McBruce

My Virtual Club game ended ten minutes ago. The event is still listed in Running Tournaments in the Director Tab, but there are only five options: Adjust Score, Player Results, Results, Chat->Tournament, Cancel Tournament. No Table History. I can see movies for any pair/board in Results, but not timing data.

Pairs tournament 4164 today, interesting ending: Name Score (%) Rank A B C Prize Points Lin1951+van0602 60.63 1 1 1 1.28 veecon+Robby8 60.62 1 1 1.28 One pair's results show 2/26, 60.62% at the top of the list and 60.63% at the bottom. The other's results show 1/26, 60.63% at the top of the list and 60.62% at the bottom. It would seem we have a rounding discrepancy in the code.

Looking at issues involving claims in Table History: --it looks like some of the events listed are attributed to the wrong person. Declarer East makes a claim, and then North accepts, and then East accepts and that is sufficient. It looks like the system is mis-attributing one of the acceptances. Also seeing a lot of claimers listed as the people who decline the claims. --in a case where a defender is on lead at trick 12 and has two choices, one of which will be successful, if partner claims the rest assuming the leader will get it right, does that show the leader all eight remaining cards, or does it just show the other side all the cards?

How surprising it is to find so many General Dreedles among us. General Dreedle was a character in Catch-22, played by Orson Welles in the film version in a great cameo, who addressed the bomber squadron of Colonel Cathcart and encountered resistance in the form of men moaning at the sight of his gorgeous secretary, so he ordered them to stop. The next item on the agenda was the synching of watches and when this too was botched, the Major in charge of the synching moaned and General Dreedle ordered him taken out and shot. Somehow I think this is not the paradigm for success for bridge games. If someone wants to start the General Dreedle Bridge Club on BBO, have at it. Before long I am sure you'll be the talk of the town.

A new type of Director call is becoming more frequent online and I wanted to warn you all against it with a rather egregious example. We've seen this offline from good players who can work out the hand after the play is complete and know how to present selected details that point to their innocence and the opponents' devious cunning. The online world, where we get to see the hand record once the deal is over, extends this to the not-quite-so-good players. This particular cherry pick has several attributes to watch for: --there is an infraction by an opponent that is minor and apparent to most even if uncorrected --the aggrieved player claims to have fallen for the rather unlikely natural meaning indicated --the Director is not called until well after the end of the deal --there are blindingly obvious clues that things are not as the aggrieved player pictures them, or claims to have pictured them, but none of these causes a Director call --in reporting the infraction, the aggrieved player will omit details that derail his case --another reason for the bad score, unrelated to the infraction, often exists in the ensuing cardplay --it soon becomes apparent that viewing the hand record is the catalyst, that the aggrieved player decides he was damaged, looks for the most advantageous bid not made, and convinces himself that with correct information that bid would have been made I'm going to give you the latest example without all the pertinent details, as part of the exercise. (I tried to avoid pronouns until I got tired of writing 'the aggrieved player' and checking that my spelling of aggrieved agreed with the last time I typed it, so please accept he or his as being sexist but not necessarily indicative of the actual player....) :) ♠ 98 ♥ T73 ♦ AQT84 ♣ Q64 Partner opens 1♠, RHO overcalls 1NT, and after you double, LHO bids 2♦ with no alert. Partner passes, RHO bids 2♥, and with LHO showing diamonds you decide not to compete further. 2♥ becomes the final contract and ten tricks are made, resulting in a very bad score. Our hero, as the auction in the next deal comes to a close, calls the Director with the helpful message "Unalerted transfer, I would have bid 2♠ with an alert." It doesn't take long to find more holes in this argument than in a good piece of Swiss cheese: --Partner had opened 1♠ in third seat, at favourable vulnerability. This pair's convention card showed that they played Reverse Drury and that in this position this could be a four-card spade suit. Coming in was potential suicide, especially after doubling the 1NT overcall with only eight points. Partner had a decent minimum opener that would be made in first seat and would probably raise, and certainly compete over a 3♥ call, after hearing this 2♠ call from a partner who had previously doubled the 1NT overcall. --The 2♥ contract was defeatable after a spade to partner's ace, a spade back to the notrumper's king, a trump to dummy's queen and partner's ace (from ace-jack doubleton) and a spade ruffed by our hero. At this point a diamond lead would catch partner with Kx. A diamond ruff with the jack of trumps on the third round would be the sixth trick for the defense, and now a fourth round of spades would promote the ten of hearts to become the seventh trick for +200 and a near top. Even ace and a second small diamond to the king works, for a spade comes back for the same promotion; if declarer ruffs high with the declaring hand's final trump, you pitch your third club and declarer cannot get to dummy without allowing two more tricks to high ruffs. Unfortunately, partner, when in with the ace of trumps, lazily led a small spade for the trick four ruff when any spade would have had equal effect, and this indicated a disastrous club return, which led to two overtricks and a near bottom. --The aggrieved player must have noticed after the opening lead that dummy, who had bid 2♦ apparently naturally, had six hearts and two diamonds. Table history shows that he did, comments were made. But if bidding 2♠ over a transfer completion was in the mind of our victim, it did not occur to the aggrieved player to call the Director until perusal of a deal record and some wishful thinking indicated that it would work. Much of your skill as a Director is revealed in how you handle calls such as this. I learned what not to do from more than one club director who would loudly and conspicuously take the player's head and several other appendages and figuratively force the Swiss cheese upon them, advertising the details of the deal to the rest of the room. Entertaining perhaps, but not helpful. The much better way is to let the player know that you will have a good look and get them to continue play on the following deals, even if the whole thing screams of inanity. Very occasionally online you get a player who demands an immediate ruling and will not play until he gets one. That's easy. You simply tell him that you've always wanted to get the chance to play a few hands with his partner and that this is perilously close to happening. The difficulty is in avoiding the temptation to clearly say what you know has happened: the player has gotten a bad result, looked at the hands and convinced himself that since 2♠ will make, he would have bid it with correct and timely information and everyone would have conveniently passed. One way is to trot out that favorite of ACBL TDs, the 'experience or expertise' clause in the Alert procedure, 'Players who, by experience or expertise, recognize that their opponents have neglected to Alert a special agreement will be expected to protect themselves.' Another is the 'knows or suspects' clause, 'An opponent who actually knows or suspects what is happening, even though not properly informed, may not be entitled to redress if he or she chooses to proceed without clarifying the situation.' It's pretty clear from this that our hero should have called when dummy hit. In this case, my choice was to simply point out to him that had he called when dummy appeared, I could have asked him at that point what he would have done, forcing him to answer before seeing the other 26 cards. This appeared to make the point quite nicely and no further argument came back. If it had, I would have told him that 2♠ would probably lead to more bidding, even quite possibly from partner, and I’d have pointed out partner's elementary defensive lapse that led to the bad score. So what shall we call this type of director call? The Cherry Pick? The Holey Moley? The Printout Problem? The Captain's Complaint (since the aggrieved party morphs from Captain Oblivious to Captain Obvious as the hand record makes it clear what he would have done)? Respond with a better name if you come up with one! I think it is great that players see the deals after the play if they wish, I don't want that to change. I do hope that we TDs will watch for this particular ploy and make sure we don't fall for it.

Our record in Vancouver comes from the 1980s, when the biggest club had a thriving Friday Evening game followed monthly by a TGIF that would sometimes go until the sun came up, with drinking, rubber bridge, poker, and backgammon. Following one of these, the Saturday evening game was the dreaded 5-pair Howell where top is 1 and all play 20 boards and miss 5. One pair (who had not attended the frivolity of the night before) finished with 12%. The real joke was the 78% score that was second.

I am sure that Rixi would immediately have responded that she had not encountered many high quality pairs... :)

As I understand it, this was done because the ACBL Virtual Club program is meant for local players to be able to get together and add some revenue for local clubs, especially full time clubs that have rent obligations to meet. Some points seekers had been shopping the list of games and looking for large ones about to start and asking to be allowed to participate, or offering to sub, even if they had never played there nor lived anywhere nearby. For games where players from different areas wish to play together, there are the daily Support Your Club games. The way to find a local club to join for their Virtual games is to check the ACBL club directory for your area and find a local contact. They will put you in touch with the local director who will get you added to the club’s list of players. At first this will be by simply friending you, which will mean that you can play in their games but will still need to find them in the ‘all games’ list — but eventually the club director should send your name to the ACBL person handling the new lists and once you are added to the club’s include list, you will see the games for your club or clubs in the ACBL list (and no others). You are allowed to be a member of more than one club.

Another nice new change is that when an unfinished board needs to be adjusted, the pop-up form now assumes the contract reached and enters the number of tricks declarer had when play was stopped. Nice!

Worked like a dream, great job BBO!

I'll test it out in about 20 minutes and check back....

Today when two or three people finished late, the area for Director calls, normally about 50% of the lower part of the right panel, grew slightly, so that it was about 55%-60% of the panel. Once the calls were cleared the area went back to the normal space allotment. I didn't have a big enough game to test it out (short of asking everyone to call the Director at the same time!) but with this new behavior is it possible that if it grows too big for all the calls there will be a scroll bar that we can use to get to the ones we want? Inquiring minds directing the large games at the ACBL Regional this weekend would like to know.

Thanks for looking into this!

Much appreciated, no hurry. Surprisingly few complaints or questions so far. Not like the grumbling inevitably heard when an offline game loses a round or two due to some outside event: fire alarm, power failure, etc.

Our local club's game yesterday (June 9) fell out of the IBM Cloud and crashed down to earth as most were bidding board 13 of 18. I was looking at two results on board 12 when the cacophony of Director call sounds began. Good day to introduce that. :) Everyone got average for boards 13-18, and the two results I never managed to review were also averages. To my surprise, after BBO came slowly back online and announcements were made that everyone affected would get refunds, the usual sources reported the tournament as complete. ACBL's Live For Clubs listed the game with the usual masterpoints for a game of that size, even though we never got near the minimum of 18 boards for full masterpoint awards. Our next game starts in a little over an hour, and I expect I will get questions. Will refunds or perhaps partial refunds be given for this game? If not, I can probably convince the club owner to charge $1 less at next week's game in this time slot to quell the grumbles, but I want to be able to answer the questions I will be getting.

Thanks: that is good information. Now we'll see if I can communicate it to my non-listeners.... :)

We had lots of virtual club folks asking to form an online IMP League, so I did. Google Forms to collect signups and preferences, a website to keep people informed, and tonight was night one, with 20 teams in 2 ten-team divisions. Nine matches were successfully completed, which is better than I thought. Another Google Form collected the results nicely. The tenth match....oy vey. I watched as the various tables were set up, recorded the team game numbers so I could look at boards later if needed, and then noticed only nine were actually going. Back to the pending area. One team has set up a table and is waiting for the other. The other has set up their own team match and are occupying the wrong seats, North at both tables, now moving and now three at the same table. All players are seated and not accepting chat. Eventually they start to get up and I try to get one table to go to the other, but the person who started the one table could not join the other, apparently because she could not figure out how to kill her table. OK, I will create a team game. Titled it very clearly "testing -- no play". Invite requests come pouring in, some re-requesting as soon as I click no. I ignore them for a second and look for a way to kill the team game. Eventually I find it in the Director tab. Does everyone who can create a team game have this Director tab? The person who created the table we needed to kill claimed not to have one. But she responded to my requests so slowly I have no idea if she understood. She certainly didn't read the online instructions I posted very well. (Based on my offline interactions with her, I am not surprised.) Three and a half hours later, the two team tables are still there. Hopefully when they reschedule in a few days they will be gone....

Silver Linings Week is finally over. In the games I run, attendance was up about 30-50% and we held a special game which was our biggest ever on Saturday Afternoon. Until this extravaganza of masterpoint giving I was very happy about the Virtual Clubs program. Players seemed to be overjoyed to play with and against familiar people online. I'm still happy but have some concerns. This week the competition factor was increased almost to the breaking point and I began to see and hear about some bad behavior: --A local expert claimed twice in private chat that novice pairs, both of whom didn't come close to average, bidding 50% slams against him that made, must have wires. --I had multiple instances of ridiculously obvious claims being rejected in seconds after being made, by defenders who seem to be set on the idea that their established queen of clubs just has to win a trick even though they have no entry and nobody else has a club. Some of these were rejected so fast I believe that some players reject all claims as a matter of principle, even if it delays the game for everyone else. --I had a player complain about the pace of one of the local "Usual Suspects", which is ordinarily a reasonable argument, but in this case there were 12 minutes left in the two-board round and they had little trouble finishing both boards with 4 minutes to go. She claimed the subsequent fast play was because she had called the director and I explained to her that I had come to the table silently and they didn't even know I was there. This drove her up the wall and ten comments later I had to tell her to cool it, enough already. --I had a silver-point seeker from far far away ask to play in our game with his mother because "his sister lives in Vancouver," and when I told him the rules prohibited that (can't steal players from other clubs), he said "but we have no game at this time slot, so please?" Clearly he was just looking for a big game to join, and I spent a few minutes looking to see if he had ever actually visited our offline club, but then he sent a message telling me I was rude for not responding! By the time I responded to this, he had found some other virtual game to cajole his way into. --I make announcements to the tournament and to specific tables when time runs low, and go from table to table constantly to look for potential problems, but quite often I am amazed at the time taken for simple plays even when the table has been repeatedly warned that time is running out. --And I had a player report (sadly long after the fact) the classic double-shot of the whiney bridge primitive: make some public sarcastic comment implying that the opponents have cheated, then after the round ends, go have a private chat with the Director and try to get a ruling without letting the other player have his say. In this case it was a jump to a slam in a Precision auction that any fool would have made given what the auction indicated. There's a way to fix much of this; not having it makes it more difficult to run these growing events. And players are beginning to realize that we don't have this remedy, and that we are understandably uncomfortable with the all-or-nothing options this forces: ignore or ban. They are starting to realize that they can get away with some of this behavior. The remedy is this: we need to be able, when appropriate, to apply procedural or disciplinary penalties to a pair's total score. I'm not suggesting that I would do it often. Offline I certainly do not. Not even suggesting that I would apply penalties on all of the incidents above. But we need to be able to privately tell players that their behavior has to change if they want to be credited with all of the matchpoints that they earn. I know and understand why BBO resists. Many directors of varying abilities run games. Some would certainly misuse the feature. If I have to file a report whenever I use the feature, that's fine. Send the report to the players whose score was changed and let them protest if they wish. I'll serve on a committee that reviews these reports to make sure there is no misuse. If I have to ask nicely and list my directing credentials to have it made possible, that's fine too. Please don't claim it is too difficult to program. It's not. I knew this was a problem when I tried out online directing in 2003, long before I even tried directing a club game. It's time to make this an option. Otherwise it's chaos out there.

Question from a player pre-tournament today: You agree to play with a player from the partnership desk and agree to play his convention card. How do you get a copy of partner's CC to peruse in the minutes remaining before the tournament starts?

I may be more of an optimist than my esteemed colleague mycroft (whom I shall miss greeting this year in Penticton), but the vast majority of these online explanations that don't make sense, prompting an ask to the other player, are due to poor written communications, or an assumption that something means what it doesn't. Offline, the funniest one I remember was a player asking an opponent about six or seven times to describe partner's Precision 2♣ opener: a joke was being told loudly at the next table and the first three tries were not clearly heard, but the next three or four were confusing, because the Chinese-Canadian player whose partner opened 2♣ said "it shows 11-15, with either a six-card club suit, or a five-card club suit with an unknown four-card major." This was perfect except that he substituted "neither...nor" for "either...or" which got the repeated response "so what DOES it show then?" By the time the joke at the next table was told and the loop had played itself out a few times, they finally got me over and it was easy to resolve and amusing to all.

[hv=pc=n&s=s2haq8daj5cqjt643&w=sak84h6532dt63c52&n=sqthkt94dk972cak8&e=sj97653hj7dq84c97]399|300[/hv] Two pairs ran out of time in the penultimate round playing this deal in 6♣ from the North hand. By the time I worked out what to do, there were only a few pairs still playing and I never got to fire off my final round promo messages. Declarer #1 got a club lead, pulled a second round, and led a heart to the ace -- time ran out. Declarer #2 got a spade lead, and a switch to a club. Declarer pulled two rounds of trumps and led a heart to the queen -- time ran out. The system assigned average to both tables. I could not see any reasonable play by which twelve tricks were not coming in. Both declarers are clearly testing hearts to see if they are 3-3 or there is a doubleton jack somewhere. This is going to be successful and I eventually realized that the ruling was correct even though I was likely to get flak from the E-W pairs involved. One of them had finished first overall and stayed there after the adjustment. They continued arguing that declarer might lead a heart to the nine on the second round or screw up somehow, even after being told they had won. This pair was the one that didn't cash the spade, they might reasonably have been adjusted to making seven (and would still have won). They wanted the average. Or maybe they wanted the opponents not to get the good score they were on course for. If BBO had the option of adjusting a pair's total score for the tournament, I would be happy to adjust to 6♣= and then chip off 25% of a top from the slow North-South pairs. I think we need to be roaming the tables who are likely to finish late and hit declarers or defenders who slow right down knowing that the analysis might favour them while left to their own devices they might screw up. Without the ability to hit slow players who stop playing when the time gets low (what the hell, let the computer figure it out), this ploy works when playing it out might fail. Let's suppose that both declarers pull only one round of trumps and now time runs out. Now what? It's not as clear what declarer will do but almost anything normal will succeed.

"I've registered [myname] with my partner [another name] but how do we play East/West? I usually play East. Thank you. 1st time" (I was kind, and in fact noted that this player was well ahead of the curve having figured out how to message me.)

Looks like the Howells are not subdivided into 15-table maximum sections: one of my virtual games got to 20 and it was one section. I have in my database of games two 16-table, 18-board, 9-round games, one run as a two-section Mitchell (with a revenge round), and one as a Howell. Both paid 2.40 to the first place pair overall. The Howell paid 18 pairs a total of 15.39 points, the Mitchell paid 16 pairs a total of 14.44 points. (Double both figures since each member of the masterpoint winning pairs got the awards.) B and C pairs grabbed about the same number of higher strat awards so the two games were fairly comparable. I'm sticking with Howells. One irate local "Karen" (look it up) claimed to not like Howells, and after some discussion, it turned out that her problem was that the results list is longer and it looks worse if you have 42% and are 35th of 40, than 32% and 8th of 8. Yes, you read that right: last out of 8 looks better than sixth-last out of 40 with a much-better score. Some people....

The pair in question signed up again today, after three failures to launch. I asked whether there was a reason to expect success today, and the answer was that another iPad is ready to go as a backup. It worked, so I expect that it was old software.

This was not an online game, but remains my favorite. It was a novice tournament (obviously): Player: Director, I'd like to know if it is legal to pull a bid-box card out of the box when it is my turn without having to make that bid. Me: And why would you want to do that? Player: I want to see the back side of the pass card to see how much it will cost me if I go down in the contract that I might want to bid. Me: Let's talk away from the table for a second. Away from the table, I explained the scoring and that going down might cost considerably more than the green card indicated if an opponent doubled, which was a possibility he might want to consider after what he had said at the table. Back we went. He made the five-level bid he was thinking about. To my considerable surprise, nobody doubled. (I would have done so whatever I held.) The contract was a struggle, but in the end there was just no way to make more than eleven tricks. +600. To this day I wonder if it was a great bluff that didn't work.