McBruce

3 tables on New Years Eve, so I switched to +howell+ +rounds5+ +allavail+ +break3+ +bduration=3+ with 4-board rounds. Game begins and the players are really fast even at 6 mins per board, so I removed the break at the start of round 3, changing the description string to +howell+ +rounds5+ +allavail+. Trouble. Clock now said 72 minutes remaining! I hoped when all pairs finished round 3 that it would end the round and move on, but nope. I first tried reducing the minutes per board to 0, which did not work. The only thing that did work was to go back to the original description and then reduce minutes to 3. Now we were able to move on and finish: our two C-pairs ended 5th and 6th and only the unlucky third overall pair did not win masterpoints! Lesson: never remove the break, just reduce the minutes per board to something low enough that time will have expired if you want to move on.

These types of games were very popular in our Unit offline, we ran four a year using 11-round Web movements so all could play the same 22 boards with a post-game discussion. The only real way to do it on BBO would be if tournament setup could include an option to restrict masterpoint levels for inviters and invitees separately, so that North/East would be >200 and South/West would be <300 (the overlap allows for the common situation where you have more of one group than the other). Currently there is not such an option, so you are at the mercy of people doing the right thing.

We have a New Years Marathon at the club every year with 3 or 4 sessions: matchpoints, IMP Pairs, matchpoints again, and Swiss teams, so we're replicating it online tomorrow at our ACBL Virtual Club. I know teams are not yet ready for VACB prime time, but I was able to modify a matchpoints tournament set up for tomorrow to IMPs without an error message. Anything I should know in advance about this?

My routine when directing Virtual Club games is to make the usual informative last-round messages (20 minutes for serious adjustment requests, here's the web site with all the club results and leaders, etc.), then in between 'Next Games' and 'Stay safe and healthy' I throw in a one-liner from the weird news of the week. We had some fun earlier in the week with the local hockey club's fired anthem singer (he went to a rally protesting mask wearing!), as well as breakdancing at the 2024 Olympics, and the Russian official who thought that the Sputnik V vaccine was incompatible with alcohol -- but today I hit writer's block until about halfway through when inspiration struck: "Next games: Friday-Saturday-Sunday at 1:15pm (all open). I dreamt last night that VBC (Vancouver Bridge Centre) reopened in Spring 2021 with the vaccine a great success -- and when we unlocked the doors there was a monolith inside... :) Stay safe and healthy."

Since coming back to directing online I have had two players phone me claiming a revoke online. I patiently tell them that this is impossible, but some of them believe what they think they saw like the folks who think Trump won re-election. Luckily, myhands is the final arbiter, and is 2-0 so far.... :)

In a typical ACBL online club game of 7-20 tables it is not difficult to check with a few minutes to go the tables that are still playing and make a quick visit. Doing this every round gives you an idea of who might be playing for the computer adjustment that may prevent their own mistakes. Once or twice a month I see this move in action and they are quite surprised when I adjust in the opponents' favour. Example: Dummy: ♠ 9 7 ♥ void ♦ 5 ♣ Q 6 Declarer: ♠ 4 2 ♥ 8 ♦ void ♣ 9 7 Declarer needs three of the last five in 3♥ and the 8♥ and Q♣ are good but the 5♦ is not. There are two spades to lose, plus the T♣, which might be in either defender's hand (♣T843 still out). After being specifically warned that two minutes had already been added to the round and there were only two left, declarer took a full minute at this point before leading a spade; the defenders cashed two spades and RHO led a third, forcing declarer to ruff as LHO pitched a small club. Before declarer could start the next trick, the time ran out. The remaining club position was 8x with LHO, ten-singleton with RHO. I ruled down one, citing as a possible play running the 9♣ and playing RHO for the singleton eight. Mean? Declarer deliberately wasted half the remaining time and could easily have sent a private message to me saying "if forced to play clubs, I will lead low to the queen" but chose to let the robots decide. I could have asked declarer how they planned to play the clubs but the hand pops up in the history pane the second the time runs out and nobody ever misguesses under these conditions.

This has been an issue for the last week or so: usually happens in the late morning on the west coast of North America: --show tables is intermittent or completely unavailable --players report signing up difficulties in getting the lists of tournaments --some other TD functions are slow or unavailable It's difficult to direct when you can't go to specific tables and let them know time is running out. Oddly enough, the one I am TDing now (#64935) has had no issues with losing players, it is just registering and TD functions that are slowed down considerably. This has been happening for about a week or more now. Can we fix it please?

The Virtual Game I run was start-delayed by FIVE minutes today: first by an offline pair while +allavail+ was on, then by the discovery that a registered player was playing in another tournament. I didn't know what to do about this (answer, which didn't occur to me at the time: delete +allavail+ from description) and it went on, and on, and on. Finally the player finished the tournament and logged off and I was able to zap the pair from the list. Similar problem: you get a sub from the list and they quit after a board and table history indicates that the sub left through frustration with the result when, as so often is the case, they are the true cause of their own poor score through insane bidding. Easy to get a new sub and happy for all when it happens, but you don't really want that sub back in any future game. Would be nice if BBO would NOT send the invite to anyone on the sub list you are ignoring when you use "Substitute...any".

"The internet this session is tossing people overboard like a cat on a crowded trinket shelf." Your turn.

Maybe that's it. I think some people just routinely ignore chat, even after they ask for help...

I reluctantly suppose you have this right, but my weighting of the probabilities would render in the fact that I'm not even sure this player would even consider playing the ten and the offenders might get at most 20% of 3NT making, so 0% is close to what their score would have been. As for extending rounds, most who direct online games avoid this like the plague. 60% of the players manage to finish several minutes ahead of the end of each round. The remaining 40%, especially when up against each other, will take all the time they are entitled to, playing sequences of winners with zero chance of getting a favourable discard and recalculating the deal after each play. One table earlier this week took 10 minutes in a 14 minute round on a 6NT in the first board, and discussed it for another 2 minutes while holding cards for the second board! (40-40 seemed an inadequate penalty for such an idiotic lapse.) Give these people an extra minute once, and they will demand it forever. And the 60% who play on time and already wait longer than they should will choose to play somewhere else. (Don't forget that you actually CANNOT give an extra minute: adding one minute to the setup adds one per board per round, adding at least two unless you are playing one-board rounds. BBO could help a lot by changing this variable to seconds per board instead of minutes per board. We're currently at 7 and 6 would be a chaos of unfinished results, but 6.5 minutes would speed up the offenders and placate the speedsters.)

This has come from three people in the past week, none of whom I would consider oblivious to the idea of scrolling. Any ideas?

Dummy: ♠ Q T 6 4 ♥ Q ♦ Q 8 5 ♣ T 8 4 3 2 Declarer: ♠ A 7 3 ♥ A K J 9 ♦ J T 4 3 ♣ A Q After being disconnected and getting back in for this hand following a sub replacing you, you open this hand 1♦ in third chair, all vul. Partner responds 1♠, you rebid 2NT and partner raises to 3NT. Opening lead is a heart, you win in dummy and take the club finesse, which loses. Opening leader now cashes the ace of diamonds and puts partner in with the king, and a heart is led. You're going to make four hearts, two diamonds, the ace of clubs, and spades will decide your fate. My contention is this: if you spend the last seconds of the round cashing red suit winners and time runs out, when it is clear you will come down to a straight guess in spades no matter what you do, why should I give you any part of making 3NT if there is one play that succeeds? When time is short, and you are the cause, I think you lose the right to delay a key decision which the computer will always get right if the hand is not finished in time. If RHO returns a club, that's different, you can't lose a spade without losing at least one more club, I'm OK with taking winners before deciding how to play the spades, and as long as you do it quickly I can give you something. But this declarer (who is local but disconnected 2-3 times per game) played out the winners slowly and never even tried to guess the spades. I ruled down one (which turned out to be zero matchpoints on a seven top) even though finessing the ten would have worked.

On Saturday our 5-table game (#59370) was not stratified. I assumed that this might have been because it was created before the server change. Is that correct?

Just had a tournament start delayed by +allavail+ because player x was offline. I usually tell player x's partner in case they can call and give them about 90 seconds. Finally I gave up and zapped the offline registrations and the tournament began, with player x in, but still listed as offline. Is it possible that logging in as invisible does this: sees a player as offline until the tournament begins, then realizes that they are actually around?

I can report that I sent a player memo about an inept pair after several deals that screamed of foreknowledge of partner’s cards. My first clue was a deal in the middle of the game where it took almost three minutes for the player who had declared the previous hand (not a dummy stuck raiding the pantry) to open a 3-3-4-3 16 count 1NT. I assumed Table History was the culprit, but eventually was convinced that the lost time was spent transmitting illegal data...

...seems to be fixed, in that it no longer is a 50-50 proposition whether the selected board actually comes up or not. This was an irritating bug especially when busy and I speculated that it was one of those perplexing ones that sometimes take hours, weeks, or months to pin down before you get the mind-blowing aha! insight. I wouldn’t want it to go un-noticed: bravo to whoever figured out the solution!

If I understand this correctly, the key is that everyone moves to a new table and the boards stay, as opposed to the way we do it offline. So using teams of Art/Andy, Alice/Anne; Bob/Barry, Bryce/Bela; and Chris/Cathy, Cary/Callie: (players in parentheses indicate assignments made later) Match One AAAA vs BBBB -- Team One: N Art, S Andy, E (Alice), W (Anne); Team Two: N (Bob), S (Barry), E Bryce, W Bela Match Two BBBB vs CCCC -- Team One: N Bob, S Barry, E (Bryce), W (Bela); Team Two: N (Chris), S (Cathy), E Cary, W Callie Match Three CCCC vs AAAA -- Team One: N Chris, S Cathy, E (Cary), W (Callie); Team Two: N (Art), S (Andy), E Alice, W Anne The other difference from the way it is done offline in the ACBL at least is that board numbers will be the same at all three tables.

Once all three matches are started, is it then safe to enter the closed room names? Or should I wait until all three matches are finished the first half?

Wow: I had not even thought this would be possible. Let me confirm bit by bit, since we are in the round-robin phase now and there's lots of time to experiment. To make this work, I need to: --set up three team matches, let's assume the three teams are Art/Andy, Alice/Anne; Bob/Barry, Bryce/Bela; and Chris/Cathy, Cary/Callie. --I need three sets of boards, one for each table, in lin format (done this before, many years ago, should be easy enough) --First table, A vs B, I set up as Team 1: N Art, S Andy, E/W undefined, Team 2 N/S undefined, E Bryce, W Bela. Other tables similar. --When it comes time for the change, the boards stay, so everyone has to move, E/W to a higher table, N/S to a lower table, and we occupy the undefined seats from round one. My first question is this: will this even work? Will the software allow a team game to start at one table before you have any players even reserved for the second? If so, great solution! Second question: how many team games can I run at one time, and who do I ask to increase this number?

On Tuesday night, season two of what was known originally as the Vancouver Summer IMP League began with a new name, since it will go to October, the Electronic Vancouver IMP League, chosen mostly for its acronym. :D We set up a system where to get to the top 8-team division you need to finish high enough in the previous season or pre-qualify, and we had ten play-in matches for five spots. I would have had a more difficult task if the numbers had not worked out so well. What I'd like to see is a BBO way to handle three-way team games, the way we do in a tournament when the numbers are odd. This would help a lot in team leagues. Is it possible?

What this effectively means is that if a player calls the TD in the middle of the game saying that there was very bad language used by one player at the previous table, you can check Table History to see what was said, and boot the miscreant if necessary. But if it happens on the last round and the shocked player tells you one second after the final table plays the last card, there is no way to prove it and prevent the miscreant from coming back.

If they only get 4 1/2 tricks played on the last board there is a reason somewhere and Table History may find it. If the declarer had to endure slow bidding and play on the preceding boards and this is clearly shown by Table History, I might award his side A+ and the others A-. What I look for in Table History is whether there were messages from the other side asking them to speed up or watch the clock, as well as clear breaks in tempo in fairly clear situations. Often a table loses valuable time by a player making his first call late, because he has left the table during the previous hand as dummy and not arrived back in time. If the result is obvious or close to it that is what I would adjust to, without clear evidence that one side was primarily responsible for the lateness. The key to avoiding these situations is to make sure they cannot happen by getting in there early at problem tables: in a game of 6-12 tables it is not difficult to go table to table and check to see if anyone is falling behind, stopping off to give a warning if they are. Our games are 14 minute, 2 board rounds, and I usually do a walk-through once or twice and take note of the tables that are behind, then watch them more closely later to ensure they catch up. I also claim for the last table if they have decided to embark on a time-wasting line such as cashing winners in hopes of a misclick when the defenders cannot help but know what to keep. This keeps things moving and can be corrected later if a mistake is made. In larger games you'll have more tables to watch and sometimes you won't be able to help it when half the room has bid to 5♥* and the other half is trying to squeeze out an 11th trick in 5♠ and every auction had more bids than passes and most of the room is going to be late. In those cases, you try to focus on the ones who have played the least once down to the last three minutes, so they can get in enough tricks that the decision will be apparent.

A player in my virtual club game today called the Director with the message "we hadn't finished bidding yet." I watched the last finishers in the previous round and nobody finished late. I sometimes claim in obvious positions to save time but had not done so in the previous round. So off to the table to investigate. It was based on the current board. Partner opened 1♠ as dealer and the TD caller passed. Partner was playing in 1♠. She made exactly seven tricks. Should I rule that dummy wanted to bid more and adjust? :)

This is usually because there is an averaged board in there somewhere. The BBO system calculates the percentages correctly, but sometimes on ACBL Live for Clubs the matchpoints are wrong, even though the percentages copied from BBO results are correct.