Dwingo

I ran a private tourney recently with the condition " Include players from file on PC" I had created a separate Inclusion List and this List was uploaded to fulfil the condition. However I found that people who were not in the Inclusion list but on my general Friend's list ( this is a pretty big list ) were able to register for the tourney. Someone help me with these clarifications 1. How do I make sure that only people's name in a specific inclusion file get to register & play. 2. If I have the restriction imposed like this and if I wanted subs from the general pool, will others be able to register as subs? 3. If this cannot be done, how do I change the Tourney setting as "Open to All"after the Tourney starts ( basically remove the restriction) Godwin

You could probably achieve the same goal through a Tournament where you have the facility to upload predealt lin files. You can try a Private Tournament with 8 board, IMP, 1 Round, No. of deals per round as 8. Restrict No. of entries to 4. Make sure you control the order of registering the Pairs. The 1st registered Pair will be Table 1 NS, 2nd one will be T-1 EW, 3rd as T-2 NS and 4th T-2 EW. This is to make sure that the correct seating order is in place. I have not tried this, but I guess this loophole should work. Can someone try and report if this works or not. Godwin

When you use the BBO Text to Lin converter link to convert text to LIN file, the top most part of the LIN file has this code bt||tu|1|mn|DOCUMENT-TITLE|nt| Now when I upload this lin file to the Tournament Rules, the colour of the DOCUMENT-TITLE keeps changing depending on when you click there, I suppose. Eveytime, I open the page, I get a different colour. How do I fix this to a constant colour that I like and also make sure that the Font size of the heading DOCUMENT-TITLE is big. Will also like to know, how to change the default white text colour in the Coloured Box. Godwin

If it is not too much work for Elianna, would appreciate if the Names of the Top 10 or Top 10% of Respondents or whatever you decide is published along with their answers. Just a small motivation for more people to participate in these polls. Godwin

IMHO, 31 people voting is too less. We need to give people more time to vote and also give more publicity. There are many who frequent the Forums, but they may not be doing this on a daily basis. It would be nice if the next bidding poll could be given some free publicity in the BBO news window for the duration of the poll. Godwin

Right click on any player at the next table and go to the next table. For that matter you can reach any table in the tourney in a jiffy, without using the back button. Long live the "Right Click" Godwin

1. Going by success of the Pavlicek's bidding polls, I would tend to agree on 5 or six. Seven a tad too long. 2. If this Bidding Poll is for the long haul, make it predictable and well organised with time schedules. Once this gets recognised as a regular feature which people can look forward to month after month, this will drive traffic to this bidding Poll. So standardisation is the key. Many of the regular forum contributors wish that more BBO regulars will contribute here. This can be a good opportunity to make this happen. Keep the poll open for 1 full month. Give time for many to participate. Soon you will see people who play on other sites posting. Good Bidding polls have a pull effect. Example: 1st of the month: Bidding Poll published 1st - 30th/31st of each month - Bidding Poll Open for particpants to send answers. It gives enough time to panelist to mull over the problem as well. 1st of succeeding month: Next Bidding poll is published 1st to 14th of succeeding month: Keep the discussion thread ( one thread for one problem) open for participants to discuss their answers of the previous bidding poll and then close that thread. 15th of succeeding month: Post panelist's answer with moderator's comments and participant's score. 15th to end month: Open new thread ( one thread for one problem) for Post scoring discussion and to comment on panelist's or modertor's observation. Alternatively, this can also be the continuation of thread that was opened at the beginning of the month. 3. My choice is once a month, but make it predictable, starting from the 1st of every month. or 15th of every month, whatever... 4. Yes, it makes a lot of sense. 5. Sure Basically there will a lull in the 1st month. Once the 2nd poll starts, action will start and then there are discussion threads going on all through the year.

The discussion here will surely influence the voting of the particpants (not the panelists) Since this is a Test Run , it is OK. Otherwise, this thread is best opened after the polls close. This looks like a straightforward 2♦ to me, but I would like to hear what is going on in the heads of the panelists when they see this hand Godwin

There are 2 issues here 1) Private chat between partners while playing a tourney 2) Private chat between kibitzer or someone in Lobby with a player in tourney On Issue 1, I wish that the chat between the partners is allowed, during a certain time window, when you finish the round early and you are waiting for 2 or 3 minutes before nextround. I see 2 benefits. You can discuss partnership problems in private without opponents or kibitzers knowing about it. It allows partnerships to chat in their native language without offending the others at the Table. On Issue 2, I usually do not greet my friends when I am playing in a tourney when they log in. I know I can't get to see their replies, so why bother. After all I am also in their friend's list and they can very see that I am playing in Tourney. However there is a point that people may want to get in touch with you urgently when you are online. They offcourse can leave a message for you even when you are playing a tourney. However you don't get to see these mail messages until the next time you log in. If only there was a way to empty the mail box contents to the chat bar as private messages, in between the rounds, it will help respond to these greetings/ messages while waiting for Round change.

Ths is probablly not a bug, but all the same... Clicked on Help me find a Game , Kibitz, Emphasis on Stars. I was taken to a table in Main Bridge Club where there was 1 Star at the Table and a couple of kibitzers. On checking through MBC & Teams, I find that there were atleast 2 tables in MBC were there were 1 Star each, but more no. of kibitzers and a Team event where there were 4 Stars in play. Team Event is probably not in picture, when it comes to Kibitzing. Godwin

When you click on Help me find a Game in the 4.2.4 beta version, you find the button " Kibbitz " - I'd like to kibbitz. Prior to this version, kibitzers were spelt with a single b. This sent me scurrying to dictionary.com To my surprise I found both the entries, kibbitz and kibitz exist. Anyone knows, if there is any minor difference between the 2 words or are they really synonymous? Godwin

Advertising in the Lobby for opps will become effective when the new version kicks in. It will a one right click solution to reach the Table. Right now it is a bit tedious to reach the Table in question in response to the Advt. So, finding opps is going to be very easy

I thought Fred said that function key F10 was for that purpose. Try it out. Godwin

Pass - Pass ( Undo requested, but refused) - Pass - ?? In fourth seat now, this Undo refusal is going to get fielded with some 1 bid to keep the bidding alive. There is merit in the suggestion.

The beta version 4.2.1 has a facility to copy chat by right clicking on the person's name. This is damn good. If this functionality can be extended by have another choice of copying the person's name, it will be useful to the Team Match organisers to copy names and paste it in the boxes in the "Create Team Match" window. This functionality will only be useful until such time the Team Match creation process is revamped. But all the same, this additional right click functionality , if implemented, will help Team match organisers the trouble of typing in the names, especially guys who have numerals and mutiple zzzzzz's in their nick. Godwin

When I checked, it showed the No. of Matches only , but it also adds up the Matches that were finished to the Matches in Play. As long as the Finished Matches are displayed they are also counted in the equation. This is my understanding. I may be wrong Godwin

I beg to disagree. Team Matches and Tournaments are the only events with semblance of serious play. So, please, please no private chat with players in these 2 forms of the Game. Godwin

Great work. I should say that the 4.1.9 is major milestone in improvements. Joining a person at his table is a great feature which has been asked many times in the past here and this should make a lot of people happy. Typing the explanation prior to making the bid avoids the delay for the next bidder. Many a time the next hand bids before the Alert is seen. This is a great improvement. I will greatly appreciate a small change in this area. The box is now a blank box. If the same can be replaced with a box with a Explain window, this will help all the OKScript users who use automatic Alerts with explanation OK Script needs to recognise a window. The Explain Window opens when you bid and press Alert. If this window is available, when it is your turn to bid ( instead of the blank box), this will greatly help the OKScript user. This will overcome the delay between the Alert & Explanation and the next hand bidding, so that the next hand will always see the explanation, before it is his turn to bid. Godwin

Great work. I should say that the 4.1.9 is major milestone in improvements. Joining a person at his table is a great feature which has been asked many times in the past here and this should make a lot of people happy. Typing the explanation prior to making the bid avoids the delay for the next bidder. Many a time the next hand bids before the Alert is seen. This is a great improvement. I will greatly appreciate a small change in this area. The box is now a blank box. If the same can be replaced with a box with a Explain window, this will help all the OKScript users who use automatic Alerts with explanation OK Script needs to recognise a window. The Explain Window opens when you bid and press Alert. If this window is available, when it is your turn to bid ( instead of the blank box), this will greatly help the OKScript user. This will overcome the delay between the Alert & Explanation and the next hand bidding, so that the next hand will always see the explanation, before it is his turn to bid. Godwin

I will be really saddened the day BBO splits. I sincerely pray that Fred & Uday can solve this problem. Once it splits, it will lose its competitive edge. Size matters, especially if you have plans to raise resources through Advertisements on the site. Change is tough. But this one, if it happens, will be a huge shock to many.

Yes, I too agree with dogsbreath's great suggestion. However look at it from the host who organises the Team Match for a moment. It is the most frustrating experience for him. From my experience, only about 40% of the Team Matches start without any problem on the 1st start. Most Team Matches fail as one or the other 7 fail to accept the Team invitation for one of the following reasons. 1) The player who registered with you is not online. You know this before you send the Invitation. So this is not much of a problem. You end up substituting this player with another one. 2) The player who registered with you is not in front of his PC to see the Team Invite. So everyone has to wait for the 2minute time period for the Team Match to abort and the host has to start all over again. By the end of the 1st minute all but one would have accepted the invitation. So a quick glance at the Create Team Match Window & the chat bar gives a clue as to who is the culprit. So I send repeated private message to that person in quick succession, so that if the person is the vicinity of his PC with Volume Control UP, he will get an audible alarm that someone is sending messages in quick succession. I have tried to overcome this problem by sending a private message to the person whom I am inducting into the Team Match "You are in. Please be in front of PC to accept Team invitation". 3) The player who registered with you has also registered with another host trying to organise a TeamMatch. His objective is to be playing a Team Match at the quickest possible time without any consideration to the people who organise the Team Match. Neither do these guys have the courtesy to inform you that they are already playing another Team Match. So when you send out the Team Invite with these blokes, the good among this rotten bunch have the decency to reject the Invite ( atleast you know who rejected immediately so that you can substitute) and there are some blokes you ignore the invite and keep playing their Team Match. which means, you and others will have to wait another 2minutes for the Team Match to abort. The 3rd category of people drives me up the wall. They may not do this, if only they have tried to organise a Team Match themselves. So for those people who read the Forums and play Team Matches, a sincere request 1) Do not give your name to 2 different people organising Team Matches at the same time. If you do so, you will be putting one of the hosts in great difficulty. 2) If your host is trying and failing with repeated aborts, have patience with your host. If you dont want to go through this mess, atleast inform him that you would like to pull out. Dont respond to other Team Match invitations in the Lobby. 1 person rejecting everytime, means losing aprroximately 2 to 3minutes for every attempt. Out of all this experience I can truly say, my patience has been tested to the maximum. Many a time, I think of giving up but I have persevered till I get one started. I am hopeful oneday Fred & co. will have a better way of handing this situation and I hope it is sometime in the near future.

There are a few Pay Tourneys - Individual Tourneys where the you pay 1$ to get in and there is a prize money of 4$ for 1st place. Now in Individual, if I am going to pay 1$ to take a shot at the 4$ pot, I must be reasonably sure that everyone is playing on a level playing field. The No kibitzers policy for such tourneys is a reasonable assurance to me that atleast the tourney has barred self kibitzers. Compulsive Self Kibitzers , if they still want to cheat, will have to pay another 1$ to register on another ID. Atmost they can get a peek at another hand. Moreover they will have to play as well on both the machines. Too much work and not worth the reward. This is a reasonable safeguard against such people. Godwin

I know this is Partnership Bidding stuff. All the same, I like to know, if there is anyway that one person can practice bidding by seeing both hands and being able to bid for himself and partner. I know, many may consider this crazy. But I somehow like this idea, where you can practice different bidding conventions, by setting up the different constraints for both the hands separately. Godwin

Similar suggestions were given before to address this issue, but this suggestion from epeeist is is easily the best. The earlier suggestions were to include the remaining deals in the Pop up invitation that a sub receives, so that a registered sub can take a informed decision, if he/she has the time to sub the balance of the tournament. However this per se, is not useful, as sometimes a Director can sweep a sub into a tourney without an invitation. Epeeist suggestion helps in making an informed decison, whether you want to register as sub. When you register as a sub, you get a popup message saying, You have now registered a sub. If this screen can include some basic info about the tourney - Deal Currently being played, Total No of Deals, Clocked/Unclocked, this will also be helpful in taking an informed decision whether to register yourself as a Sub. If one is not comfortable with the Time he/she can give for subbing, one can immediately remove oneself from the sublist.

8 players maybe in 8 different Tables at diiferent points of the Hand. Where do these guys hang around until everyone finishes the hand? Just because you give your name to a Team organiser, it does mean that you are going to be playing Teams in a shortwhile. The Team organiser maynot include you, even if he includes you, sometimes it takes about 4 or 5 attempts before the Team match takes off. Everyone acknowledges that there should be a better way of Registering for Teams, than the current model. Your suggestion of waiting to finish a hand before getting sucked into "Teams" doesn't appear practical. Godwin