Hello all, I started a weekly online casual bridge game on Bridgebase after COVID-19 emerged, in order to replace a long-running weekly in-person game, after everyone felt it was not safe to play in-person. It seems to be very popular so far, and I am very impressed with stability and versatility of the Bridgebase platform. We usually get 3 tables on Friday afternoons for 2 hours. I assign table managers and players to each table each week by email. We start tables in invisible mode, reserve seats, and players accept invitations. We switch 2 players from each table to the next table after 1 hour. I have heard from one person that he would like a more random assignment method so he does not have to play with certain people all the time, some of whom are a bit slow playing, and I suspect others feel the same. I try to mix players up each week but it is hit-or-miss. I try to mix up the sexes and have different table managers, but it is ery time-consuming to try to make sure that everyone is not playing with the same people as last time. In our in-person games, someone managed attendance so that there were always a multiple of 4 players permitted to attend, by first-come-first-serve response to email invitations. However, when we arrived at the game, people would choose individually where they would sit. This had the effect of allowing people to control their own seating to some extent and naturally mixed people up so you played with different people each time. (We also had 2 people move from one table to the next after every six games.) I have been trying to find a way to allow players to control their own seating in Bridgebase. If the games are not invisible, the table manager has to deal with constant attempts to join from non-members of our group. I have experimented with logging in in invisible mode when starting a table, with sometimes inconsistent results. Sometimes players can't seem to see my table, even when we set each other up as following friends, but then sometimes they can see and join my game. One one occasion, multiple non-members would sit at my table, while other times, none seemd to barge in. I have tried having players log in invisible mode too, but it is not clear if that makes any difference. I don't want to foist an unpredictable method on our players and cause a lot of confusion and wasted time. I need repeatablity and a good knowledge of how things work. I have not been able to find any good documentation on this subject, either in help or in the forum. Can anyone with an intimate knowledge of how the BBO software works advise me how to start and manage tables so that people can choose to sit at any of the available seats, without having non-members constatnly try to join our games? BTW, I have been using a web browser on my PC, since apparently there is not a current PC BridgeBase app. Some of us are using iPads and iPhones and some of them may be using the IOS app, but this may have no bearing on the issue. Please do not suggest things that you have not done multiple times yourself unless you have examined or written the Bridgebase software code. This can make other more knowledgeable people fail to respond because they see that others have already responded, and generally wastes eveyone's time. Thanks in advance, Alfy in Gibson Island, MD, USA.
