JanM

The ACBL Board passed it in Las Vegas, but I think it's not effective for about 2 years.

If you look at the bottom of the page you will see that you can download the original LIN file and use that with BBO to get what you seem to want. Some people prefer to be able to follow the play without having to click on one arrow after another.

Not Niko's site, but try http://usbf.org/docs/vugraphs/Spingold2008..._s3_scores.html

In the amazing coincidences of bridge department, I'm watching the Cayne match and the auction just went (opponents' silent) 1♥-1♠-3♦ to a hand with QJTx, x, 9xxxx, AKT. Not having read this thread, the person holding the hand bid 4NT presumably intending it as RKCB for diamonds (I happened to ask Chip about the auction and he agrees that 4NT should be natural here). Opener, who had x, AKJxxx, AKQT, Qx, bid 5♥ (I guess he also thought 4NT was natural). Responder bid 6♦ and opener, now realizing that 4NT had been KC, bid 7♦. Not a success. The other table bid 1♥-(1♠)-1NT-(P)-2♠-(DBL)-3NT-(P)-4♦-(P)-6♦ and made it (diamonds were 4-0 onside, hearts 3-3)

Great post, Peter! I particularly enjoyed the paragraph I've quoted because of something that happened to me a few months ago. I hadn't played much bridge at the end of last year (I'm sure you can all guess why), but I did manage to find time to watch and commentate on BBO. Early this year Chip and I played in a local Regional tournament and he commented that he'd been thinking I was wasting too much time watching BBO Vugraph, but he had changed his mind, because it had clearly improved my game B).

You must know a different set of "virtually everybody" than I do. When I compare or watch others compare, a player announces the pair's score and another player says "win x" or "lose x," with so little time in between the score announcement and the IMP announcement that I have to think fast to add the IMPs to my mental total for the set before the score for the next board is being announced. I'm not very good at either subtracting or IMP'ing and I never get a chance to improve because by the time I've started to subtract someone else has announced the IMP result.

My brilliant husband, who hasn't been able to figure out how to post on the BBOF (actually, something seems to have gone wrong when he registered and now he's not allowed to post :)), has this to recommend: The site: http://www.noozit.com/ Has special software for inputing hands and auctions as well as displaying them in an article. It can be posted online or put in printable format (and then saved as pdf). You can see several articles I have posted there writing up hands from world/national championships. Chip

Maybe so, but Mr. Buffett contributes only his name to this event, and the players are not paid for participating in it. The organizers choose the participants and make an attempt to choose players they think will put on a good show, which may not necessarily be the best partnerships from either the US or Europe.

I'm a little late here, but shouldn't there be some penalty for picking as the losing semi-finalists two teams (Westheimer & Simon) who played in the semi's and picking for second the team that played the winner in the semi's? :P

Well-l-l, it sounds like what's going on is similar to a very old story I remember being told (I honestly don't remember by or about whom). Pair comes to a table in a MP event and on the first board they bid 1S-3S-6S, opener having no possible reason to bid 6S. The contract goes down 2 or 3. On the next board, the bidding by the other side starts 1S-3S. Opener calls the director and asks "am I allowed to bid a slam on my opponent's wire?"

North & East are always on the same side of the screen, so far as I know - that's so that N/S, who are responsible for pushing the tray, bid first, allowing E/W to control the tempo by the timing of their bids and N/S to control the tempo by how promptly they push the tray. As I read the OP, what happened is that S didn't push the tray back fully, so N and E thought that 3S had been passed out and E led under that mistaken impression. If that's true, the issue is presumably whether N & E are still allowed to bid over 3NT-P. And of course, there's the secondary question of whether E is allowed to change his lead now that he knows the contract is 3NT. Sounds as if the table definitely needs a director to straighten this out. I'd think that N & E still have bids coming (after all, N might prefer 4S to 3NT), and that E should be allowed to change his lead, but I don't know. That's why we pay the directors the big bucks, isn't it? :)

I gave the strong hand to Chip, without the weak one, just to check on how I thought we'd bid it. He opened 2♣ (I think that's pretty automatic with this hand, btw, it's just too strong for 1♣). Auction proceeded: 2♣-3♣ showing 4 controls 4♣-4♥ both natural suit bids 7♣ The key to this auction (and it would be the same if responder had the KKA hand) was that when we have a 5 card or longer suit to two of the top 3 honors, we bid 2♠ in response to 2♣, so once responder had 5 hearts, s/he couldn't have AK of hearts, and therefore had to have the A of clubs and either both red Ks or the A of hearts, either of which took care of the diamond loser. Obviously, it's possible to construct a responding hand where there would be a spade loser: xxx, Axxxx, xxx, Ax for instance, although spades do sometimes split. But it's not likely (and of course LHO is pretty likely to lead a spade or a diamond on our auction, especially without a trump to lead - a diamond lead makes even that worst hand cold.

This surprises me. You seem like a person who wouldn't care about something like this. I think it was Compton that was reading a book during the USBF when he was dummy. Probably it was Chip, who always reads something when he's dummy so he doesn't waste brain cells trying to figure out what's going on (or get unhappy if partner doesn't play a hand as well as s/he should :)). I do crosswords when dummy for the same reason. I've never considered that either of us was being impolite to anyone.

The USBF Trials to select our teams for the Patino Cup and the Damiani Cup in Beijing and for the FISU Games in Poland will be held immediately before and during the Las Vegas NABC. The "WBF" Trials are Tuesday and Wednesday, July 15 & 16. The "FISU" Trials are Saturday & Sunday, July 19 & 20 (in between is the ACBL Intercollegiate Championship). Both Trials will start with half a day of Round Robin and then have one and a half days of KO. We hope to broadcast from all of the KO matches. To do that we'll need 4 Vugraph operators on Tuesday from 7:30 pm to about midnight and Wednesday from 1:00-3:15 pm, and 2 operators on Wednesday from 3:30-5:45 and 7:30-midnight. We'll also need 4 operators on Saturday from 7:30pm-midnight and on Sunday from 1:00-3:30, and 2 on Sunday from 7:30-midnight. If you'll be in Las Vegas not playing bridge, please consider volunteering to be a Vugraph operator for these events. Junior bridge is always fun. To volunteer, just send me an email (marteljan at gmail dot com).

Entry forms are now available on the USBF website <www.usbf.org> for the two Junior Trials being held in Las Vegas in July. To enter either event, the captain must first join USBF, although you do not have to pay dues to enter these events. Just click on "Join" in the upper margin of the USBF website and fill out the membership form. Then log in and on the User Menu click on "Enter 2008 Junior Trials" to enter the trials for the Junior World Championships in Beijing in October, or on "Enter 2008 FISU Trials" to enter the trials for the FISU games in Poland in September. For the WBF event, players must have been born in 1982 or later. For the FISU event, players must have been born between 1980 and 1990 and must have been associated with a recognized college or university in 2008 (2008 graduates are okay; almost every institute of higher education in the US is okay). More information is available on the USBF website - just click on 2008 Junior Trials or 2008 FISU Trials under the Main Menu.

This interested me, because a psychologist bridge player (Andy Bernstein for anyone old enough to know him :)) once suggested that difficulty visualizing hands is one of the main reasons women aren't as good at bridge as men. I've often thought that was true - one of my constant errors is not realizing what my hand will look like after some number of tricks have been played - I just don't notice that I'll have to pitch x cards and can't hold all the nice positions I now have. My personal biggest issue is, I think, concentration (or rather lack of it).

A cell phone ban was enforced for the last 3 (or perhaps 4, I've forgotten) rounds of the Vanderbilt in Detroit, with no problems. And in response to the question about the cell phone ban and the USBF Trials, it was interesting that this year far fewer people brought their cell phones to the playing area than have in the past. We didn't actually count the number, but all of us who were involved agreed that many fewer cell phones were left with us and therefore we believe that many more were left in hotel rooms. The only problem we had with the ban this year was one kibitzer who has yet (to my knowledge) to pick up his cell phone :P.

I don't know when the library will be available, but you can see the USBC Vugraph records on the usbf website. Go to <http://usbf.org/index.php?option=com_vugraphs&event=USBC2008> and click on the stage of the event in which you're interested. Click on any score that is in color to see the scorecard from the match, and on any result on the scorecard to see the bidding and play. There's also a link at the bottom of each scorecard to the LIN files if you prefer to watch the play as a BBO movie. A few of the scorecards are missing some boards, but hopefully we'll find the complete LIN files for those very soon. It turned out that in order to create multiple LIN files for a segment in which you are covering more than 1 match, the event names not only have to be unique, but the uniqueness has to occur within the first 20 letters of the name - I was using the team names to make unique names and those were too late in the title, so late-finishing matches over-wrote earlier finishing ones. Now that I've discovered that, it won't happen again, but it did cause problems through the 6th or 7th segment yesterday. Sorry! We were unable to cover the first two segments of the Round of 16, so that's why you won't be able to find those.

I think that the thing that has most often caused me to send a private message to the entire room is that if you're typing a chat message when a hand is completed, and return to the message after you've been bounced back to the table screen for the new board, the chat message addressee is changed back to "this room." Often when my message was almost complete, I just finish it and click on send without realizing it's no longer going to the intended addressee. And slightly off-topic, but would this be a suitable time to mention how nice it would be if ungagged people show in a different color at the top of the kibitzers list?

I think it was actually every 30 seconds - streaming video is *very* bandwidth intensive, especially with a lot of people watching. I'll try to remember to state the fact that the camera is facing North under the picture, if that can be done (haven't looked at software yet).

At the Cavendish, we had a webcam at each Vugraph table. I was wondering if people liked them. And also if anyone knows anything about what kind of webcams are best. Also software for them.

I haven't discussed this with the ACBL organizers, who will be providing playing space and directors, but my guess (definitely only a guess) is that we'll be on the normal NABC schedule - 1:00 and 7:30 starts. We'll have screens, so that means we may need to start at 1:00 and 8:00 (but Juniors play fast, so maybe not). I realize that probably makes it tough for your players to get a flight out after the end of play on Sunday, and I'm sorry about that. Isn't LA an easy drive from LV (or is my total lack of geographical knowledge extending to my own part of the US :)).

I am sorry if you thought I was claiming "a triumph." Certainly had we known 3 years ago that ACBL wouldn't be buying Bridgemates, USBF would have made arrangements to have them sooner. ACBL has been looking at them, and I know that some clubs have purchased them already. Hopefully, they'll be used in major tournaments here soon.

The Bridgemates worked very well at the Cavendish. They were used only for the Pairs, because the programming to interface with ACBLScore has been done. For teams, you need different programming. We're (or rather Kitty Cooper, our wonderful website programmer is) working on that for the USBF Championships this year right now. I'm hoping that everything will go smoothly at all 3 events and that the results from the Round Robins will be posted more promptly than they have been in the past. We already post the KO results as soon as they're confirmed, and show most of the tables on BBO, so bridgemates won't change that.

The Bridgemates actually have three options - -x/=/+x, number of tricks taken or what they call "American" where if the contract is set, you do -x, if it is made exactly, = and if there are overtricks, the number made, so if declarer takes 11 tricks in 4♠ the score is entered as "5." I discovered this at the Cavendish, when one of the players at the table where I was the Vugraph operator said that the Bridgemate "wouldn't accept" the score when they had made an overtrick - he had entered +1 and the Bridgemate wouldn't accept it. I did the same and it worked no better for me. We called the director who explained that they were using "American" scoring and he had to enter a 5 in as the score. Afterwards, I asked some of the players what they thought of it and several said they liked it - it is consistent with what you say if you're talking about the result on a board - "I was in 4 spades making 5" is the way most of us describe it verbally.