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I imagine that for users that do not work at computers every day it might be difficult to get a list of tables with free seats using the new "View" options - although I think this is no problem for the majority of the users. But for the others I suggest a simple solution: Let's have a new line in the "Play Bridge" screen that reads "Tables with empty seats". This would be really easy to use for all. An additional benefit could be that this list could contains all such tables not only from the main bridgeclub but additionally from all other public clubs (except for the total points club) and maybe even those private clubs where the user is member. In this way, it would be possible to create tables in any bridgeclub which would be recognized by other users, as opposed to the current situation that if I open a table in any public club nobody would ever find me. Having this entry, the "Main bridge club" could be split into e.g a "Social bridge club", "Competitive bridge club" and "Learning bridge club". A property of the learnig bridge club could be that post-mortem discussion of hands is welcome there, and kibitzers are encouraged to share their observations with the players after the hand is finished. A color could be assigned to each of these bridgeclubs, and the scoring column could indicate the color especially when "Tables with empty seats" are displayed. The view menu of the "Tables with empty seats" list could contain an option to select which clubs should be included in the display, in case e.g. somebody wants to see only competitive and learning tables but no social tables. Karl

Hi Fred, I like the new layout a lot! Thanks for this improvement and the many others in the past. I tested with 1024x768. Only one bug found so far: in order to chat with a person privately, I could click on the name in the chat area when I was at a table or in the "play bridge" section. However, when I was in the lobby or in the main bridge club, clicking at a name in the chat area had no effect. In the main bridgeclub, when selecting tables according to skill level, tables with all seats empty were always displayed. This is correct according to the algorithm but maybe it is not really what most users want. Karl

Howell type movements, like all other movements in face to face bridge (except those for barometer tourneys), take care that not only you play against different opps in each round, but also that you play a set of boards that is not used by another table. But that is not what you want in online Bridge Brige, as there each board is played at all tables simultaneously. thereby preventing that you hear information about a board you will play later in the tourney in advance. So the movement in online bridge can be much simpler, like the one Ben presented in this thread. I consider it ideal for clocked tourneys. Karl

Hi Ben, I suggested this type of movement here short after the tourneys started last year. I is not really Howell, though. In face to face bridge it is used for barometer tourneys where you have each board duplicated so that it can be played at all tables simultaneously. As in online bridge a board is always played simultaneously at all tables, the movement could be used for any clocked tournament. I would really recommend to replace the existing clocked movement by this one, as it is nicer for small tourneys and has the additional benefit that the pairs do not all stay on NS or EW like today. The only disadvantage this movement would have had in the past, that it would have been more difficult for the director to locate movies of previous hands, is gone with the latest beta. Karl

I think some slow players do not realize that they are slow but think the others are slow, because their bids and cards are diplayed with a delay. The slow player himself clicks without delay when opp's bid/card is displayed for them. Maybe a solution could be if the server ever records thinking time and connection speed, slow players should be given an indication of their own connection speed. And maybe there should be an option for directors to specify the worst connection speed allowed for the tourney. The server will eliminate a slow pair when the current round ends, or automatically substitute the player in question. Karl

Knowing which software produces errors and which does not is a good way to get an idea which company to pruchase and where to write a new product. It simply serves to know better what is going on in the software market, which is quite an advantage I think. Karl

I would never send a report if a non-Microsoft product chrashes, because this information would help to strenghten Microsoft's position, which is already far too strong. Karl

Hi Uday, this is how I would implement recording times: Client measures that time the player is thinking, just the time between receiving the action of RHO until the players own action. This period of time is sent along with the players action. The server can subtract this from the period of time between the actions as measured by the server, yielding the time the information was busy travelling through the internet. Karl

Great! I saw another new feature: Lock Symbol attached to those tourneys not open for all, and automatical descritption of the kind of restriction imposed. However, I would not show the lock symbol if the host just excludes his enemies - text that states that should be sufficient, and I think most people are nobody's enemies, so they are not affected by that restriction. Karl

hi Ben, about this subject maybe you missed this topic: http://forums.bridgebase.com/in...?showtopic=1812 Karl

hi Sceptic, if I were not able to do adjustments, I would not direct a single tourney. According to my experience, people tend to think most hard if they are in a desperate situaltion and going to have a bad result. Likely this results in missing the deadline for that board and they get an ave-, which is probably better than the score they would have gotten if they finished. For the innocent pair, ave- is a great loss. So I believe that this automatical ave- is very unfair in most cases, and I adjust whenever possible. A much better solution would be, however, if unfinished boards would be played anyway even if the next round has already begun, and the respective pairs start late for next round and will miss a board completely some time if they do not catch up. This would require of course that pairs that caused the delay get an ave- for unfinished boards and innocent pairs get an ave+. And this would require that the software measures the thinking time of each player in order to decide who caused the delay automatically. Karl

Hi Sceptic, here are my tips: Do not take more pairs than you can handle. Set the playing time to a value where most players are able to finish. If a round contains a difficult board, maybe add 2 minutes for this round only. Ask the players to send you a private message when they need an adjustment. This should contain the board number and the table number (at small clocked non-swiss tourneys you can find out the table number yourself). Carefully look at the movie in order to find out what the result would have been if players would have continued. If you are sure, make the adjustment. If there are several possible scores, I ask which pair caused the delay. If both pairs agree on this point, I take a score that is in favor of the innocent pair. If both pairs don't agree, maybe you can ask kibs or find out in some other way. Last resort is not to adjust but leave the ave-. In the last round, give some more time so all can finish and you do not have to adjust after the tourney. Maybe you can adjust the last tables while they are still playing but a player has a problem. Other director calls have higher priority than adjusting. So maybe you do not get all adjustments done before the tourney ends. In this case tell players that the results will not be final when the tourney ends and do the adjustments after the tourney with myhands. BTW most of the adjustments I made were obvious and could have been made automatically by software if there was software for this purpose. It would also help if there was a list of ave- boards available so that it would be unnecessary to be asked by players. Karl

Hi Uday, you said: "Adjustments made after the tourney has completed are not reflected in every players individual results." I asume you mean by that that the MOVIE display remains the same for a player once the tourney is over. But it should be consistent at that time, that means there should be no dicrepancy between the average of all board % figures and the "Your score" figure in the movie. If adjustments really were made after the end of the tourney, this "Your score" MOVIE figure should be different from the corresponding figure in the leaderboard, but they were the same in this case. If you wanted to say that only the per board figures do not change in case of adjustments, but the "Your score" figure is updated, your explaination would make more sense. However, I doubt that a difference of 5% between "Your score" and the average of the per board figures can be explained by adjustments for other pairs, as they should change this score only a little and in both directions. Karl

hi, I calculated it 3 times using 2 different calculators and then again without a calculater and I always get .6113 - however, according to all that I know it should be exactly the figure that is displayed at the top of the screenshot. Did you receive a message during that tourney that the director adjusted a score? If not, I cannot think of any other explaination for this but a software error. If I add the % figures from myhands, I get an even higher value, but as we know these figures are not as valid as those from the movie. Karl

Rain: In general, you are right. But I was referring to the situation where a slam has been bid and made at one table only. In this case, the overtrick does not matter at all, as in both cases it is a top score for the declarer. Karl

Rain: If you go to the table where an unfinished board was played, you can replay it up to the point where it was interrupted. If this is a claim situation where there is no doubt how many of the remaining tricks each side will win, I would always assign an adjusted score. If there is doubt, but I know that only one pairs had connection problems during this round, I would assign an adjusted score as would result from lucky but reasonable play of the other pair. And finally, if a table was the only one where 6 Hearts were bid, and the contract always makes, and the only uncertain thing is if there is an overtrick or not, I would of course adjust the score to = or +1 (makes only a small difference perhaps at imps and none at MP). However, you can only make adjustments if there are no director calls pending or after the tourney has finished. Karl

hi Dusan, it seems you are judging the scoring of a tourney by what you see in myhands. As Uday pointed out in several posts, this is not acurate in respect to assigned artificial scores - playes should look at the movie after the event. When the whole tourney thing started I had a closer look at the scoring and found it was ok, apart from a bug I reported, which I believe was corrected by Uday long ago. Karl

Hi Ben, I would call it "team tourney" what you are proposing as opposed to the team matches already implemented. But I doubt that team tourneys would be very popular, because it is hard enough to find 8 players for a team match, and I wonder if you really find 3 or 4 or 5 teams for a team tourney. On the other hand, if you find more than 5 teams, there is the problem that you would have to play so many boards that it is unlikely that all the players like to play for so long. And you need a tourney director for the subbing, because it is no fun to have a sitout for a whole team match (which should last for 6 boards at least). All possible, but no so likely to happen if you consider the normal length of a pairs tourney here at BBO. Another difficulty: swtiching tables can only be done when all tables have finished (no matter if even or odd number of teams). This may result in long breaks for tables which play fast. In a recent normal team match at BBO one table had finished all 8 boards when the other had only managed to play 4! And there have been no connection problems. If you implement it, I would sugest a different movement for an odd number of teams: Round 1: NS pair EW pair board set 1 3 B 2 4 C 3 5 D 4 1 E 5 2 A Round 2: NS pair EW pair board set 1 5 C 2 1 D 3 2 E 4 3 A 5 4 B Round 3: NS pair EW pair board set 1 2 D 2 3 E 3 4 A 4 5 B 5 1 C Round 4: NS pair EW pair board set 1 4 E 2 5 A 3 1 B 4 2 C 5 3 D This way all teams play all boards but one set, and it is easier to implement as it does not include exceptions like a 3-party team match. My top priority would be improved handling of the existing pair tourneys - e.g. no replays, no subbing, no automatic timeout for the last board of the round, enhanced director tools. Karl

I am quite sure that it is possible. With the current unclocked movement it should be no problem at all, and often there will be no real sitout as the sitout pair is so late for the sitout round that the next round has already started and it can continue to play by simply skipping one round. For clocked tourneys it would require to use a simple random movement (or a swiss movement). The sitout pair should be selected randomly (among all pairs who did not sitout yet) before all other pairs are matched against each other. If there are any pairs with a missing player at the time of the round switch, they should be the candidates for the sitout. If there are 3 such pairs, one should get the sitout and the other 2 should be matched against each other. For all kinds of tourneys it would be required that pairs could be matched across section boundaries, or to get rid of the section paradigm altogether. This would also avoid the replays in unclocked tourneys. Along with the renunciation of subbing there should be an automatism that kicks out a pair when the frequence of actions of a player is too poor - either because of bad connection or because of simply think far to long (which often means not being at the computer). This would enable an unclocked tourney to finish even if the director encounters a severe connection problem. All this does not mean that subbing shall be de-emplemented, but simply that it is not required anymore. But if a players asks a director to be replaced by a friend as he cannot continue for an unforeseen and urgent reason, the director should serve this request. Karl

Hi Uday, I have said this before, but just to be sure it is not forgotten: I would rather automatically remove a pair where one or 2 players suffer from bad connections, than trying to automate the subbing. Of course movemts must be able to deal with a decreasing number of pairs, but it should be possible that there is at most one sitout pair and no replays. Subbing assumes that there are players available who are willing to sub. No automatism can help a tourney director when the sub list is empty and nobody answering the directors call for subs. And I would think that most players would rather quit the tourney than finish it with a complete stranger and no system discussed. I also wonder how subbing can succeed with restricted tourneys, as the players who fit the restriction criteria may not be available at all. Your points 1-4 are fine. Another suggestion: it is easier to find 4 players for a team match than to find 8. So it should be possible to enter a team in a "team desk" list like the "partnership desk" in normal tourneys and then find another team in the list which is willing to play against us. Another solution might be that creating a team match does not require any names to be typed in. Instead, after all other items are filled in, two tables appear where players can join the normal way by clicking on the green seats. As soon as there are 8 players and the host clicks on the start button, the EW pairs of the two tables are switched and the match starts. Karl

Hi, sometimes tourney hosts like to wait for more players to join and therefore set the start time of a tourney to a time some minutes later. I don't like this, but it is ok with me, as I can cancel my registration if the new time is not suitable for me. But in 2 tourneys recently I had the impression that the tourney started a few minutes before the time it was originally scheduled. Both times I was taken away from a main bridge club table while playing a board that I expected to finish before the tourney starts - I do not like to leave opps with an unfinished board, so I try to finish playing before the tourney starts. And it might easily happen that I do some things away from the computer and when I return I find the tourney already started and the other players waiting for me. Therefore I suggest that the software does not allow to re-schedule a tourney to a time earlier than it was originally scheduled. If a host likes to do this for a tourney where only few players registered yet, he can send a bbo-mail to all of these players, delete the original tourney and schedule a new one. Karl

I don't think that is is a good idea to have the surviving player find a substitute for his missing partner: he could ask candidates, but could not hear their answers. And he cannot access the substitutes list. Karl

main advantage for me is that the new forum is easier to read due to better colors. Even if there were no other improvements we should switch to that software for that reason! Karl

Hi Gerardo As connection problems are beyond your control, it has to be AVE+. However, if I had frequent connection problems, I would not register for clocked tourneys, or maybe I would not register for tourneys at all. I cannot imagine that it is fun to be subbed often or miss half of the boards or delay the end of a clocked tourney endlessly. Karl

hi Uday, you cannot seriously asume that a player played slow because he sat at a table that did not finish a board. But even if you measured the thinking time of each player, maybe the delay was caused by an interrupt he could neither foresee nor prevent - e.g. boss calling at the phone in the evening. Therefore I strongly suggest not to assign any penalty that extends to subsequent tourneys to a player who has played slow. Rather, the movement should be such that there are no such cases: Clocked movement, but allow any unfinished boards to finish - except director abandons the play manually. Do not start a new board if less than 2 minutes time. Random or Swiss movement where next table for each pair is determined at the end of a round, so that some tables can finish the last round and these pairs are matched against each other when ready. Possible to implement this avoiding replays. This way, you do not have unfinished boards (except those abandoned and assigned a score by director) but only unplayed ones. For those, Ave+ and Ave- should assigned automatically according to who was responsible for the delay that prevented the board from being played. Karl