Dwingo

Right now Copy and Paste works within the same FD file. Would be nice to have it work on say 2 offline FD files.

I beg to differ here. If my memory serves me right, before Ben started these polls there was mention by Ben that these polls will help define BBO Advanced better. I remember Fred also mentioning in one of the posts that he was not able to spend t ime in the area of common system definitions and we was quite pleased that these polls would help evolve some consensus in the expert community. Now, I surely like to hear and see how an expert uses his judgement in these tight situations where the system does not come to his help. All the same I like to see how specific system agreements could have helped them overcome these situations. And if there is consensus among the expert about these treatments and if these are incorporated in the evolving BBO Advanced, all the more better. After all we all learn a lot from reading these posts and the more meat is there to BBO Advanced, the better will be our understanding in a pick up partnership and to reduce the judgement element. It is not as though, one is at the expense of the other. Now if anyone tells me that they dont need a detailed BBO system is either not familiar with the fiascos of pick up partnership or his/her bidding judgement is always right under whatever circumstances. I find this hard to believe.

These discussions are great. The BBO Advanced Notes available is only a framework. There are no continuations and hopefully these discussions will help BBO Advanced evolve. My only plea to Fred,Uday,Ben,Cascade is that if there is any agreement among panel members about a treatment, they update the BBO Advanced Notes immediately. If this is not done, all the gems that we get out these discussions will get lost. Right siding the contract has its merit, but in the scheme of things where you have used a lot of bidding space by opening at 2NT, there is nothing much you can do to play a non forcing 4♣ and that too by right siding it. You need the extra bid space to explore slam so 4 level bids will have to be slam tries. So if you believe that right siding the contract has the potential of giving you an added trick on lead, then the only way to do it as the 5 level. If ♣'s is your suit and if your hand is weak, either you pass 2NT or play in 5♣. You have no methods to stop the bidding at the 3♣ or 4♣ level. Right siding is a possibilty at the 5 level as most systems do not have any use for the 4♠ bid over 2NT ( ie if you are playing Texas transfers). You can now use 4♠ as a transfer to 5♣ and 5♣ as transfer to 5♦ for the weakish hands.

I bid 3♥. Didn't realise it was MP. In retrospect, Pass would be appropriate in MP's.

BBO Advanced states that 3♠ is a Puppet to 3NT for further (slam) tries in minor single suiter or minor two suiters. So this appears to be a straightforward system bid of 4♣, unless it is intended as a trick question.

Will anyone tell me what would 4♣ be in this sequence. If it is RKC in ♣, I am all for bidding 4♣. The hand is too powerful to languish in 3NT. Since the meaning of 4♣ was not known, the only options left were 5♣ and 6♣. You would have guessed by know what I would choose. 6♣.

Will partner be on the same wavelength? I uttered a small prayer and bid 6♦

3♠ My hand is too strong , not to make a slam try. With as little as xxx, AKxxxx, KQ,xxx slam is still possible. My problem is what would I do if I hear 4♣ instead of 4♦. Is it possible if he can have ♣K and ♦K? If he bids 4♣, how do I find about ♦K?

I still don't get understand Gerben. Probably a bit dumb. Am I understanding this rightly as 1) Choose "Defend Undoubled" as an outcome until such time the auction has not reached a Forcing Pass situation. 2) Dont choose " Defend Undoubled" as an outcome, when balance of strength is in your side and you will penalise Opps wherever they go. Godwin

Ben, can you explain the Copy and Paste feature for the benefit of others. I had 2 offline FD's running. I was trying to copy one section of the bidding tree from the Master to the other FD file that I was creating. The Paste button doesn't seem to be active on the second one. Also, how do you select a range of bids to Copy from the bidding tree? Godwin

One of the possible outcome is Defend undoubled. What type of auction, will this be an outcome? I am yet to see this being selected in any of the FD files. For a Jacoby transfer bid like 2D or 2H , why do people select all the suits and Defend undoubled as possible outcomes? Godwin

Over such a big population, you would expert the Novice-Beginner-Intemediate-Advanced-Expert-Worldclass spectrum to follow the Normal Distribution Bell Curve. With people rating others, it is quite likely that you will see more Novices, as people in general are very harsh in criticising their online partners. One bad play and your partner is likely to take it on you with some bad rating. With novices and beginners also given this right to vote, are they knowledgeable enough to distinguish between Advanced, Expert and WorldClass? Godwin

Thanks Ben. Hope Fred reads this and includes an option for Dealer 1 or 2 or 3 in the next release. Godwin

Thanks Micky B. but Didn't understand this. What does Constructive mean under Settings Menu? Thanks Godwin

Thanks MickyB. Some more doubts. Lets say I want to input 4th seat 2H and 2S as opening hand 11-15 good 6 card M and and in all other 3 position, it has the standard weak 2 meaning, how do I input this? 1) Select Dealer "Any" and input meaning for 2H and 2S as Weak 2. Make another entry with Dealer 4 and Input this as opening hand 11-15 good 6 card M. Will the 2nd entry override the 1st entry so that Dealer 1,2,3 will have weak 2 meaning and Dealer 4 will have opening hand meaning. or 2) Since Dealer 1.2.3 cannot be select at a time, do I have to make 3 separate entries i) Select Dealer 1 or 2 - Weak 2 ii) Select Dealer 3 - Weak 2 iii) Select Dealer 4 - opening hand 11-15 good 6 card M Thanks Godwin

With no help available under "HELP" key for CONV button, I seek your help to understand the followig under Full Disclosure CC. This a 2 part question. 1. While editting or creating a FD CC, Under Dealer, you have the following pull down options: Any, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 or 2, 3 or 4. What do these denote? Is this 1st seat , 2nd seat etc.? 2. Next to the bids, there is a Square divided into 4 segments by an "X", with or without dots in these segments. How do these dots correspond/correlate with the above 1,2,3,4. I am not able to figure out. Thanks Godwin

Offline editting seems to be best.

What you are asking Brandal, is to take an existing default system and edit it to save it as another. I also have a standalone bidedit running. Create a shortcut on your desktop and point it to the bidedit application at C://Bridge Base Online/bidedit. You should basically know this. All default stock convention stored on the BBO server is saved in C://Bridge Base Online/convcards/default convcards. All the cards that you create for your self are stored C://Bridge Base Online/convcard/yourBBOID convcards. Open your bidedit application by doubleclicking your bidedit icon on your desktop. Open the card that you want to edit by File/Open and Look in C://Bridge Base Online/convcards/default convcards . Make all the changes that you want in the Edit mode, and then use "Save As" feature to save this one with a different name in a diiferent folder now C://Bridge Base Online/convcard/yourBBOID convcards. Next time you log into BBO, ( even when you are not at a table), open the modified Conv Card and click USE. The server will receive your new card and the cards in your PC and server will be synchronised. From then on, you will be able to use the new modified system FD CC everytime you play. Godwin

I too find the process of rejecting a new joiner to the table quite difficult in situations where I have a replacement player lined-up, the departing player leaves and before I get a chance to reserve the new player's seat, an avalanche of requests arrives which prevents me from editing the table details. I think this is a genuine bug in the software. Also, the "close and reject all" button doesn't seem to have that effect. If I click that button, more requests keep coming. Dave , you can try this crude method till you get an elegant method from Fred. When you want to put your pd in, when there is a vacancy at your table, using Table options do the following in order. 1. Kick all kibitzers out . 2. Make table Invisible. 3. Reserve seat for your pd. 4. Make your table Visible. 5. Allow kibitzers "IN" Godwin

My partner and I had a misunderstanding on the meaning of the Double in this sequence. [hv=d=e&v=n&n=sjxh10xxxdaxxca10xx&w=skxxhjxxxxdjxxxcx&e=sq10xxxxhkqdxxcjxx&s=saxhaxdkqxxckqxxx]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] North East South West -- ..... 2♠ ... 2NT .... 3♠ X ....... P....... P ....... P I was South and passed my Partner's X taking it as a penalty X. My understanding was that any Double opposite a hand that has bid NT is a penalty double. My partner was of the opinion that a double after a weak 2 bid that has been bid and supported cannot be penalty as there is no way to find a 4 - 4 heart fit at the 4 level, if the double here is treated as penalty. His understanding was that Doubles after a 9 card fit has been established cannot be a Penalty Double. Our Opps were down 1 when we had a cold 9 tricks in 3NT available. This board turned out to be bad for us because of this misunderstanding. My questions: 1) What is the expert treatment here in this sequence? 2) How do we find a 4-4 heart fit, if this sequence is penalty? 3) When is a double penalty in these type of sequences? Godwin

This is simply not practical in an online environment. People who have been substituted come back and join the tourney as a sub at a different table with a different partner. You wouldn't want them to play the same hand twice Godwin

The concept of Online Team league like the one organised by BBO Poland has great appeal but is a big pain in the neck to organise. Whoever volunteers to organise this, please get in touch with BBO Poland folks and get feedback to see why this was dropped and what they did right and wrong and learn lessons from that. Right now, I am the organiser for a Teams League of a BBO Private Bridge Club, whose members are restricted to players in a particular city. Even with a small field of 8 teams and knowing everyone of the participant personally and even after repeated phone calls in trying to schedule events, it is difficult to keep the momentum going. I will never again want to be the Organiser for such an event. However, IMHO, this type of League can succeed if certain conditions are right 1) The No. of Teams are limited to a small group. 2) The participants are known to each other and are committed. 3) Participants who read their e-mail regularly. Organising random Team games is still not that easy on BBO. People give their names to multiple Team Organisers and when you send them an invitation, they are already playing another Team Game. This really irritates me. There are others who give their names and disappear from the keyboard. They neither accept nor reject and everyone is left waiting for 2minutes, only to start the process all over again. Godwin

This maybe the problem. You are using 2 restrictions 1. Exclude people from a file on your PC 2. Include people with levels b, i and so on. An enemy whom you wanted to exclude will satisfy 2nd Inclusion condition. These 2 conditions may be an "OR" function and not an "AND" function. Simply remove the "Include by Level' restriction. Include by Country and Include by Level are simply not practical and not effective. Bridge Players are smart and once they see these restrictions in the " Tourney Description" , it is a mouse click away for them to change their Flag and Levels. Godwin

Since the FD files can be opened by any Text Editor like Word, I would suggest that the creator of the FD file use the WBF syntax to make it easier for them to create such files. Once these files are sent to the FD Czar, then Ben / Wayne can use the Find and Replace function of Word to replace all the WBF abbreviations into their fuller form. For eg. FJ in these FD files would be replaced by FJ ( Fit Jump). Once all the default systems available in the BBO server uses the abbreviated and expanded nomenclature together, then over a period of time, all users will soon be able to recognise and understand these abbreviations, even when the expanded text is not available in the FD's created by other users for their pet systems/conventions. As more and more people are aware of this Find and Replace function in Word, it shouldn't be too very difficult to get this message across to stick to this format of Abbreviation ( Expansion). Godwin

Digressing a little bit, but still in the same sequence, can one of you help me in understanding the standard meaning in a 2 /1 Game Force bidding style the following sequences 1) 1♠ - 2♣ : 2♥ - 2♠ 2) 1♠ - 2♣ : 2♥ - 3♠ 3) 1♠ - 2♣ : 2♥ - 4♠ The terminology " Picture bids" confuses me. Can anyone care to elaborate? Thanks in advance to all of you will throw light. Godwin