Dwingo

I only hope the Golden Stars who value their privacy dont form a clique and play in Invisible tables and deny lesser mortals like us the pleasure of kibitzing them Godwin

With this version, sometimes ( not always) when I click on a persons name to Chat and when I send the message, I get an error & when I click OK, the BBO application closes and I have to log in again. I am not able to replicate this and not sure if this has to do with other applications running at the same time Godwin

Uday, can you please consider changing this to 3 people leaving. Today in a Team match, one player was disconnected in the Other room. Unfortunately I as a host was not aware ( though I can monitor this). One of the other player instead of messaging to "Tournament" that they needed help in the form of a sub, was impatient and withdrew and that was enough for the Match to collapse It will also give the Host sometime to find a sub , before another gets disconected or if someone wants to play a prank when he sees a disconnection. 3 looks like an Optimal number. Would appreciate if this change could be made. This is only a suggestion, as I can no clue of other factors that affect this parameter.

I have seen that when 3 or more WITHDRAW from the game, the table and the Team Match collapses. So if the Director is missing and the others want to cancel the game, all they have to do is WITHDRAW from the game, using the "Call Director" button. I don't think a Yellow intervention is required. So the feature is already there, only that many people are probabaly not aware that when players start scooting, the Table will collapse. Godwin

Adding this functionality to satisfy the needs of a few individuals will further complicate the user interface. Lets remember that many of the people who log into BBO are bascially bridge players and have very little clue of computers. Sticking to the 80/20 rule , any new controversial functionality should satisy the majority of the BBO population

Scope for improved clarity? If a particular deal has been played in the Other Room, the Results of Other Room is displayed on the Left Top corner , below the Names of teams. This is done in a dark blue blackground. I have difficulty reading the contract , if the contract in the other room is in the black suits. I dont know, how it appears when this screen is projected to big Vugraph screens, but atleast on my PC Monitor it strains my eye and I find it difficult to differentiate the club from the spade. Or is it my eyes that is a problem? Godwin

Automatic logging with embedded commentary is a great plus. Congratulations. We can now, download these files and analyse the bidding & play at our own convenient time This is not correct. For a given Round X, I am able to see Open Group A Provisional Rankings : Round X ( 1 page) Open Group B Provisional Rankings : Round X ( 1 page) Open Group C Provisional Rankings : Round X ( 1 page) Open Group D Provisional Rankings : Round X ( 1 page) Women Group A Provisonal Rankings : Round X ( 2pages) Women Group B Provisonal Rankings : Round X ( 2 pages) Seniors Provisional Ranking : Round Y ( 2 pages) Open Group A - Unofficial Scores : Round X ( 1 page) Open Group B - Unofficial Scores : Round X ( 1 page) Open Group C - Unofficial Scores : Round X ( 1 page) Open Group D - Unofficial Scores : Round X ( 1 page) Women Group A - Unofficial Results : Round X ( 2 pages) Women Group B - Unofficial Results : Round X ( 2 pages) Seniors - Unofficial Results - Round Y ( 2 pages ) Then comes the hand records/results of deals page for Open Group ( 9 pages X 4 groups) = 36 pages Women Group ( 11 pages x 2 groups ) = 22 pages Seniors Group = 14 pages The latest overall position for a particular group keeps changing dynamically. At the start of the match, each team is creditted with 15 VP's and then overall total keeps fluctuating depending on the IMP difference as the match progresses. I find this actually very good There is a Stop button there. I use this to home in on the Group or page that I am interested and sort of lock that page. I refresh the page after a while using the Go button. Atleast you know that the page of your interest in not more than a couple of clicks away, either Next or Prev. Each page is a click and right now, there are 92 pages. Hence if you are lost in the maze, it will take quite a lot of clicks to find your way back to your region of Interest. Hence the Stop button is a vital button for the Home audience I am on Win 98 and I also experience the same crash. This appears to be a bug. I would love to see these Results in a separate sizable window so that I can watch Vugraph and at the same time keep a track of the updated results of other matches Lot of people whom I talk to have no idea, that these features exist in the new version. As the Olmpiad is in progress, it makes sense to give a little publicity to this feature in the login Pop Up Screen that gives the latest BBO news. It should have instructions on how to get there Explore Bridge, Vugraph Theatre, Olympiad or something to that effect to make people aware of this functionality. This is the period of time, when many members of other pay sites would visit BBO to watch the Vugraph. If advertised well and if they appreciate the services rendered by BBO, some may have a change of heart and start patronising BBO Great way to Go . Fred , Sheri & Uday!!!!

I can vouch the same thing has happened to me twice and I have sent a message to Uday about this possible bug. I am inclined to believe this is a bug as there were other people in the Team match who said that they have seen this happen to them as well Godwin

Great Work, Fred & Uday. I love this. If it is going to be an automatic archival of all Vugraph's with embedded commentary in future, this will a great resource. I expect this will restrain the commentators from loose talk and silly jokes, if they know that their comments are now being recorded for posterity. And thats good for people who browse these hand records offline later as the embedded commentary will predominantly be meaningful bridge stuff. I am presuming offcourse that these archives are unedited versions. Godwin

Thank you ehhh, Ben & hrothgar for your useful replies Godwin

My pea brain is not able to understand how the BBO interface can be used as a Hand generator. Can someone explain in a little more detail. I know how to print hands that we have played, but how do we get hands that has not be played but generated by BBO? Any help on how to use the Hans van Staveren DEALER to a person with no knowledge on DOS programming will be higly appreciated. Is there a Step by Step Guide anywhere? Godwin

Like to see the country information & any other notes that I might have noted down about that player to be visible. Cant even go to Lobby & check the guy out. Normally If I had played with a person earlier, I would have noted some info about that player.

I have seen some lurkers after getting a bad decision from a TD running to these forums to make their first post. But this one takes the cake. Surely an insider. Please remove your mask and face these forums boldly. It is a real Shame!!!!! I dont know what credibility is he talking about? Godwin

This has happened to me twice already in the last 6 months. The CHAT button & CLAIM button are too close to each other. At trick 2, I claimed all tricks by mistake, because my intention was to use the CHAT button. All my cards were open and defense is so easy afterwards. I paid for my negligence. I wish the CHAT button was to the right of the ARROW keys.

I would like to hear from experts what methods/tools/bids that they use after the preemptive raises 1♣ - 3♣ & 1♦ - 3♦, especially when Opener has a big hand. Thanks in advance Godwin

One improvement to reduce waiting time in a clocked event is for the field to move when a certain % ( 90% or so ) finishes the round or when the Round clock is over, whichever occurs earlier. This will open another can of worms. There will be a few tables that would not have moved. This would mean that the movement for the next round will be only within these slow pairs. In a Swiss movement, the leaders play among the leaders and so on. There is a convoluted logic that slow players are bad players and some Advanced pairs play slowly deliberately so as to be in the Slow group where they can meet some lesser mortals to get a decent score. If it is not to difficult to do this programming, this can be tried out, but my hunch is that this remedy will be worse than the cure. There will be a lot of allegation and counter allegation. But nothing wrong in trying and if it doesn't work out, fall back to the original movement.

One day , I saw a need for a sub for a Team Match and when I went to the Team Match page I found that this match was not listed. It was puzzling and so I did some searching and found this listed under Tournaments. This person was asking for players for this Team Match in the lobby. He has obviously used the existing Create Tournament Infrastructure in an intelligent way to create a Team Match atmosphere. Some experienced TD's could probably give Deanrover the tips to create the Team Match in the Tournament Area. If you can do this, then you use predealt hands and Deanrovers wishlist could be fulfilled in an indirect way. I am not a Director so I am not able to help you directly. You could try by trial & error, different settings to see if this could work out. For eg try for a 8 board Team Match Boards to Play : 8 Max. No. of entries : If it is No. of Tables - then 2. If it is No. of pairs, then 4. Boards per Round : 8 Minutes until start: keep some small no. if you have 4 pairs registered Movement: Clocked Scoring : IMP Pairs Restriction: Include friends of host or Include players from a file on PC then Upload preset hands for tourney Obviously you will have to solve the seating puzzle. The sequence of registration of Pairs may have something to with who is in which Team. As a Director/Host, you should be able to hop from one table to another and do the neccessary coaching announcements to all 8 people. Hope this helps

- Ben I think we have not understood Adriano properly. We get the deal results as we finish each round. However we do not have the cumulative IMP's or cumulative MP's after each round change. One way to get an idea in a Swiss event is to see in which table you are playing. This will give an rough cut idea where you stand in the overall standings at the end of that round. Adriano probably wants to see the actual cumulative IMP or actual cumulative MP at the end of each round. In IMP's it is just addition, so this can be done manually also, whereas in MP's you will need a calculator. If this can be automated and displayed , it be useful . e.g Deal 1 - 65% Deal 2 - 50% End of Round 1 - cumulative MP is 57.5% Deal 3 - 48% Deal 4 - 82% End of Round 2 - cumulative MP is 61.25% Taking this one step further, if we can also see the list of players with current cumulative MP's / IMP's , then it will be a great leap forward. I think I am asking too much. This is what is on offer at e-bridge.

I have tried to download the OKScript from Mike Mardesich's website http://home1.gte.net/yweare/ This site doesn't seem to be working. I have tried everyday for the last 3 days. Is anyone elese having the same problem?

I wouldn't waste even 1$ until, I am reasonably sure I am not getting shafted by the online cheaters. There are atleast 2 online prizemoney bridge sites and lessons can be learnt from here. As of today, the cheaters have the upper hand. You find one way to block it, they will find another loophole. I am hopeful that one day technology should be able to find a solution to this. Some sort/variant of blind Individual is the way to go. Some things for the programmers to think about to prevent cheating. 1. Partner not known, Opponent not known 2. No Directions on the table ( only you, Partner, LHO, RHO) 3. No. Indication of Table Number anywhere 4. No kibitzers offcourse 5. Only 1 Standardised bidding and and agreed carding standard 6. No chat whatsover, even among players at the table, so that players cannot be identified by thier Hi's and coded messages. Courtesies are not needed as you dont know who your pd & opps are. 7. The same deal will not be played at more than 1 table in any one round. Since the sequence of boards being served at every Table is different, Swiss movements is not possible. 8. Some sort of symmetric rotation of majors and minor suits should be done for the same deals, to prevent deal identification Radical Thought: No two deals are the same in a tournament. So every one is playing a totally different set of boards. So there will be an element of luck as we are not comparing everyone playing the same set. If people are willing to accept this, then it boils down to preventing the identification of your partner or Opps, so as not to dump that board. This is probably easier to achieve for our programmers.

I agree with Deanrover that it can be annoying when someone rejects after having accepted to play in the first place. However it is not that difficult to restart with some fresh faces. This works for me. Maybe you can give it a try. 1st tip : After you click the "Create Match" button in the Create Team Match screen, dont make the mistake of closing the Create Team Match pop-up box. If you click outside this box, it will minimise the box, but it will not close it. If at this point, if someone is not online, then the software prompts you as to who is not online. It is now easy to replace that person with another new person. Remember we have not yet closed the Create Team macth box. You don't have to reenter all the names again. Just change that one person who is not online and click on "Create Match" again. If all are online and all accept, there should be no problem 2nd tip: Once you "Create Match", your eyes have to be glued to your chat screen. You will get automated messages saying Player 1 has accepted , Player 2 has accepted etc. Keep a close watch on this to see who is rejecting. You can keep "Create Team Match" box open now . Move it up a bit, so as it does not obstruct your chat lines. It is not that difficult to find which spoilsport has rejected the Team Match. Just change that person allow and click "Create Macth" again. Remember we have not yet closed the "Create Team Match" box. 3rd tip: Never Close the "Create Team Match" box until, the match starts and you are already in a table. It probably closes after the match starts, but I am not sure of this. 4th tip: To organise Team Matches without pencil & paper. Earlier, I use to note down the names of people who message me for Team matches and then I use to fill in the boxes. Nowadays, I have found an improvement. I first open the "Create Team Match" box. I fill up all the details except the players names, like Name of Match, No. of deals, Barometric scoring, Undoes allowed, Team 1 name, Team 2 name etc. Only after this I send a message to the Lobby asking for players. As I get private chat messages from players, I move the mouse on their name to see their profile, and if I feel they should be playing I keep filling up their names in the boxes.This way I dont have to go back to the Lobby. Even if you go back to Lobby, doesnt matter, but never close the "Create Team Match" box. 5th tip: Always wait for atleast 10 people to respond before you click on "Create Team". Have a backup. There will be a moron or two who will reject just for the fun of it. When they reject, you can fill from your reserve, without sending messages to Lobby asking for more players. This saves on time. When you ask for 1 more person, you will get response for another 5 players atleast. 6th Tip: As a courtesy to the players who are not making it to your Team Match, if possible try and send a polite private message that they couldn't be accomodated this time and you are starting without them. They shouldn't be unneccessarily waiting for the Team Macth to start.

OK, this is the 4th time, this subject has been brought up in the Forums. See the related posts http://bridgebase.lunarpages.com/~bridge2/...wtopic=3099&hl= http://bridgebase.lunarpages.com/~bridge2/...?showtopic=2799 Obviously, this will be a very good feature to have with so many people bringing up this topic. I wish this need will make it to Fred's & Uday's priority list.

3♠. First time around, I did not bid my ♠. Hence support now should show specifically 3 card support. Not a very weak hand, as I could have used Lebensohl ( or any of its variants ) after the reverse to bid my suit. If partner is 5-6-1-1, this will be good news to explore slam. With normal 4-5-x-y type of hands, it will help partner to decide to play in the Moysian fit or 3NT

I have my options enabled for Beeping of Private messages. I still dont receive any beep/sound for Team invitations. This feature will be a Nice feature to have. Similary an alarm when we get invitations to "Sub" will also be appreciated

No, this is not a solution. This is a similar problem, which should also be addressed. 1) Once you register as a sub for a tourney, the software should disallow the player from kibitzing that tourney. 2) In the same fashion, if you are already kibitzing a tourney, the software should make sure you cannot join the sublist for that tourney any longer Currently, you can do both making it possible for subs to play hands which they have seen already.