phantom0

I like the features available in the current convention card but never use them. My main problem is that I almost always play with pickup partners, so my card is almost always a little different. This makes me think that maybe the answer is to set up a convention card based on all the conventions that you play. and be able to turn on or off the conventions you agree to play with your current partner. You could simply mark the conventions in a list of check boxes when you get a new partner. What I envision is to setup what each bid in your base system means similar to the way we do now. Then repeat the process for each convention you play, only marking the bids that the convention overrides. The order of the convention list could show a priority order indicating which conventions are checked first to determine what the bids mean if specified. By doing this a flexible convention card could be made that would be easy to use with pickup partners. --brian agnes (phantom0)

John, I agree that many players fail to correctly identify their skill level. Some do it from ego (i.e. they have been playing bridge for 20 years, so they must be expert!?) or they dont realize that they are week in some area of bidding or play. Anytime you allow people to evaluate themselves, inaccuracies will exist. With that said I believe that self evaluation is the best system to keep the enviornment friendly and reduce cheating. I believe that having more levels would reduce the inacuracy. people who believe they are better than the average intermediate would have an option instead of simply listing themsevles as advanced, they could pick intermediate + or advanced - (or maybe something more original ;) ). The automation I recomended does not solve inacurate ratings, nor does it try to. The system I proposed would help players find and play games of the correct level. Because BBO is growing so rapidly the number of empty seats makes it difficult to pick a good table without reading 50 profiles. By the time you figure out what table was best someone else has taken the seat. One answer that has been suggested on different threads is to create multiple main rooms of different skill levels. I believe that would be very exclusionary, and also very rigid. If you want to start a table but would prefer no beginers, do you start it it intermediate advanced or expert room. If you want a friendly game but dont want the presure of playing against experts, again what room do you pick. if you are really looking for advanced game you should be able to set that too. With so many criteria that people use for a desired game, breaking up the main room does not seem like a good solution to me. Flagging and filtering the list of tables in the main room, would allow a much more flexable solution. Although this requires some programming effort, adding skill min/max values to table setup should not be difficult, and the skill levels already exist. So the main programming effort would involve marking seats in the lobby and adding a filter. I realize Fred and Uday are very busy working on other enhansements, but I beleve the more BBO grows the greater the need will become for a feature like the one I described. --brian

although the unneeded queen ask may fool opponents, if your partner knows you often ask for queen while looking at it, and you don't alert opponents to this, isn't that a bridge inpropriety?

is there any estimation on a release date of the BBO software? All of the changes you have mentioned in this thread and others sound great!!!

I think that using the self proclaimed skill levels within the software could make the BBO experience even more enjoyable than it already is. * when a table is set up, set the min/max skill desired / allowed in the table profile. Then when a player in the lobby sees an open seat outside of his/her level, make it red instead of green. The player may try to sit, which would prompt table owner to "allow new player xxx who is [below/above] desired level to play?". (...even at open table that dont normally require permision) * also if you only desire to play with certain level partners / opponents, this could be set in a private section of your user profile. Again open seat color could be changed to yellow for games outside your desired range to help find ideal games for you. Also this could be used as a default when setting up a new table for above feature. * Also along the lines of finding ideal partners if seats could be flagged based on partners preferred / known bidding systems to find fit. This could be chosen from multi select pick lists in user profile (maybe with "other" used as catch all). If the intersection of the profiles is not empty then an ideal / acceptable partner is found. * Add a button at bottom of Lobby window to display all tables / display only ideal tables. This would create the equivalent of having customized virtual bridge clubs. Only tables that a user would be interested in playing at would be displayed! For this to work all BBO members would have to set a skill level, but would be able to mark it as private so it would not show up on user profile. The program would have access to skill level for partnership matching. Also I believe more skill levels would helpful in allowing more descriptive filtering (i.e. low intermediate, intermediate, etc). As a side note, I believe that if skill levels are used within the software fewwer users will use the skill levels as a joke (i.e. experts listing themselves as novice or novices listing themselves as world class)

since this is in a suggestions for the software section, I thought I might provide one related to bumping / leaving the game: Use an automated message to inform everyone at table when either a player leaves in the middle of a hand or when host boots someone. This way everyone at table is aware of rude behaviour and who is really to blame!