JanM

Vugraph will move to the web version sometime, but not immediately. Among the advantages of the move is that we will be able to use inexpensive, light, small, reliable chromebooks for Vugraph operators, which should make it even easier for people to organize broadcasts. There are also improvements planned to the operator and organizer interface, which won't be apparent to you as a spectator, but will make the lives of those of us who organize Vugraph broadcasts easier, so I for one am looking forward to the move. Having said that, I'm also not holding my breath, since there are many things with higher priority, including I'm sure some of the things people have requested in this thread.

Just in case you don't know, and since no one else has mentioned it, the Vanderbilt is a Super Chart event, in which you can play Moscito or anything else you want (with some exceptions that I'm sure wouldn't apply to you). The Midchart is relevant for other events at the NABC.

Of course it is possible to post hand records online instead of, or in addition to, printing them. At the USBCs, I got tired of throwing out reams of paper and now print hand records "on demand" instead of printing a vast number and tossing most of them. Although there are a significant number of players who ask for them, many people actually prefer to get them online. I don't know whether that would be true at an average bridge club or not - obviously they wouldn't have the bidding and play records available online as the USBC players do, thanks to Vugraph :) .

The WBF has entered into an agreement with OurGame that grants OurGame exclusive rights to broadcast the finals of the events in Sanya. WBF officials assured me that the Vugraph broadcast will be available using a web browser, will not require registration, and will have English commentary. Despite these assurances, I have short term, long term and philosophical concerns about this. I want to be absolutely clear that these opinions are mine alone and are not USBF positions. I have posted this both here and on BridgeWinners because I think some people read only one of the two. Short Term Concerns At the moment, if you want to watch Vugraph on OurGame, you must register at their site and download software to your computer. In order to register, you must have a Chinese identity number. The OurGame website is in Chinese. See <http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/ourgame-for-non-chinese-speakers/> for more information on the current state of affairs re OurGame. The World Bridge Series takes place in Sanya in two months. When it comes to computer software, it often seems that things take longer than expected and don’t work as well as expected. I hope this instance will be different, but I am concerned that those of us who are not Chinese will in fact not be able to access Vugraph from the finals in Sanya on a web browser. At the moment, as far as I know, there is no English commentary on OurGame broadcasts. I know very well how hard it is to get good commentators for Vugraph. Even on BBO, we often have problems, and OurGame doesn’t, at least now, have the sort of connections and history with the excellent commentators who help us make BBO Vugraph more interesting. I have no idea whether they have the capability for voice commentary, and although I only rarely have the opportunity to listen to that (it would be too distracting when I am working as a Vugraph operator or organizer, even if I were able to listen to it without having any “leakage” to the room), I know it is very popular with the Vugraph audience, and I hope it will be available from the finals in Sanya. Long Term Concerns My long term concerns arise from my belief that Vugraph is important to the growth of our game (without capital letters ☺). I may occasionally be unhappy that I don’t have enough money to do something I’d like to do with Vugraph, but I feel very strongly that the solution is not to charge for Vugraph. I recognize that there are die hard Vugraph fans who would pay $10 or $20 to watch, and it is possible that charging would make economic sense for someone organizing the broadcast. But I think that one of the ways in which Vugraph can help keep bridge alive is if people who are only casually interested in bridge have the opportunity to watch experts compete at the highest level and hopefully become hooked. Those casual people aren’t going to watch if they have to pay. Drug dealers and cigarette companies know that the way to build your customer base is to give out free samples, and so should we. But OurGame paid a very large amount of money for the exclusive rights to broadcast the finals from Sanya. Before you ask, I don’t actually know how much it will cost them, but they paid the $300,000 the WBF charges for holding a World Championship in a specific location and are also supplying playing site, Vugraph operators, caddies and other personnel, and some equipment for Sanya. A knowledgeable person suggested it was going to cost them in the neighborhood of a million dollars in all, and I have no reason to doubt that. OurGame is, as far as I know, designed to make money. I worry that in the future they will seek exclusive rights to all Vugraph from World Championships and that they will eventually charge the audience. I hope I’m wrong. Philosophical Concerns I know that if BBO hadn’t developed internet Vugraph probably someone else would have. But in fact, BBO did. We all owe BBO a debt for all of the (originally unpaid) time and effort they put into Vugraph. I would be very surprised if we’d have the great Vugraph we now have without them. It just feels wrong to me that they should be told “sorry, but you didn’t want to pay us for exclusive rights and someone else did.” I probably can’t justify that feeling, which is why I call it philosophical. But I have it nonetheless. When I asked Fred & Uday about all of this, Fred shared with me the letter he wrote to the WBF President when BBO was asked to bid for Vugraph rights. His letter says some of what I’ve said above and many other things in what is, to me, a very persuasive way. I don’t want to try to summarize or extract from that letter, so I’ve posted it in its entirety on the USBF site (one of my perks as an unpaid USBF volunteer is use of the USBF website) and you can read it at http://usbf.org/docs/misc/wbf%20vugraph.pdf

Thanks to Sorina Negulescu, I have all but the last 3 hands of the segment. If anyone happens to have a .lin file with boards 28-30 and could send it to me, I can combine things to have the entire set.

It's been suggested to me that if 3NT is natural but can be made with a hand as strong as this one, it is probably an alert. If that's correct, there wasn't any UI from the alert (and from the OP I think that no explanation was sought or given until after the auction was over). In the absence of UI, both players bid somewhat reasonably in their own "worlds." North thought that 3NT and 4NT were RKCB and responded to both of them properly. S/he didn't pass 5♦ because S had asked for Kings, which is surely forcing to slam. S/he bid 6♦ to show a minimum with no interest in bidding more. South thought that 4NT was RKCB for hearts and that 5♦ was to play if partner had 0 Keycards. S/he passed 6!d because at that point s/he knew that partner was apparently on a different wavelength.

I have no idea, but my guess is that this was at Regionals or Sectionals, not NABCs and that the person involved knew someone who did hand duplication. If you want duplicated boards and hand records, you have to trust someone with the files that power the dealing machine.

"In most bridge competitions, one often sees unmanned computers between sessions. It doesn't take a huge leap to see what could happen - and one probably would not have to be a computer genius to do it." But those unmanned computers don't have things like hand record files and dealing files on them. The computers that do have that data are separate and are kept in locked rooms (at least at NABCs) and are never connected to the internet. ACBL prints hand records in house to prevent them getting out in advance of an event. At least, so I was told several years ago when someone raised a concern about possible insecurity of USBC hand record information. And in case you're wondering, something I know for certain :) is that I am given the Vugraph files immediately before each set, and I do not log the computers with the hands on them into BBO until the players are ready to start play.

The USBC is holding a Junior Training & Trials Week in Atlanta at the end of the year (Dec. 28th - Jan. 2nd). The first 3 days will be training for the Juniors participating in the Trials, the final 3 days are the SemiFinals & Finals of the Junior USBC, which will select the US teams for the 2014 World Championships. The earlier stages of this event were held on BBO in October. There will be 10 Junior teams in Atlanta: 4 Under 26, 4 Under 21 and 2 Women under 26. They will play 48 boards a day in the event. Two teams in the U26 and U21 divisions and one in the Women's division will compete in the World Championships in Istanbul next year. We plan to show 4 or 6 tables each session on BBO Vugraph, and need a few more operators to do that. If you live in the Atlanta area and would be willing to be an operator, you'd be very much appreciated. We'll even pay you a little ($15 for each 12 board segment) to help cover expenses. We'll be having discussion sessions with the players after each day (all of the tables will probably play the same boards) and you will be welcome to come to those, so this will be an opportunity to learn from our expert mentors (Marty Fleisher, Barry Goren, Karen McCallum, Chip & Jan Martel, Debbie & Michael Rosenberg, Joe Stokes, Patty Tucker & Howard Weinstein), as well as from the commentators on BBO. If you'd be interested, please email me: marteljan at gmail dot com. Thanks!

My experience has been that providing some compensation, even the very small amount we do for ACBL & USBF events makes it a little easier to recruit operators. Providing travel and a room, which I was able to do for a few experienced operators for this year's USBCs definitely made it easier. The USBC is the Team Trials, by the way - USBF holds the United States Bridge Championship, which chooses the US teams for the Open World Championships and the Women's & Senior USBCs, which choose teams for the Women's & Senior World Championships. Even with travel and room expenses, though, I couldn't persuade enough experienced operators to come to Orlando for this years Women's & Seniors events (which were held at the same time). No one is going to do it for the money or the "free trip" and no one can earn a living at it. It's a lot of work being a Vugraph operator (it always amuses me when people volunteer thinking it will be trivial to hear their comments after the session). It's also a wonderful way to learn and a way to give back to the people who have helped entertain and enlighten you over the years. Jeffrey asks how much people would need to be paid to make a difference. I think the answer is "it depends." The more you are able to pay, the more people it will matter to. The amount that we pay now matters to a few of our younger players. It's not enough to recruit caddies to become Vugraph operators (they can make more as caddies because the sessions are shorter). But it is enough to recruit someone who isn't playing and would otherwise kibbitz a friend. The money is more important to students than to those of us who are employed or retired. The good news is that students are usually excellent operators (younger so more computer literate and also with better eyesight). The bad news is that they graduate and become employed and you can no longer persuade them to come be operators :).

I certainly agree that Vugraph operators should be paid. I wish we could afford to pay more than we (USBF & ACBL) now do, but I can also sympathize with Andy's numbers. ACBL & USBF pay Vugraph operators the modest amount of $40 a session (with 2 sessions a day; Barry thinks of a session as a quarter, so his $20 a session is for 4 sessions a day). I suppose that's somewhere close to minimum wage (the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour for about 5 hours a session would be just under $40; some US states have higher minimum wages). It was actually determined based on what ACBL pays caddies at NABCs, although a session of caddying is shorter than a session of Vugraph. Certainly no one is choosing to be a Vugraph operator because of the money, but I hope that it makes the job more attractive. When I collect the money to pay NABC operators and put the amounts into budgets for USBF tournaments I am always amazed at how large the total is. The question of where the money should come from is difficult. I'm pretty sure ACBL allocates Vugraph to marketing. USBF puts it in the tournament budget, but since USBF usually loses money on its tournaments, that really means it's coming out of general funds. When I first made a push to increase USBF Vugraph, I raised money from donors to pay for it, but that isn't something you can do over and over. It did allow me to go to the USBF Board and say "I have the money, let's see whether people like having more coverage." This year, when I wanted to improve the quality of USBF Vugraph by paying expenses for a few experienced operators, the Board voted to spend the extra money out of general funds. I think Vugraph benefits many groups. I hope it's good for bridge in general, because it shows people who aren't yet "hooked" bridge at its best. Players like it because they can watch their teammates when they're sitting out (I always tell them they're supposed to be resting, but as an operator I see people who log in invisibly, so I know they're watching) and they can go over the boards after a session or event. People "back home" like it because they can see what's happening in real time. Journalists like it because they have a ready source of information about how hands were bid and played. Coaches and NPCs like it because they can "scout" future opponents easily. I think that bridge organizations are the obvious place to get monetary support, not because they benefit more than anyone else, but because they, at least to some extent, represent all of the different groups and can pass money through from those who benefit. I don't want to charge spectators, because I think it's good for bridge to have spectators watching and in some ways it's more important for bridge to have the "marginal" ones (those who wouldn't be willing to pay) than to have the "addicts." More and more, it has become something that a top level tournament "needs" to offer as part of the package, but whether that means it should come out of entry fees or advertising budget or private sponsor donations I don't really know. I do know that opinions change over time. When I first proposed showing all of the tables in the USBC from the Round of 8 on, people thought I was nuts. Now I get complaints when I can't show every single table, even if some matches are very one-sided.

I'm not sure where you're seeing the "Artificial, any" for 2♣. I see 18-19 BAL on both the front and back of the card they filed on Aug. 7th, pretty much the same as 2 years ago. 2♦ is 23+ Balanced or any GF. So they've put the very strong (and infrequent) hands in 2♦ instead of 2M and use 2M for weaker (and more frequent) hands, especially NV.

There are 22 teams in the Bermuda Bowl. South Africa has 4 players (2 pairs, thus 2 convention cards). All of the rest have 6 players. Most are playing as 3 fixed pairs. The ones with more than 3 convention cards have some additional partnerships. I believe there are a total of 70 convention cards. As for how many different systems, that depends on your definition of "system." And as I'm only about halfway through summarizing convention cards, I can't tell you anyway. Plenty of different variants of all of strong club, Polish club, unbalanced diamond, 2/1.

It's called "grunt defense" I think. Yes, http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/grunt-defense/ It's about defending against Precision diamond and 1♣ natural or balanced.

Looks as if the Fast Pairs should finish before the second half of Spingold matches start :) and we sometimes like to add a match for the second session, so that might work well! Thanks.