modicum

We just use Google Sites. Free, attractive, and easy enough that anyone can post to it.

When Flash CS 5 comes out could the Adode Packager for iPhone be used to port BBO to the iPad? That would make me much more interested in picking up an iPad. Thanks as always for the great product.

shintaro - You're welcome, I'm glad it can help make your games better. If you end up adopting it at your club let me know.

Per Barmar's request the timer will now gives you some more choices about how to warn people that the end of the round is coming. You can set the 'Warning Time', which is the number of minutes before the end of the round that the timer will try to warn people. When this time is up the background will turn red. Also, if you select 'Announce Warnings' it will make a verbal announcement at this time. http://timer.bridgelife.net/timeroptions.png Thanks again for all the ideas.

Blackshoe - agreed, I would hate to give people an excuse to have their phones distracting other players. Then again people are probably going to carry their phones whether or not they have a use for them, so hopefully they know how to turn off the ringer. JoAnneM - Great! Please let me know how it works. The iPhone does have a built-in timer (in the Clock program), but I don't think it will automatically repeat. I hope to get this program to the point where a director can monitor and control their timer on their phone while all the players watch it on a computer, but it won't get there for a little while. Barmar - Currently the timer will announce all round changes if you select 'Verbal Announcements' when you start the round. It does not currently do warnings a few minutes before. That's a good idea; I'll try to add it one day this week.

There is now a version of the timer that you can install on your computer and run without an internet connection. Hopefully this will help JoAnneM and others use it in clubs without internet access. To install it you need to have Adobe Air on your computer. You can get it at http://get.adobe.com/air/. Then to install the timer go to http://timer.bridgelife.net/BridgeTimer.air. I hope that works for you guys. Blackshoe - those sound like huge club games. (By my standards, I've never seen more than two sections at one.) I guess with that many people it makes sense to have dedicated scoring and timing computers. I agree that few people have computers with multiple screens, and even if they do the screen is right by the computer. The idea is that eventually you will be able to display the current timer on as many different computers (or cellphones) as you want, and they will all follow the same clock. That way if you have a big room you can keep everyone in sync. It doesn't do that yet, but I would like to drive it in that direction.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Blackshoe - You must play at bigger clubs than I do, I haven't seen one yet with multiple computers. But if this timer is expanded to play on multiple screens, then even if the players aren't looking that the scoring computer the director can use it to keep an eye on the time. Barmar - Done! You can now add and remove time from a round. JoAnneM - Interesting. I did a little digging after Blackshoe's first post, and I think I can turn it into a standalone program using a product called Adobe AIR. I'll look into this and if I find a way to do it I'll post a link here.

Thanks for the feedback. A web-based timer will require an internet connection, so clubs that don't have internet access will not be able to use it. But I expect this isn't a problem for many clubs (most places I play have internet access, and I only expect it to become more widespread). I'll take a look at the features for the free Windows tool. It wouldn't be too hard to add support for admin time and breaks, or to let users store their configuration. There are also some interesting features that we could add because this is an internet application, like displaying the time on multiple terminals or controlling it from a mobile phone.

My bridge club isn't good at keeping our games on time, and we don't have one of those giant clocks used in tournaments. So I made a little computer program to show all users where we are in the movement, and how much time they have to finish their round. It shows everyone in the room what the round is, how much time is left, and what board they should be on. It uses giant letter so the screen is easy to read from across the room. It can make a verbal announcement telling users when it is time to move to the next round. The tournament director can add time to rounds or skip forward to keep pace with how people are playing. And it is written as a simple web-page, so any computer with a web browser can use it without installing any special software. http://timer.bridgelife.net/timerscreen.png I know that there are other tools around that do similar things, but I don't think any of them can be run as easily as loading a web page. If anyone wants to check it out or try it in your club, I would be interested in your thoughts. You can use the timer by going to timer.bridgelife.net. (I haven't tested it on many different computer or browsers, so if you have trouble running it let me know.)

Thanks karlson and fred - that helped me figure it out. Fred is right, I had a syntax error. I was mixing the syntax of Dealer with that of its Perl preprocessor (which it looks like BBO doesn't use). The preprocessor (documented here) lets you specify hand shapes a little more generally (like 'shape{north, 5+M3+c(31)}' rather than 'shape(north,1534 + 3514 + 1633 + 3613 + 5134 + 5314 + 6133 + 6313)'). It looks like the pre-processor is helpful for finding certain odd hand shapes, the built-in features of Dealer are sufficient for my needs. Also, if I do end up needing it, I can always preprocess the file myself before feeding it to BBO. Also, karlson's second example 'shape(north, any 4333 + 4432 + 5332)' seems not to work. When I ran it it didn't return an error, but always dealt 4333 hands. Aaron

I have been writing up specifications for practice deals in Dealer syntax and using them for partnership bidding; I find this to be a fantastic feature. However, I don't think all the commands specified in the documentation for Dealer work. I have no trouble executing a script like this: north_standard_opener = (hcp(north) >= 12) north_1level_opener = north_standard_opener && (hcp(north) < 22) north_1h_opener = north_1level_opener && (hearts(north)>=5 && spades(north) < hearts(north)) north_1h_opener However, many of the examples in the Dealer documentation use the 'shape' function, such as: north_1nt_opener = shape(north, 3+3+3+2+) north_1nt_opener Whenever I enter a hand like this, I get the response 'Error Generating Deal'. Also, the syntax of Dealer allows the file to specify who deals and what the vulnerability is, but commands like 'dealer north' seem to be ignored by BBO. Is there documentation of which Dealer commands are supported by BBO? Again, great feature, and I look forward to being able to fully utilize it. Also, has anyone set up an online repository of example systems for dealer? It might be useful so people who want to practice unusual hands don't have to start from scratch. Aaron

Thanks for the thoughts everyone. Clearly the number of boards affects the volatility of the result, and if players would play more boards the results would be flatter and fairer. But there is no way people could squeeze more boards into an hour, and the one hour tournament format works well. So I think playing 10-12 boards in an hour is a good format. Also, the number of opponents you play would affect the volatility of your results. If you played all your boards against the same opponent, then your result would have a lot to do with how good your opponent is. And if you played 12 different opponents the results would be fairer. Given that it doesn't take any time to move between tables why do you only play against four opponents in an hour? This seems like a leftover from playing bridge off-line, where it takes time to move between tables so you'd better play several boards while you are there. Helene - when you say that BBO supports a 'Swiss Movement', do you mean that it supports a Swiss Team game (with 4-person teams), or it uses a Swiss-style movement in a pairs game? If it is the second, that sounds like a great way to reduce the volatility of our results. While I like Swiss Teams, I don't think they are a good format for quick online games. The teams have to be larger, and you have to trust your teammates. But what I like about playing Swiss in a large field is that they match you against against appropriate opponents based on your results in earlier boards. This helps make sure everyone is challenged. So what I wonder about in our pair games is why does it seem like all of your opponents are randomly selected? Selecting opponents who had performed at a similar level would help to flatten results and makes everyone's game a challenge. This also seems like a leftover, because in an off-line bridge tournament you don't have time to compute new pairing between each round.

I'm a newish bridge player who has been playing on BBO quite a bit, especially in ACBL tournaments. I have learned a lot and had a great deal of fun playing here. The great thing about BBO tournaments is that you can play whenever you want, they only take an hour, and there is always good competition available. One of the big disadvantages of BBO tournaments over going to a real-world club or tournament is that the results seem to be much more erratic. (All of my data here is anecdotal, I would be interested if someone has studied this more closely.) When I play with one of my regular partners at a regular night in the club we tend to get about 45-55%. Anything much higher is a pleasant surprise, and lower is a disappointment. At BBO, I find that I can play with a regular partner and go from 30% one game to 70% the next game with little change in play. This volitility actually helped me as a new player, becuase I would sometimes place in BBO tournaments before I was placing at the club. But if we want winning BBO tournaments to mean something and deserve the same level of respect as winning real-world tournaments, then they should strive to be as exact a measure of skill as possible. The obvious culprit here is that in online games you only play against four other pairs, where a real-world club or tournment you tend to play against 5-13 other pairs. So a major determinate of how well you do is how good your opponents are. The easy solution to this would be to extend tournaments for two hours so players could play twice as many opponents. This is unappealing, as it undermines the benefits of online bridge: short games with plenty of players. The better approach would be to stop looking at online bridge games as analogs of real-world games. Much of the process BBO uses for these games is exactly the same as it would be in offline bridge games: play is divided into similarly-sized sections, players play several boards against one set of opponents before advancing to the next one. But online bridge lacks many of the constraints of real-world bridge: players an all play the same board simultaneously, they are always at the right table, and it doesn't take any time to move between tables. As a result, it seems like in an online tournament we can allow players to play more opponents, and opponents of similar skill, without lengthening the tournement. The process I would propose would be much close to the way that Swiss games are played today: 1. In the first round each pair would be matched against a random set of opponents. 2. In the second and later rounds, pairs would be matched based on their performance in the earlier rounds. So the winning pairs would play more winning pairs, and the losing pairs would play more losing pairs. 3. Rounds would last for 1-2 boards, and there would be 5-10 rounds. So by the end I will have played more different opponents, and my later opponents should be at a similar level to me. It would be very different from real-world bridge, and matching winners probably means that the results would be quite flat. But neither of those are bad things. It would be a game that keeps the things I like about online tournaments, but makes them a better game of skill. Thoughts? Aaron