QQSV

Periodically dumping unused aliases will be a help, Uday. I think it would be nice if an alias user who knows he or she is not going to reuse an alias could explicitly release it to the pool somehow (probably only after an "are you really sure?" prompt of some sort has been given.) I think I once created an alias that I didn't need (I have pointers to it in my directories on my computer) and I would be happy to give it up. --Q (Dick Wagman)

As one who uses an all uppercase name, I suppose I had better vote to be allowed to keep it! Serious thoughts: proper capitalization can make anything (be it a name or just ordinary writing) easier to read, if properly used. However, I don't tend to distinguish between capitalized and uncapitalized versions of things; thus, I hope that McBruce, mcbruce, MCBRUCE, mCbRuCe, and all the other variations would continue to be equivalent. (I would not enjoy having to memorize which variation was my friend and which was my enemy, were that the case!) --Q (Dick Wagman)

I have been looking to see what the various control characters mean when they are typed. I have found that there is some variation in meaning depending upon where you are when you type them. (Example: ctrl-D means "redeal request" if you are playing, but launches a chat window to some destination if you are kibitzing.) I would like to know what all the characters mean in all contexts. Is there a posting of this information already? If there isn't, it would be very helpful to have it available as a standalone article in the bridge library (under "Help! How to use this site"). I think I would like to make some suggestions for shortcuts, but it is tough to do sensibly when I don't know what is already there. Any help? --Q (Dick Wagman)

OK, Uday; here is my suggestion for putting the direction on the table. All that is needed is a simple (small) arrow that points to North. I would suggest that it be immediately to the right of the vulnerability in the upper left hand corner, and to the left of the North (or top) player. Just a small black arrow with a "N" at the head is quite sufficient. The arrow rotates, of course, depending upon who is actually North. You can make the arrow's presence a table option (and default it to off if you have set South to always be at the bottom, for example.) I don't think that that would have to be very ugly. --Q (Dick Wagman)

Recently a fellow player hosted a vugraph table. When the table got to the end of the vugraph boards, the player shut down that table and started another one using a different vugraph board set (and with three new players at the table.) To our chagrin, the score from the previous (entirely separate) table carrried over to our new match! Even though there were in fact no IMPs scored, a cumulative score was posted (for a different team, yet!) before we had played a single card. Can this be fixed?

I was all set to click the "No" button. But then I remembered: What if I am currently playing in a tourney? In that case, the person cannot cannot ask me in a private chat message, and the formal invitaion is the only way to accomplish the request. Ordinarily I would say that etiquette requires a private request first. I think I would be willing to break that rule if (a) I were at a table where I can't see the chat, such as in a tourney, (B) I have a frequent partner relationship with the person, or (possibly) © if there is less than 2 minutes remaining before the tourney start time, and there is not time for a chat, a reply, and a formal invitaion.

Here's one vote for keeping things the way they are. Occasional extreme scores are a part of bridge. Usually the extremists will lose big; on occasion they will score a hit. Either way, that is what happens in real life matchpoint events too. Your nice average 3NT may gain a matchpoint over average (or lose a matchpoint) because someone did something silly or brilliant. That is life. If you consistently play sensibly, over time you will find yourself accumulating positive IMP scores. Forget about the occasional wild swing. Besides, every once and a while the crazies will swing against you and give you the undeserved 12 IMPs! One question: with so many people playing IMP pairs, what would be the problem in increasing the number of plays per board (say to 32) for IMP pairs only? I would not object to that method of reducing the effects of one random swing. --Q

No; such a feature is not necessary. But it would definitely be a convenience. I know that when I am about to kibitz I frequently seek out the most kibitzed tables in order to increase the chat possibilities (and the general resulting comraderie.) I suspect that I am not alone in doing this. If sorting by kibitzer count can be added as an option without too much trouble, I would certainly be pleased to see it. --Q

Pretty clearly, there is no sensible way to do the Chinese characters--even if the keystrokes were available, western directors would have no clue about how enter them, because the keystrokes would be non-intutitive (for them.) I suspect that this would be limited to the ASCII Latin extensions (i.e., the characters that fill out the first 256 spaces of Unicode), which include Scandinavian, German, and French, but not (for example) Czech. I would limit it to characters where the compose sequence would be obvious (i.e, where the result character is something like a combination of the two characters that make up its sequence.) Adding some characters such as Czech is conceivable, because most of those odd characters actually look like two ordinary Latin characters. But I don't have strong feelings about it. In any case, if the Windows select capability can be added to the Name field portion of the chat, all names can be easily copied. That takes care not only of all possible odd characters, but also such things as directorial mistypes. --Q

While some of the funny characters are a bit silly, others (particularly for folks from other countries) may have real relevance (e.g, accented characters for French, or the Scandinavian extra characters at the end of the alphabet), and may be part of their names. I would like to be able to enter some of these characters when I chat, and I cannot easily do so now (the method that Uday suggests works, but it's so inconvenient and unintuitive that I can't bring myself to do it every time I want to type an "é", for instance.) Here is a suggestion for allowing an alternate way to enter these characters that would work for substitutions as well (it is very similar to the method used on linux systems): Define a control character as the so-called "compose" character. After this control character is typed, take the next two characters typed and map them to a funny character. (The two characters can be typed in either order.) Pick the two-character pairs so that the combinations makes sense. (And use the linux compose sequences where possible--they are very reasonable.) Examples (where Comp represents whatever control character we pick): Comp + e + ' = é Comp + ? + ? = ¿ Comp + a + e = æ Comp + 2 + 2 = ² (The case at hand) Comp + n + ~ = ñ Comp + o + / = ø You get the idea. The pair of characters always leads to a character that is pretty intuitive. This would take care of most of those with special characters. There is another technique that you could use to help the directors make substitutions with special characters: How about allowing the portion of the chat text that contains the name to be selected (i.e., with the mouse)? Then a director could just use the Windows capability to select the name and copy it directly into the final location. That takes care of all possible unicode characters, and would allow people to continue to have names with funny characters (I admit I enjoy seeing them...) Is adding either of these capabilities difficult? --Q

I think that some time such as 3 minutes is sensible for unclocked tourneys. But if the tourney is clocked, 3 minutes can be a huge percentage of the round time (consider a speedball tourney, for instance.) In the clocked movements, I think that the director should be allowed to move more quickly, particularly if there is not much time left in the round and there is a lot more left to play. I understand that this can be tough for folks with slow reconnect times, but it is just plain unfair to deprive the opponents who are ready to play from doing so. If we truly cannot stand such a strict standard, as an alternative I suggest that the code be changed to guarantee an average plus to the "nonoffending" pair (i.e., the pair without the sub) on any board that can't be completed in the allotted time. Presumably, none of this would be relevant in team matches. --Q

I'd like to request that the current behavior not be changed. Even if I am playing in a tournament, I like to know when my friends come on. I may not be able to chat with them immediately, but I do know to look for them after the tourney is over (and I am then not surprised if they decide to kibitz at my table.) So I'd vote to leave things exactly as they are. I think the pop-up bubbles during a tourney are just fine. --Q

I would like to echo this request in a bit stronger fashion, because I think replays seriously damage a movement. Duplicate movements are supposed to give all the pairs a (relatively) equal shot by allowing pairs to play against a bunch of other pairs. But consider a recent tourney experience of mine: I played a twelve round (one board per round) tourney. In that tourney I played one pair five times and another pair three times. If we were stronger than that pair that I played five times, then not only was I able to pile on the IMPs (thus artificially inflating my score), but I also deprived the other strong pairs of the chance to grab IMPs from them. Similarly, if we were weaker, then my IMP score was massively depressed. The result was that the final standings lost meaning. Indeed, my goal should have been to play at the same speed as a pair that was much weaker than we, and to worry less about playing the best bridge possible. By playing this pair repeatedly we were both able to complete play more quickly than we might have otherwise. But if we cared about the results we then had to wait just as long (if not longer) because the slow pairs (who were now paired with other slow pairs, thus making them REALLY slow!) took forever to finish, and the results had to wait for everyone. I agree with Fred that the software (not directors) should do the pairing, but I think that there should be no option here: repeated play against a pair should be unconditionally prohibited by the software. It would be more fun (I got tired of saying "Hi again again again again!" after a while), would be more fair (as I explained), and would get the tourney over quicker (because the slow pairs couldn't get stuck playing against one another indefinitely.) Please consider this as you work on the next version of the movement scheduler. Thanks! --Q

I have replied that I like 24. But truthfully, I think different lengths at different times works just fine. I would enjoy the occasional 32 board marathon, actually! And the 8, 12, and 16 board lengths are OK too. Maybe the number of boards should vary with time allowed per board. I could handle more boards if the format is speedball (say, 11 mins per two board round.) --Q

I just voted for tourney wide kibitzer chatter blocking; however, there is another possibility which I think would be a small improvement that was not suggested in the poll. How about blocking chatter until the play is complete, but allowing chatter after the last board of the round has been played and the players are waiting for the next round to start? That would make what can sometimes be a long boring wait a bit more interesting. --Q (Dick Wagman)

I have heard that Fred is opposed to the suggestion which follows. If that is true, I hope that by begging, I can persuade him to reconsider. (Fred, do you hear my grovel?) The subject: open chat to a table by kibitzers. My request: As a kibitzer, I want to be able to (otionally) protect myself from accidentally letting my private or kibitzer-directed chat go to the whole table. My beg: I have embarrassed myself (and seen others do similarly) a number of times recently when I was discussing something (usually the current hand; occasionally a private topic) with the kibitzers or one other kibitzer, and neglected to type ctrl-K or ctrl-R before I typed my message. (It can be depressingly easy to do.) I have on occasion revealed aspects of the current hand to the players which they may not have known, and had to apologize profusely as a result. Additionally, I have sometimes chosen to shut up rather than share thoughts with other kibs (who might well have been interested) because I was afraid that I might accidentally let the comment get out to the whole table. It is definitely nice to be able to talk to the whole table when I want to--I am NOT advocating removing that capability. But if I am going to discuss the current hand (or something private), I do not want to risk bothering the entire table (or worse, revealing the hand) by my accidental release of my comment to the world. It would be nice if I were required to (otionally) type some character to force my chat to go to the room (table.) Pretty please help me stop embarrassing myself? I grovel at your feet. --Q