qwery_hi

If there is a way we can set clubs as trumps and then ask for keycards, we can convert to 6!S or 7!S later. This way we can also find out about the club A/K. So if 3!C then 4!C would be rkc for clubs, I would do that.

My bad. I looked at the youth matches again and all URL's I found are clickable. I couldn't find the previous URL which was not clickable. If I find that particular URL I'll update the thread.

One more improvement I'd like to suggest is that URL's while watching the live vugraph are clickable, whereas the same URL's in the archives are not. Making these clickable would improve user experience.

I checked it out, and love the way it works. In fact, if you could use some mirrors of the vugraph archive page, we could have a thread right here on the forums for volunteers - I know I'll be one. One suggestion is that the player names in the commentary are in black - while in BBO they are in a different color which makes following the commentary slightly easier.

IMO, it's best for bridge that they not volunteer if they don't have the time to do justice to the job.

I read Blink and 'The paradox of choice' and recommend both.

The raw vugraph feed is property of the ACBL or the organization hosting the tournament.

So you partially agree? Also I think you misunderstood "fire each other up".

The primary concern of ACBL shouldn't be whether BBO should charge its audience or not, but rather whether it should charge BBO or any other site which wants live access to the vugraph stream for broadcasting. AFAIK there are no corporate sponsors. Is this because the ACBL is not trying hard enough or because the corporate sponsors don't find this lucrative? Has online vugraph resulted in a higher rate of growth of ACBL membership than before? If yes, then ACBL is getting something out of it, if not, ACBL might as well charge for it.

The tables need not wait, just the publication of the results of the boards to the outside world.

And it is never going to be (as popular). Instead of waiting for the day when Bridge will be as popular as football before charging for it, we might as well ask the Vugraph audience to pay .

You are kidding, right? First, the ACBL is only a small percentage of all broadcast. Second, what makes the broadcast work, is the vugraph operator and teh commentators. These (generally 4 people) are all volunteer. If there is any charge, I would expect the money to at least go towards these people. Third, the BBO is heavily involved as well. Did you know that at least in the past when large vugraphs occurred, the number of tournaments being played had to be limited. This is probably been fixed now, but their resources are being heavily used. Fourth, how much would you suggest charging? The ACBL, the BBO, and other bridge organizations should encourage as many people to watch as possible. Bridge needs stars, and vugraph is the best way to encourage people to experience real-life, top level bridge live. Charging seems backwards to me. I don't know how the NFL makes money off broadcasts, but it seems like they give the rights to some tv companies, who then charge end users. The tv companies are the ones which hire commentators. I think the ACBL could do something similar with BBO or any other people who'd want to relay "live".

Should ACBL charge for live vugraphs to offset the costs of OCR/clocks/other tech stuff (to prevent cheating perhaps).

My turn. Let's say a particular campus (UCLA, for example) would like to have a more diverse campus. And let's say that Asian-American students are "overrepresented" in the school's demographics. If two applicants are being considered for the last admissions spot, and an Asian-American student is regarded as slightly better than an African-American candiate by objective criteria (LSAT, grades), and even by color-blind subjective criteria (reading their essays without knowing the races of the applicants), and they grew up in the same socio-economic stratum and attended the same schools, would you favor a public school's being able to reject the Asian-American student solely on the basis of race, to create a more diverse campus? I would flip a coin. If the goal is to increase the sociological fitness, we could do worse than learn from evolution and biological fitness.

IMO declarer play is significantly easier than defense or bidding. I think bidding is the toughest, since at defense, we have information from the bidding and the dummy, but not the other way round.

Uday/Fred are the experts here, but looks to me like what would one do if the ack itself was lost. I don't know if the user experience is significantly degraded by this issue for more complex protocols to applied.

Chess is much easier to do electronically - after all, the pieces are placed in very limited areas on a board. Both pieces and board can be easily coded for electronic transmission. On the other hand, cards are played in a less than precise manner, and it might be trickier to read them. Before you tell me that players could easily put their cards in a specific spot on the table, let me tell you about the difficulty one often has as a Vugraph operator getting a player to play a card in such a way that you can see it. And even those who try to correct their sloppy habits usually only do so for a hand or at most two. Agreed, and making a rule that the card should be placed in a specific place on the tray is the way to make progress. Using Braille cards for the top tournaments would make card recognition easier. Even in chess, you cannot place the piece anywhere, furthermore, if your move displaces other pieces you are required to correct the position before your move is regarded as completed.

It is beyond silly, and heck of a troll post.

Imposing penalties for discussing a board after it is played and enforcing them would be a step in solving this issue.

If I can't go to the bathroom during a segment, I'm afraid I will be unable to be a Vugraph operator - I usually only go when there is a break for another reason (the best thing about smokers is they allow me my bathroom breaks), but once in a while I have to go during the bidding and am always grateful to the players for waiting to remove their bidding cards until I can get the whole auction in. If I couldn't ever ask the players how many tricks had been claimed, I wouldn't be able to provide an accurate report. Being able to hear the players allows me to pass on some of their insightful and/or amusing comments. Most operators don't have time to use another program (I confess I sometimes answer email during a broadcast, but I think I'm unusual there). But more importantly, if we're worrying about Vugraph operators cheating, there are lots of easy ways to do that without any electronic help. We all try very hard to control our facial expressions and body language so as not to communicate anything to the players and that is often difficult. No tournament organizer is going to have a Vugraph operator who might cheat. I'm always grateful when I'm able to find one operator per table for the number of tables I want to cover. You're living in a fantasy world if you think we could ever have four operators per table. Anyone want to be an operator for the USBF Senior Trials in Las Vegas next week? An excellent analysis of the challenges vugraph operators face. Perhaps the solution is to go electronic and eliminate vugraph operators like in chess. Howie weinstein in a BW article also talks about this issue where relaying live bridge is technologically behind relaying live chess events.

I answered in favor of online sectionals and not regionals.

Quite frankly, I think a "wdp" is crass, certainly a "wpp" after the opps have blundered is really rude.. You should play exactly like in f2f. I say nothing at any time, except call for the cards. Don't even thank pd for the dummy - why? The only time I say anything is when the opps are fighting, and then I agree with both of them to stir the pot. There are quite a few similarities to cricket, where initially the British marketed it as a gentleman's game, but then sledging happened, fines were imposed, and now everyone accepts that sledging is part of the game and life goes on. What I've seen is a holier-than-thou attitude is very prevalent among bridge players. When you think about it, it is the only team sport I know where congratulating your teammate is frowned up. Take beach-volleyball or doubles-tennis or ping-pong or what have you - the two partners fire each other up routinely and the opponents don't regard this as an insult to them. But since Bridge Players are Better Than Them , it is frowned upon to do this. As an aside, some of the best friends I have made were my fiercest competitors across the net.

Absolutely not. I wonder if they even follow the play when they are dummy - seems to me to be a good idea if I am dummy to conserve energy .

It'll be interesting to know how the top partnerships are in this regard in RL. Do they gtp wdp glp too?

I think OP was talking about initial rounds of high level competitions where there are no screens. Subtle UI through screens would probably require ESP, investigating it would need Mulder and Scully.