mink

Hi DrTodd, yes, the problem that you are refering to does exist. However, I really doubt that people would not go for higher ratings because nobody else can see them. They would still go for them! They would do it even without any reason, but the way you propose it, there is a reason: with a low rating you have fewer tables where you could possibly join. Currently, if my pickup partner makes stupid mistakes in 3 boards in a row, I just think he might be having a bad day. With a rating system I might think I should really leave now because he ruins my rating. I would not like that people think this way. The only solution to your example problem I can see is you and your partner leave and open another table. Karl

Here is another suggestion: As I already wrote in the German thread, the translation of skill levels (Beginner, Novice ...) to German resulted in words where the German reader would not be able to tell which level is higher. Probably the same might be true in other languages. Meanwhile, I saw another problem: People are refering to these levels in table descriptions and in chat. Having different level designations in different languages would make this impossible. So I suggest to either leave the levels in English and do not translate them (preferred), or precede the levels by a Letter (e.g. A:World Class, B:Expert, ... X:Private). Or simply use the letters to specify the Levels and explain the meaning somewhere in the Help or Library. Karl

It is correct of course, but simply sounds funny. Is "Ich gebe alles Stiche ab." already too long? Nice solution! However, it should read "... an mink's Tisch. ..." Maybe it was just the text the claimer entered manually as an explaination. This occurs so seldom that I am not used to it. Karl

When the final results were diplayed in the movie, there was no % figure displayed left to "Your score". I switched to English and it was still not displayed. The ranking was displayed all right both in German and in English. I completely exited the program then and invoked it again with the English setting, but there was no score again. Seems to be a problem with all languages (I really tried all). The word "Restrictions" in the tourney information popup is not translated. Should be "Einschränkungen" in German, though everybody would understand "Restrictions", too. Displaying the first page of "Bridge Base Standard" generates a high system load. Everything becomes normal again after clicking on "Bridge Base Standards System Notes" or when going back to the "Explore Bridge!" display. Karl

6. "Advanced" was translated to "Fortgeschritten", and "Intermediate" was translated to "Erfahren". Nobody would know if Erfahren is better then Fortgeschritten or the other way round. Maybe better translate intermediate to "Durchschnittlich", as "Mittelmäßig" has a negative touch. 7. "Anfänger" and "Neuling" have the same problem. I cannot think of a solution here. Maybe it would be the best not to translate these categories at all. The English words should be just fine for most Germans, as all except advanced are similar to words in German. 8. In a claim statement I saw the word "all" which was simply superfluous there. But in general, the claim statements were ok. Karl

Hi Fred, I think I better write my suggestions here than by email, so that others who observe the same can read this and need not report the same thing again. General observation is that everything works fine, and it was a lot of fun hearing the program talk German to me. Most translations were fine. Here is a list of what should be improved in my oppinion, I (and hopefully others too) will extend this if I find more. 1. In the movie display the headline "Duplcate Results" is translated to "Kopieren Ergebniss". This re-translates to "copy result" which nobody would understand neither in German nor in English. A good translation I think would be "Boardzettel" ("traveller sheet"). 2. When a player concedes all tricks it says "Ich verliere alles" ("I lose all"), which sounds like you just lost you last Euro at the casino. Better: "Ich gebe alle Stiche ab." 3. In the login dialog where you can type in the user-id and the user-id and the password, "Benutzername" is just a bit too long to fit there. I think "Spielername" ("Player name") would be fine, too. 4. The yellow pop-up telling you "Click for private chat. Right click to set status." was translated to "Privater Chat - Status setzen - Rechte Maustaste". I doubt that a normal new user would conclude that the first option is achieved by left-clicking on the name. I suggest "Klicken: links für Chat, rechts für Status". Should fit in there. 5. In the upper part of this yellow popup where the text "Mirja is playing at ralle's table in the Main Bridge Club." is displayed, the German translation omits the word "table", which sounds strange then. I would literally translate this: "Mirja spielt an ralle's Tisch im Hauptbridgeclub." Not that it should read "im" if it is the main Bridge Club. With private or public clubs it should read "... im Club 'The Beginner/Intermediate Lounge'". The Translation for players at tourney tables is fine. I shall add more after I have played a tourney. Karl

It would be suffient that appearing in the sublist is delayed until the current board is completed at all tables. If I consider to enter the sublist of a tourney, I first check how many boards are left to play by kibbing for a second just in order to see the current board number. If this would prevent me from entering the sublist, some other means should be availabe to get the required information. For example, some phrase like "Tourney will finish in 25 Minutes according to current settings" could be displayed in the tourney information pop-up. Karl

All quotes of McBruce: This is also true for face-to-face players, and it works there. Could be implemented similar in software. Extending the time for a board should be an exception and only be done if a large number of tables will probably not catch the deadline. Unlike face-to-face tourneys, the same board is played at all tables online, and it may be a difficult one. This would only be an aid to directors that a computer system is able to provide. When directing face-to-face, I watch and find out those who tend to be slow, and I can easily ask, so I find out what to adjust if a whole board is missed. If all tables finish early, a new round starts right away even with the existing software. There is nothing else needed. Disallowing director calls at any time is ridiculous. Starting early gives an unfair advantage to pairs that happen to be matched against another early-finished pair. The 4-minute rule is already established, except for that ave= is assigned automatically. The only change needed here is that software assigns ave? taking into account which pair (maybe both) caused the delay. Implementing "late play" would be rather costly and not worth the effort. Sounds to me like you are proposing to have new laws that are hard to implement. The 'time-vulnerable' idea is simply crazy in my oppinion, sorry. Karl

Hi, not sure if this subject was already mentioned, but this is what just happened to me: I completed a tourney that I joined as a sub. Then I was invited twice for the same tourney again. When I refused the second time I was told that I am no longer on the sub list for that tourney. But I should have better been removed there automatically the in the moment I joined this tourney for the first time. I would like extend this suggestion: Please remove a player from any sub-list in the moment he is successfully subbed into a tourney! Because what happened to me was I had clicked to sub in 2 tourneys. After I had played 4 boards in one of them I had completely forgotten of course that I was in the sublist of the other one. So when waiting for the result for the first one I was suddenly auto-subbed into the second one and had to play 3 more boards there. Fortunately, it was no problem for me this time. Ok, here is another one: If some player is not responding but also not red, it is not possible to sub him the convenient way with just clicking and invitation - or maybe I just did not find out so far how to do it. My suggestion is that the system sets up a timer for each player when it is his turn to bid, play or answer a claim. Timer starts at say 150 seconds (maybe make this a function of "minutes per board") and counts down. If it reaches 0 the client is pinged, and the player turns red in case of no response to the ping. If the ping succeeds, a dialog is displayed that asks the player "Are you still there?" Player has 15 seconds to click "yes", and if he does not, he is replaced by "sitout", thus enabling the director or partner to perform a convenient subbing. This way, directors would know that it is never necessary to sub a non-red player, and all subbing could be done with invitations. Karl

hi Al, unfortunately, at the time you are in BBO I am normally still sleeping - seldom get up before 9am CET. But I can describe how I do it: When the clock shows 2 or 1 minutes left, I display tourney status in order to learn what tables are still playing. If I think too many tables are playing I add 2 minutes in order to avoid too many adjustments. After the round is completed, I visit all tables that maybe did not finish, consult the movie and adjust. Of course, if there are too many calls that have to be served prior to the adjustments, maybe I cannot do all adjustments during the next round, so they are sometimes delayed, and sometimes I can do them only after the tourney has ended, consulting myhands then. In survivor tourneys adjusting is sometimes not possible as tables are removed by the cut. That is one reason why I try to avoid survivor tourneys and sometimes argue with directors who run them with high cut values (not such a problem if the value is low and only few tables disappear). If I host I have 1 board per round and even then do the adjusting. But I admit my regular tourney is rather small, though I do the same when I run or co-direct a larger tourney. As for the problem to determine who is responsible for the delay, this is not an issue in most cases as there are no alternative scores I have to chose from, but instead it is obvious how the last tricks will devellop. So it is very seldom I really have to ask player, and sometimes it is not necessary as I had been at the table before because there was a problem and I already know what was going on. There is another thought that did strike my mind which is related to unfinished board - have a look at Law 8B: "In general, a round ends when the Director gives the signal for the start of the following round; but if any table has not completed play by that time, the round continues for that table until there has been a progression of players." If the intention of the creators of the laws was that the sponsoring organization is allowed to abandon playing of unfinished boards when the director gives the signal, I am sure they would have explicitly stated this possibility. So I conclude that the current procedure in clocked, swiss and survivor tourneys does not comply with law 8B. In order to minimize the effect of this I think directors should always adjust all unfinished boards if an adjustment is possible. At least in cases where the line of play is clear the players get the same result as if the software would follow law 8B (which I have suggested here several times). Karl

Hi Al, there is another possibility to get it 2 down: ♥A won, ♥ ruffed, ♠ won with A, ♥ ruffed, second ♣ trick ruffed. I now declarer ruffs the last ♥ and North refuses to ruff 2 ♣ tricks now, in trick 10 ♣ can be ruffed by South, overruffed by West and again overruffed by North. Dummy wins ♦A then, but declarer has to concede one of the last 2 tricks to North. Found out and proved with help of Deep Finesse. This is not unlikely to happen. So I would adjust to -2 if I was able to see this line of play in time. I would not consider that East plays his clubs before drawing trump. Karl

In my oppinion, this is a good example to support my policy of adjusting nearly every unfinished board without being asked. Why do I do that? First of all, I can just announce this policy and thereby avoid all calls that request an adjustment and the answers to these calls. This really saves time, as only few players do not call. You also cannot miss calls. Even in cases where the board was not played at all, there is usually one side responsible for this, and so I find out and adjust to ave+ for the non-responsible side. If - like in this case - a pair that does not care to call meets a pair that (probably)does not play when seeing the result will be bad, I do not like at all to let that pair get away with it. Karl

[hv=d=e&v=e&n=st976hqj75d83c963&w=sakq32ht82dt954c8&e=sj854ha63da72ckq5&s=shk94dkqj6cajt742]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Bidding: W N E S # # 1♦ 2♣ 2♠ - - 3♣ 3♦ - 3♠ 4♣ 4♠ - - x xx - - - While directing I found the movie of this hand with only 1 trick played (♣3KA8). I tried to find out what happened and asked West and North. There was no answer by West. This was my chat with North: ->North: what happened in your board 6 - who was slow? North: opps 4!S X -3 they dont play ->North: ok I shall check North: sorry -2 North: not problem with me i play with beginner but it is not honest North: not double but redouble ->North: movie shows that it was your partner's turn to play next card when timeout North: you have to make black list i think ->North: ? ->North: I did not say that I do not belive you - maybe there is an explaination then, after tourney was finished: ->North: North, I am still waiting for your explanation about what happened in board 6 pls no answer ever - maybe he blacklisted me and therefore could not hear me. I then tried to ask East, but he obviously had gone away from his computer after the tourney, so he could answer my request only long time after the end of the tourney - here is the chat: ->East: hi, are you there? ->East: hello East, can you hear me???????????????????????????????????? ->East: hello East, can you hear me???????????????????????????????? ->East: hello East, can you hear me??????????????????????????????????? East (Lobby): now i can hear u ->East: I like to ask you a question about board 6 in yulek's tourney, do you have time? East (Lobby): sure ->East: I just would like to know why there was only 1 trick played East (Lobby): sry i will have 2 see the board again to recall ->East: it was 4!Sxx by your partner ->East: opps were celmare and redale East (Lobby): yes only 1 trick was played ->East: I did ask your partner during the tourney but he did not answer ->East: had no time to ask you during the tourney East (Lobby): only 1 trick was played ->East: yes, but why? ->East: who caused the delay? East (Lobby): is it important NOW ->East: I am just curious because I did not get an answer by your partner and an unsatisfactory answer by your opps ->East: of course I cannot adjust now ->East: as the tourney already disappeared ->East: but maybe I shall write in the Forum about it East (Lobby): do u log everything ->East: I can only log what I see, and I was not at the table when the board was played ->East: I log all chat of course ->East: I stumbled over that board when playing was already over East (Lobby): ok ->East: if you do not want to talk about it, it is ok with me East (Lobby): pl ask ->East: my question still is: who caused the delay so that only 1 trick could be played? East (Lobby): i am free East (Lobby): i had bad connection so i cannot be very sure.but i think it was opps ->East: was it during bidding or after the bidding? East (Lobby): both ->East: ok, thank you East (Lobby): wlcm As I understand it, it sounds like East wanted to protect his partner and did not like to tell the full truth. Why else did he ask if I "log everything"? North was obviously convinced that E/W did not play, but refused to explain why it was South's turn to play when the round ended. But it is entirely possible that the delay occurred when the dummy came down, and East continued to play just before the end of the round with one minute on the clock. Even if I cannot really find out what happened, it is a shame that EW got away with a ave- here - if it was scored -1 or -2 they would have lost many more IMPs than the 3 IMPs generated by the ave-, and N/S would have got a much better score. Maybe I should have adjusted to -1 at once and then investigate about who was responsible for the delay, and maybe adjust again later to -2 if it turned out that it was indeed East who caused the delay. Oppinions? Karl

It is always ok with me if somebody request to adjust an unfinished board. I do not pay much attention to what score is requested, as I always look at the movie and decide on my own (sometimes wrong and players correct me then - sometimes right but still players try to correct me :). I would think here that the request to adjust to -1 simply was an error by the requester. Deep Finesse says that there are only 9 tricks available. However, discarding is a bit tricky for E/W. Therefore I would adjust in favor of the fast players, if I have time to find out who was fast and who was slow. If I cannot, I shall stick to 9 tricks. Karl not an expert - sorry

I also have rejected underclaims from time to time. And I believe that, if the director learns that an underclaim had been accepted, he should adjust unconditionally. The same is true in my oppinion if more tricks than possible are claimed, and the claim is accepted by accident. I recall that that happened to me once and I called the director and said that I accidently agreed to the claim, but he refused to adjust. I think this is wrong. All this of course only applies for tricks that cannot be lost/won by rational play. Karl

Hi McBruce, I like to answer to your suggestion that the playing should end if a claim is rejected. What we are talking about here - declarer following a different line of play than his claim (with or without statement) implies and using UI that way - does occur very seldom. My observation is the most rejections are made because of not seeing the line of play of a failsafe claim. Far fewer rejections are correct, and the claimer follows an obvoius line of play and thereby gets the number of tricks he should have got anyway. Even if there are several lines of play, in some of these cases the claimer will find an unlucky line, so no reason for opps to call the director. If software would really disallow the playing to continue after an rejected claim, the vast majority of cases that now would have to be handled by the director would be trivial ones, and only a small minority of cases are such where the director is really needed. I consider a minute of director's time to be a lot in a tourney. And I have no idea how in surviver tourney the software should handle such pending claims when deciding on who has to leave. Therefore I suggest the following: The software should add the claim statement and the time of the claim to the .lin file, so that it pops up in the chat area, e.g. "Player xyz claimed all remaining tricks after card 2 of trick 7, saying: 'crossruff'". Players are encouraged to play on after a rejected claim without calling the director. If, after the board is finished, a player thinks that the claimer chose a superior line of play when several possible lines of play were available, he can call the director, who will handle the case as if the play had ended after the claim and disregard what was actually played after the claim. This is essentially that the playing in fact ends after the claim as required by the laws, but the directors relieved of the majority of cases where a correct result can be achieved by just playing on. Karl

Deleted immediately - was nonsense - Karl

This would not help against cheaters. For them, it is sufficient to kibitz at any table, because each board is played at all tables simultaneously. The method of kibitzing using another computer is only possible if you have 2 computers that are located in a way that you can see both, and that both machines have an internet connection. I doubt that this is the case at only few homes, and that only few players desire to cheat in the first place. The set intersection should be rather small. In order to chase cheaters, there is no other way than to look at many boards of a suspected pair or individual. Thereby, you could get them all, no matter what method they use. I do this from time to time even if I do not suspect them, just because of a good score in a tourney. But I was not successful so far. There is an argument against disallowing kibitzers in a tourney which has not been mentioned yet I think: If I consider to sub, I like to know how many boads are left to be played. So far I have found no other way than kibitz a table for a second in order to see the current board number. For this reason, I shall not sub in tourneys with kibitzers disallowed. Karl

I fully agree with DrTodd and McBruce and strongly disagree with the other posters. There are some prinicples governing the laws of dupicate bridge. Probably the most imporant one is that the side that the director should try to prove that an error by the offending side did not cause a disadvantage for the innocent side, if he considers not to adjust. It would be wrong if the director attempts to prove that the innocent side was damaged through the error, finds annother possible explaination where the damage might be caused by other reasons, and therefore does not adjust. Example: a Verdi opening of 3C (meaning long diamonds, weak hand) was not alerted. Response was 3nt, which was the contract. The defender fails to lead Club, and so the declarer makes without any Club stopper. There is absolutely no prove that the declarer would have lead Club it the 3C bid had been alerted and explained. However, this is a crystal-clear case for an adjustment, as you cannot prove that the defender would not have lead Club even if the 3C had been alerted. The only possible case where no adjustment is made is if the defender to lead first is void in clubs. If you think we should disregard such principles in order to save time in online bridge, I could not disagree more. It was a good idea to implement the claiming in such a way that playing can continue with opps seeing all 4 hands if the claim is rejected. However, this should not lead to results that are better for the claiming side than a directors decision would have been, if the play did not continue after the claim. If opps think the claimer achieved a better result than he deserved, they should call the director, and the director should rule as if playing after the claim had never happened. This way, we save time in 99% of the cases, but no harm is done to the innocent side. Karl

Allowing players to leave a tourney early if they have a bad day sounds reasonable. However, I think you should be allowed to finish the tourney if you reach e.g. 47% of MP or more. So about only 25% of the players should be excluded at most. If you have 5 rounds then the cut happens after round 2, 3 and 4. If you set it to 10%, you will already exclude 27% of the players before the last round. I consider that the highest value acceptable. If you like to allow all who reach at least 40% of the matchpoints to finish the complete tourney, then with 3 cuts you should set the value to 2% per cut, asuming that only 6% of the pairs normally have a result worse than 40% of the MPs available. If there are more rounds, the cut value should be even lower. 0% cut is an idea if you do not like the subbing business, as pairs where a player is missing are excluded at round switch. However, this happens also if the connection was lost immediately before the round switch and regained immediately after - not fair. And this does not help if a player is non-responisve but not disconnected. Karl

If you have sound on you hear when it is your turn to bid for the second hand. I like to be able to post-mortem-check the previous hand immediately, before I make my first bid of the next hand, if I have time to do that. The problem would be gone if thinking time was recorded by the system and the side that needed longer time than the other receives an unfavorable result, if there is any doubt what the adjustment should be. Karl

Dear Uday, on Feb 16 in thread "Best Movement" (http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=2182) you said "TY. I will look into replacing the standard clocked movement with this one." Of course I understand that you have a lot of work, and probably you simply did not come to this point of your to-do-list. But I take this opportunity to ask you maybe increase the priority of this item, as small tourneys could be run without replays for sure if you implemented that. Thank you. Karl

I think what Lukasz likes to suggest in the first place is to split the "tournaments" link in the "Play Bridge!" section in "tournaments scheduled" and "tournaments in play or completed". I consider this a very good suggestion, and it should not be very complicated to implement. Karl

Hi Mirjam, each country can have own system regulations. They may be different according to the kind of tourney played, e.g. club, regional, national. As I am German, I do not know the Dutch regulations of course. Lets asume there is such a regulation for Muiderberg. Now there are 2 possible ways the regulations might state how the case should be handled: 1. Automatical Average Minus (40%) whenever the opening is used with a hand not suitable, or the result reached at the table if it is worse than 40% for the offending side. In this case, this should inclucde forbidding to psyche with Muiderberg. 2. Cosider it a misinformation of opps if Muiderberg was on the card and or explained but the hand of the opener does not meet the requirements. In the second case, there cannot be an automatical artificial score. Instead, the director has to judge if the innocent side was damaged by the misinformation. He has to look for a way how this might have happened. If he finds one or more, he adjusts to the best result for the innocent side that might have reasonably been reached if they knew what the real agreement was. However, I do not think the dircector can automatically asume that your partner knew you would deviate from the Muiderberg convention. If your partner knows the correct definition of Muiderberg and did not play with you frequently, this assumption should not hold, as he was not aware that you didn't know the regulations. But if you both thought that it was legal to have a 6-card-major when opening Muiderberg, then you have a better knowledge of your system than opps could possibly have when hearing "Muiderberg". But if even if the director thinks that your opps did not have the correct infomation about your version of Muiderberg, it is not very likely that they were damaged by that lack of information, so in most cases the score will problably be left unchanged. This whole thing is not about punishment, but cares for the innocent side that there is no disadvantage caused by a possible misinformation. Punishment would only come to effect if you deliberately misinformed your opps. Director should be able to prove that this is true. In this case the score would be adjusted as usual but you would be awarded an additional "procedural penalty". My personal oppinion is that if Dutch regulations really say that Muilderberg is always exactly 5 cards in a major plus a minor, this is not a good idea. It should be plossible to slightly deviate from the convention (e.g. bad 6-card major suit) without being acused to have and undisclosed agreement with your partner. Karl

I also vote that making the client display messages in several languages is not worth the effort. I have introduced several average players from my local bridgeclub to BBO. At least 2 of them had little or no knowledge of the English language and they both managed to play without much trouble. Even if the client talks the native language of the user, most other players still do not. I think this is a much greater handicap for a non-English-speaking person. The client has only a limited set of messages, and they are soon understood. But people talk whatever they like, and it is a great disadvatage if you do not understand them. Karl