I also had the impression that I have seen this before at some other machine with some older version of netbridgevu. Karl

It is highly unreasonable that anybody really limits his 1!C opening to 10-11 points. So if I saw that alert I would just conclude that this is a poor alert. On the other hand, it looks obvious that West has a minimum opener, if East is able to bid 3nt with a non-opener. Very likely that E-W have below 25 point, especially given the fact that partner overcalled. If they really had more than that it is hard to believe that partner overcalled on level 1. So there is some reason to double that is totally independent of the alert. So if South double, he does that on his own risk, and no adjust shoud be awarded when N-S fail to set the 3nt. Karl

Such a player should be replaced and reported to abuse. I would award ave+ to both pairs then, as the removed player does not benefit from that. The director should use private chat and tell the sub either the tricks played that he cannot see or, if this would be too long, relevant facts about the board, e.g. that a suit in his hand or in the dummy is high or some opp already did not follow a suit. Karl

When creating a new table in the lower right corner of the dialog there are 4 fields where user names can be entered, thereby reserving a seat for that user. So simply put your own name and your partner's name in opposite fields there, and leave the other 2 blank for anybody to sit. If you are planning to accept any opponent there is no need to check "Permission required to join For Players". Karl

If the problem is mainly or partly the overall bandwith that is consumed by providing each client with the current state of all other clients, maybe it is a solution not to include idle players and kibitzers in the players list. Friends and Yellows are an exception, of course. A client does not need to know anything about an idle player or a kibitzer. The only drawback would be that the number of Kibitzers at a table could not be displayed anymore. Keeping the full player list or all players of a user's own country could still be a option, that can switched on by the user when looking for a specific player. When entering a table, of course, the kibitzers at this table need to be added to the list of players monitored. Karl

Great! Then we just need a "Tactical Bid" button, an "I used my judgement" button (this one could be disabled for ACBL tournaments, or automatically be converted to the "Psyche" variety if the bid is 1NT), a "I miscounted earlier" button and a "Yes I really think 6331 is balanced" button. :) Very funny, I admit. But I agree with hotshot here - a psyche button would be an improvement. I can imagine a situaltion where a bid looks like a psyche but could also be artificial and part of the system, but just forgotten to alert. At present, as a TD I would ask the pair that made the bid, but I cannot know if they tell the truth or lie or even can understand English. If a psyche button was available and not used, I can rule that they did not alert. However, the question remains if the work was justified by the benefit. At least maintaining a database of psyches is work, and it could show only the freqency of psyches, which is not very relavant, but the frequency of psyches of the same kind can not be computed easily. I doubt that a tourney director would browse though the hand records when he needs to decide if this psyche was too frequent or not. Karl

I played my first board at October 13 2001. Some players I met that day are still well-known to me, like Gerardo and Booze. Karl