mink

Problem with this is that East will never pass such a double by North, and the end in 3♦ doubled which is also worth 200. Karl

I see no point to let the other table continue when one of them is closed. However, it would be nice if a table playing is allowed to finish the current board and only cancel the game when a board is finished at one table and there are 2 sitouts at the other table, or if there are sitouts at both tables. In another thread, I already suggested that withdraws at at table that has not yet started should cause the seat to be open again, and any player looking for a new team game can apply for it, in contrast to sitout where only the host can select a player for the sub list. Players tend to withdraw from a table that has not yet started much easier than from a playing table. And I also suggested to leave the choice whether to cancel a team game or not to the host or TD (send him a message that suggest the cancellation) and only cancel automatically if no td is online. This can be done by a dialog that contains a "Cancel" and a "Continue" button, and some deadline after which the automatic cancellation takes place if no button it clicked. Karl

Sorry I missed the other post on this subject. However, "Totally Random" is not enough to characterize the non-clocked movement. It would be interesting what triggers the software to start moving players to new tables of a new round. Is it done say once each minute? Or does the software wait until a minimum number of tables has finished the previous round? Or a combination of both? If it is possible by the current algorithm that only 8 players a randomly reseated at 2 tables, I would suggest to increase this minimum number of tables in order to allow more randomness to happen. Maybe a good idea would be to set the minimum_number_of_tables_to_be_moved to some fraction of the total_number_of_tables. Karl

Wenn jemand hier ein Alert forder, dann bezieht er sich am ehesten wohl auf TO §15(2)3: Das ist die Alertregel, die dieser Situation noch am nächsten kommt. Aber erstens ist nicht 1 in Farbe, sondern 1SA eröffnet worden, und zweitens ist bei dieser Regel nicht von einer Gegenreizung die Rede. Es gibt zwar Leute, die meinen, dass dieser zweite Umstand irrelevant ist. Ich dagegen meine, er ist durchaus relevant. Meiner Meinung nach ist die Bedeutung von 2♠ mit oder ohne Lebensohl die gleiche. Auch hier gilt, dass es keine Regelung bzgl. des forcierenden Charakters einer Antwort auf eine 1SA-Eröffnung gibt. Karl

Hi, since BBO Indi tourneys existed, at least in unclocked tourneys it could happen that I have the same opp more than once. However, I never experienced that I had the same partner twice, until it recently happened. In the 8-board-indy I played today it happened even twice. In one of the 2 cases even one of the opps stayed the same, so that the table was changed only in one seat. I cannot imagine that this behavior is necessary in a tourney with 152 participants. However, no big deal of course. Karl

An automatic 2-minutes-ban was imposed on me, reason: spawming. What had I done? I tried to invite a friend who was in the partnership desk list of a tourney. Got the message "is not online". I tried again several times as I expected him to regain connection any second, and the tourney was scheduled to start soon. Of course, if he was really offline, this did not disturb anybody. Karl

In the ideal case where East receives the correct information, there is no alert, and nothing on the convention card, and the explanation is "no agreement". For sure I would not assume lowest unbid. And for sure I would not lead ♣, but my longest suit. Karl

The answer whether to adjust or not depends mainly on what agreement North and South really had. Their convention cards were different, their explanations were different, and the North hand was even different from both CC and explanation. The only way to find out their real agreement is that the TD asks them what they agreed, an judges how believable the answers sound. My guess would be that they had no proper agreement about the 2nt at all, so this would be the information East was entitled to. In this case, I would adjust to -2, as ♥ is the likely first lead with no information available. Zelandakh suggests that it is illegal for East to ask North about the 2nt call. I cannot see why, if he does so right before his first lead. Karl

Today I played in a teammatch with 10 boards. After the match I studied my results - other table, and when I wanted to access board 5 it was not displayed. It turned out that I could only access boards 1-4 and board 10. Something else: I suggest that if someone quits a teammatch at a table where the play has not yet started, the seat is restored to the original state where it is possible to ask permission to sit down for anyone who uses the web client. Currently, the state of the seat is "Sitout", and the host has to use the subbing process to get a player for this seat. Karl

Is there really a language used for telling GIB how to bid? Is this a language also used elsewhere or something Matthew Ginsberg invented solely for this purpose? Up to now I always thought that GIB bidding was hard-coded, and it therefore it is not possible to implement alternate biddings systems. If all of it's bidding is coded in some bidding-system-definition-language, however, I wonder why it is so difficult create the definition for another bidding system, especially another natural bidding system, where it is possible just to change the 2/1 stuff, as there are basic principles common to all natural bidding systems. And if it is still difficult with the language, why can commercial bridge playing programs play several systems and a lot of conventions, even such definable by the user? Karl

Today I tried again to set up a pickup teammatch but the same error as yesterday occurred more than once, and I canceled this teammatch early during the setup process. I shall not try again until something has been done about this problem. Karl

I have the same configuration and do not have such problems. Karl

I have been playing team matches during the last 2 weeks, and most of them finished. However, those which were automatically canceled are still annoying. Today I started a new pickup team match and put in some players that introduced themselves by chat (probably using the old software) and accepted some players that requested to play with the new software. This worked. Then, I tried to place 2 players that requested to play via chat on the North and south seats of the first table. This did not work, and after some time I got the message that a nick with many digits, lets call it "f54365", was not replaced by the player I intended to place on north. I tried again several times with this player and the partner he had suggested for himself, but always got the same message that would only make sense if the North seat was occupied by "f54365". But the North seat was empty all the time, and I verified this by refreshing the display of the 2 tables. Finally, I put myself on the North seat, and this worked. Even if the players were not placed because they rejected the invitation, the message was wrong as no "f54365" was ever at the table as far as I can tell. Karl

East does not have any UI, and therefore nothing what he did is possibly an infraction. West knows from the bidding that South must have the ♠, and therefore a 2 ♠ contract is the worst that can happen. So pass is not a LA. Karl

The most likely reason for the BIT is that he considered pass, given that he passed over 3♠. In this case, pass is the suggested action, and 3nt is allowed. But even if it was possible that he thought about double, 3♠, 3nt or pass, there would be no suggested action and 3nt would be allowed. There is no indication from the bidding that he did not consider pass. Karl

I have started to use the teamgame feature and like to share my experience. Within the last hour I have tried to play in at least 3 pickup teamgames, one of them hosted by myself, but all were automatically canceled after the second player chose to withdraw from the game. Of course this ruins it all if it happens often to a single player like myself. In the case where I was the host, one player did withdraw after the second board (all IMPs won by the other team so far). I tried to get subs but had no luck. Then, after 2 minutes, the partner of the missing player did also withdraw, and the teamgame was automatically closed. I am quite confident that it would have been possible to fill the 2 seats in reasonable time. In the other cases, the teamgame was canceled when one table had not yet started, but 2 people who sat down at this table did withdraw. It is not reasonable to count such a withdrawal, because 2 impatient players can blow a teamgame this way. In general, I think the automatic cancellation of a teamgame is a very bad idea. Instead, a message to the host should be issued, suggesting to cancel the teamgame, but leave the decision to him. I had a look at the list of running teamgames. After opening a table from this list, on return the my view of the list should be the same as before I opened that table. The same is true for the list of tables in a tourney, btw., in case the td is busy inspecting tables in a certain region of the list. Currently both list views are positioned to the top of the list when I return to it. In the list of tables I found some red players and sitouts. These all did not trigger an information for me, though I had selected to be informed when a teamgame needs players - this worked only for new teamgames. I did chat with some hosts to offer to replace the missing player, but I was never subbed in. Maybe these hosts did not know how to do it. I also tried to click on the red seat in order to invite myself to the game, but this did not work. There was also no way to put myself on the sub list for teamgames only. I suppose if I liked to do that I would have to move to the list of tournaments in progress and register to be a sub there, with no option to restrict my subbing to teamgames. In the last teamgame I attended I had no partner for some time before the start. So I polled my friends and asked them to join, one after the other. I got only one response, when a friend bothered to come to my table and tell by table chat she was registered for a tourney already. This makes me believe that they were not able to chat to me privately because I was sitting at a teamgame table. Of course, this restriction does not make sense while the game has not yet started. Karl

This is really an important issue. We would have the same problem at BBO-Germany if one day the old Windows client does not work. There should be some way to upload a list of names in the Flash client. Karl

You are correct, this is not possible with the new client. However, with the old client, I have virtually never used this feature, because it depends on the self-rating of players which is not accurate at all. Rather, I try to find friend who want to play with me, usually in a tourney. Karl

Maybe this was posted before. I finished playing in the Main Bridge Club. Displayed "My Results" and for the last board "Other Tables". It was not possible to display any of the other tables' diagram, though the any line selected was highlighted. See here:Screenshot The same was true for the other boards I had played. Karl

We have version 1.47v now. I would like to make a suggestion that for sure has been made previously, but I did not find it by searching. Problem is that when chatting to a player the chat is automatically converted to a mail if the player went offline. We often say things that only make sense in the current chat context, and sound quite strange if the recipient reads it in his mail, maybe not remembering the chat anymore. Therefore, the automatic conversion should be preceded by a dialog that ask the user if his chat should really be sent as mail, and offering the opportunity to edit the mail before sending it. I have noticed that since some time it is possible to privately chat to the playing director of a tourney - I liked this a lot. There are 2 other situations where chat should be possible though it is normally prohibited: When I am registered to play a tourney with a partner who is currently invisible. The TD should be able to chat to players and vice vera, even if the player has marked the TD as enemy and vice versa. Karl

I have installed the Windows Version of double dummy solver under Ubuntu using wine, and have no problems when using it. Karl

I have just finished an unclocked 8-board-tourney. While playing board 7, the opp declarer was red for a long period of time, and then finally was subbed. The sub played quickly, but the round clock showed "2" when the board was finished. Therefore, board 8 was automatically discarded. I chose a random table to kibitz, and they were still paying board 6. I recommend to inhibit the automatic discard of a board number n if any other table is still playing board number n-2. This should apply to unclocked tourneys only, of course, but all tables of the tourney should be inspected, and not only those of the current section. Karl

The double is clearly takeout, and the hesitation suggests to leave it in. Possible reasons for the Break In Tempo are "maybe too weak", fear we cannot make anything at the 5 level though 4 will not make, distribution not really suitable for takeout and partner might chose my short minor suit. Karl

Again, the app was not responding. It happened when a tourney was about to finish for me. I was dummy and my partner had claimed. I invoked chat in order to thank partner. While typing, the message that the claim had been accepted was displayed, and I could not do anything but select to abort the app when Andriod sugested this to me after some time. Karl

Both forums and BBO itself was not accessible from here around 11 a.m. local time, which is UTC+2. Am I the only one affected? Karl