John in the Sun

If you have Deep Finesse and are comfortable installing software, I have a program you may be interested in called bdRT. bdRT converts an on-screen deal to Deep Finesse format and starts Deep Finesse. Deep Finesse offers some advantages over GIB: you can change contracts, declarers, and opening leads; in short you can experiment with the deal. The concept is rather crude. bdRT takes a screen shot of a BBO deal, uses OCR technology to extract the 52 cards and the contract, and then starts Deep Finesse using the BBO deal. There is a downside though. You must install Perl (from ActiveState), ImageMagick, and bdRT. You will also have to install a few Perl modules. I'd ask that anyone wanting to install bdRT to have Skype installed so we can talk during the installation/setup process. Oh, the cool part - bdRT is started via a hotkey, and as it completes each step (taking the screen shot, extracting the 4 hands, etc.) it plays the intro from Beethovens 5th! Note: The software works on deals displayed with BridgeVu, so you must select Lin , not "Movie" on the MyHands web page, and then choose "Open with", not "Save File". bdRT will not work if "Pictures of Cards" is checked in the BridgeVu options. As I think the changes to use bdRT on the web Movies directly are simple, I'll test them and post in a few days...

Hi Fred I'll make the following points, and then fold my tent on this issue. Perhaps one of my thoughts might make sense :) 1. I view custom conventions as an extension of custom convention cards. Why should we have custom CC's but not conventions? 2. I have a software background. Well written programs consist of a small "main" section with calls to various subroutines. Similarly I view a well designed CC structure as one with most of the custom bidding residing in conventions and the main CC consisting of links to those conventions. This is an extreme example, just to illustrate my point: *00{custom 2/1}=NYYYYYY2/1 with many specialized treatments %BBEECDDDDCCCCCCBCCCCCCBDDFCCECGCBBBBBCCCCAAKGADGICAAGAADGI +convention_1_minor.bss +convention_1_major.bss +convention_1_NT.bss +convention_2_C.bss +convention_2_weak.bss 3. This is why I wanted to write a custom convention in the first place: Playing a big club system, we had very simple and natural bidding methods after a 1C opening bid and a negative 1D response. My partner proposed a change to a complex and artificial method. I wanted to give the new method a try without making wholesale changes to our CC, so creating the new bidding in a custom convention made a great deal of sense to me. With a one line change I could switch between methods. I think this has value for any partnership - the ability to add or remove a convention / treatment with a one line change to a CC. 4. The change to the software probably involves modifying very few lines of code; perhaps as few as 6-10, and the change is backwards compatible. Thanks for providing this forum for my thoughts!

Hi Custom (user written) conventions do not work; apparently all of the users at the table must have a copy of the convention file on their computer. Since it's very impractical to upload any custom conventions to the opponents I suggest: When a Full Disclosure CC is loaded, the software follow any convention links and integrate that bidding into the main CC's bidding. Then a user can define a custom convention and no one is required to have a copy of the convention, even partner.

I have also run into the same situation. The convention card with my custom convention loads fine for me; and loads OK when my partner and I are practicing bidding. This leads me to believe that the problem is indeed that the opponents don't have the convention on their computer. IMHO the FD software should follow the convention links and load the convention bidding into the main CC, then no one else needs the convention, not even partner.

I open 1NT and LHO bids 2S. Let's assume that we want to punish the opponents with a penalty double only when the reward is the greatest: when they alone are vulnerable. The rest of the time we'll play negative doubles. These are the FD vulnerability choices: 0 = Any 1 = None 2 = Only We Vul 3 = Only They Vul 4 = Both Vul 5 = We Not Vul 6 = We Vul 7 = They Not Vul 8 = They Vul The first part is easy; I define a 1N opener where only they are vulnerable: 3 = Only They Vul and define partner's double as penalty. The second part is not so easy - what I want is the converse of the first part - "NOT Only They Vul". With the current choices I believe I have to duplicate the 1N structure for 3 conditions: 1 = None 2 = Only We Vul 4 = Both Vul and define partner's double as negative for each of the three 1NT openers. Is there a better way? Should there be more choices?

The difference between monitors and LCD TV's has been shrinking. Monitors however, cost another 50-200% more than TV's, and in many cases very large monitors are not available. I recently purchased a 37'' Samsung LCD TV for $999 (yes, it's a lot). 37 inches diagonal is about the smallest size TV you can find that supports 1920x1080 resolution (Hi Def). I thought 1920x1080 would be clearer than 1366×768, wich is common for televisions smaller that about 42''. It had a VGA connection, the normal 15 pin D-sub, but I understand that recent video cards support HDMI connections. Anyway, I configured the TV as 800x600, 75 Hz, 4:3 ratio. There is about 4 inches of the screen on either side that isn't used, but my usable screen is 2 feet wide and 1 1/2 feet tall! I can NOW see the cards, bidding, and chat, something I could never do before. It's awesome, I wish I had done this sooner.

The Explanation box allows only a very short message. I know there's not enough room to type in "11-15 HCP. 3+ Dia unbalanced OR 2 Dia if 4-4 in Majors.". I'm a strong believer in giving the opponents as much information as possible, and Full Disclosure makes this possible. Of course it's possible to chat this info to both opponents, but what's easier, scrolling back through all the chat (which is interspersed with "!!!!!!!! Experts+++++ Team Game Stars Only !!!!!!!!!!!"), or mousing over bids? More information is a good thing.

I've noticed that all of the deals in the last round of a tournament are frequently missing from the ".lin" file. For example, I play a 12 board tournament; 3 boards per round. I log out after I'm done playing (but before all tables have finished). When I view the results in the ".lin" file, the last 3 boards are missing. I've also noticed this behavior when kibitzing vugraph presentations - many deals are often missing. Are the file writes buffered? This could be the problem...

Thanks for all the help! Just to make sure we're all talking about the same thing, BBO does have text-to-speech, not speech recognition. A solution that I have used in the past is two monitors and an appropriate video card. It's possible to display the bidding box on one monitor (with zoom) and the cards on the other monitor. I must admit I had problems with this setup though; it crashed more than I could stand. Thanks for the Rotary Club lead; if I contact them I'll post the info here. Still, it would be very cool to incorporate speech recognition: "Alert". "5 Spades and 4 Hearts 6-9 HCP". "2H".

Hi I played in a game with a player who has a severe visual handicap. Unfortunately he is so blind that it takes him a long time to even find his call (many of which were routine passes). I have a few suggestions: 1. Carnegie Mellon University has released into the public domain "world class speech (recognition) components", called Sphinx. There is no restriction against commercial use or redistribution of the engine. The Sphinx engine could be integrated into the Bridge Base software. 2. An option could be added to allow a partner or opponent to control a visually impaired players bids. Then an opponent could talk to the player on the phone and make all of those routine passes quickly, for example. I realize either of these suggestions would entail major changes to the BBO software. Does anyone have any better ideas? Thanks

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. To me, command line options mean you open a Command Promt window and type in "bidedit.exe /xxxxx", where /xxxxx represents a command line option. Possible options are: 1. Teh file to open 2. All of the Settings: Editor mode We Open Constructive etc I hope I made things clearer ;)

If there are not any FD command line options to bidedit.exe, I would like to request that at least one be added: namely, the .bss file to open...