rmunson1

Well, we (player who wants to start team matches as well as myself) have watched your video. He has tried at least 2 more times. Once 'xxxx' is not online even though he is very much online and conducting chats as the match setup proceeds. Again, several times, 'limit exceeded' - I fully understand the point made in the video (click twice) and I have encountered that error legitimately. But, my friend is consistently getting that error even though he is not clicking twice. So, hoping someone has some idea beyond the video regarding what could be preventing 'create team match'?

I have started more than 500 team matches, possibly more than 1000. I am trying to step through a process with a friend to have him do it. He has tried 3 times. First time 'xxxxx is not online' - xxxxx was online so I just wrote that off as a 1-off glitch in BBO. Second time 'exceeded limit' Third time 'exceeded limit' I think we covered the necessary steps rather well. He has been a member for many years with 1000+ logins. Any ideas?

This is new as of yesterday. It works, but it works very very differently and not in a good way. When you click 'create team match' the window closes. There used to be an option to close the window after creating the match, or leave window there if you don't close it. Leaving it there is far far better for 2 reasons: Sometimes invitees decline and you need to reissue. Creating the team match is tedious, and closing the window means that you get to do it all over again, for no reason other than that is the new way that it works. Sometimes I create a short team match (4 boards) and then 7 more using the same players, just moving to different seats (to create an individual movement - which is another issue). I keep the window open through 24 boards, but can close it after the 7th round is started because I am done, there will be no more. But, now that it closes after 1 click on 'create team match' I get to do it all over again. And, if any one declines, then I get to redo that one too. Is it possible to revert to the old way?

Help pages are not dated, so I don't know the vintage of the information found here: Making a bridge movie In any case, once upon a time, it was possible to (re)construct a hand in handviewer format. With the recent removal of all history, it would be nice to be able to reconstruct history. If that is still possible, please advise how. The details in the help document (linked to above) describe features that are not currently a part of BBO. Thanks.

The current system allows every BBO id to be an enemy, neutral or follow. If they follow you, they change from gray to blue. This is useful, but it would be more useful if it were possible to have folders of friends. Default to 'all' but allow me to see only friends/followed ids from those listed in 'folder 1' or those in 'folder 2' If you are trying to start a team match and need the other 7 players there, it would help to be looking only for those 7 and not 'all friends'. If this is implemented, it needs to be possible to have the same friend in 1 or all folders - that is, do not confine a given friend to only be in 1 folder.

I have a couple of suggestions: Vocabulary: Pick a name for each (such as 'Casual' and 'Home'). However, in the announcement, at one point it appears 'Main' is being used to describe 'casual' and at another point, it appears 'main' is being used to describe 'not casual/Home' The current vocabulary (top of page heading) works: 'Casual' and 'Home' I play on my desktop, but have BBO loaded on iPhone and iPad. the logon page should have 'Version 5.6' displayed. Your announcement says 'be sure to have the latest' but there is no way that I know of to know what version I actually have loaded.

Thank you. That answers my question. Much better than I feared.

Actually, I was looking for hands that my son played. Like you, I can see hands from a month ago (for some ID that is not mine), but not yesterday. So, this is actually a slightly different problem than I suspected. My son gave me his password. I logged on. The hands are saved and viewable, but only by his ID, not when I am logged in under my ID trying to look for his hands that were played yesterday. mikemunson is the ID in question.

Steve - have you tried it in the past 2-3 days. This certainly worked a week ago. For me, it does not work today.

+nokill+ means that BBO will not detect slow play and kill the hand - the declarer/defenders can take as long as they like and the hand will proceed to completion. +silentspecs+ means that kibitzers are not allowed to talk to the table or players at the table. Sorry for almost a month delay in responding. Just now saw the question. BBO never sent me an email.

There was a time, until recently, that if you knew any ID within the world of BBO, you could go to hand records and find the history of that players play. Simply go to BBO.https://www.bridgebase.com/ and click hand records. The current process requires login (I think that has been the case for some time, possibly always), but once you login, the only history of hands that can now be viewed are your own. I don't know if this an accidentally induced flaw to be fixed, or a new 'feature' - do you know? I think it is really wrong. For, one thing, you may just have general interest in how a particular player you have followed is doing. Or they may have asked you to look at a hand. Or, much more importantly, they may be teammates on a 6-8 person team - you were sitting out, but you want to know how your team did during your sit out. Your current choices are: Never see, never know what happened Kibitz live and watch each hand as it is played Have them give you their password, so you can login as them to view the hands I think all 3 of these 'choices' are quite poor and hoping the situation can be fixed or changed.

Thanks. Very helpful - specifically answered all my questions (and one I didn't ask! - why are some blue and some gray?!!!)

BBO clearly allows you to list friends who are currently online. Is there a way to list all friends that you have ever identified as 'friends?' It seems the 'account' tab should have a 'friends' tab across the top. Currently, when I add a 'friend' it actually adds a 'follow' - the person is not considered a friend. Is there a limit for # of friends? Is there a way to 'remove' a friend? - someone who, at one time you thought you wanted in your friends list, but no longer wish to have that be the case.

Sorry for my lack of research. I have solved problem #1 by creating another ID and playing with it more. Even though 'invite' produces a list of random substitutes, I learned all I need to do is go to the bottom and type whatever name I want and they will receive an invite. Using that other ID, I created another team match and tried to "Sit!". A popup came up 'Waiting for permission' which is what I would have expected. However, on my screen (that started the team match), no permission request appeared. Clearly the concept is there and working, except I don't know how to get it to work. Where is the permission request supposed to pop up on the Director's screen?

I have established many team matches when all 8 players have been online, ready to go. I assign each a seat and start the match. Very straightforward, it works. I have tried, quite unsuccessfully, to start matches when less than 8 (say 4 out of 8 have arrived). I hoped that 1 of 2 techniques would allow me to fill the seats and let the match begin. 1 - invite. When I try to 'invite' I am given a very very long list of substitutes. What I want is a list of friends online that are now ready to play. 2 - 'Sit' - I hoped that friends could find my match, request to be seated, and I would be asked to confirm that they are allowed to sit there. When they tried, nothing happened. They could not sit. I have heard that it is possible to establish the team match without all 8 players logged on at the time, but so far my attempts at searching the forum have not found a post that explains how that is accomplished. Fortunately, I have become familiar with +nokill+ +private+ +slow+ +silentspecs+. The first time I tried (without all players seated), I wasn't aware and got the experience shown here: In addition, is it documented somewhere about what all the choices are like +private+ and what they mean?

Wow, thanks for the incredibly clear and detailed instructions. Rather painless. And, as you note, this technique completely solves the problem I posed. I don't know if you are familiar with 'Lead Captain'? It is software that attempts to put "David Bird's book" into an app. http://www.bridgecaptain.com/LeadCaptain.html Anyway, rather than give a single answer (lead this), the app gives a table that shows the results of leading any/every card in the hand and allows you to see over an arbitrary number of hand simulations (David Bird used 5000 simulations) how successful each lead would be. You can then see that the 'best lead' is the one that worked the highest percentage of the time. What I would like to see, some day, is something similar to Lead Captain, where you could input a choice of 3 bids for this hand (or let "GIB" name the choices), and then 'software' could run a simulation, similar to Lead Captain, which would conclude the bidding. Then the software would play the hand double dummy to its logical conclusion. The result would look like this: Bid 1 - arrived in successful part score a%, arrived in successful game b%, arrived in successful slam c%, arrived in contract that went down d% Bid 2 - " Bid 3 - " Your instructions clearly answered how I would accomplish the stated question that I initially posed. And, for the hand that I had in question, I learned what GIB would bid. I'm probably not stating my problem very well (or my "solution"), but I'm thinking there is an opportunity to learn more about bidding using computers just like, for me, I learned more about leading using computer simulations via David Bird.

Thanks for the suggestion - I'm embarrassed to post back, but to execute your suggestion, I need help. I started with BBO Help which has a huge number of help categories, but none of them include 'create a bidding table with a robot partner'. I possibly also need help with 'predeal the hands' as well as 'jump between seats'. Other than being cumbersome (and having the skills to accomplish it), everything about your reply sounds perfect. Thanks for the reply. If you could also coach me in the steps, it would be appreciated.

GIB can sit at the table and play with you. Alternatively, GIB can sit over your shoulder and watch you play all 4 hands, showing you which cards will lead to success/defeat at any point in time. This post is to suggest/request an enhancement that is already embedded in GIB: Provide a hand with vulnerability and bidding up to 'this point' and find out what GIB would bid (optionally GIB could say they would not have bid like you forced them to bid on the prior bidding!)? One could argue that human bidding is better than robot bidding - ask a panel of experts and get the 'real answer to the 'best bid' at this point in the auction. And it would be hard to argue with that. Still, David Bird opened some eyes with his books on opening leads. Rather than using human judgment/experience, he used robots to lead every card in the hand and then play out the hand, double dummy, and find the leads that work best. I know some people who still do not believe/buy into what was published in David Bird's books. But I do. I don't know the internals to GIB, but I believe, at any point in the auction, the 'next bid' is based on a combination of some bidding rules as well as some computer simulation of what the other hands are likely to look like and, therefore, what bid would work best. With this tool, GIB could enter "It's Your Call" in the ACBL Bulletin or "Master Solvers" in The Bridge World, or even bid both sides as in "The Bidding Box" or "Challenge the Champs". By comparing GIB results with expert panels one could... Improve GIB's bidding after learning about better bids Improve expert bidding by learning, via simulation, that there is a better way Ignore the results because robots aren't 'real bridge' and the quality of the answer is sufficiently suspect to be worthless Clearly, the problem that bridge players try to solve with each deal/hand is finding the best answer for this hand. Via experience, better play occurs over time (for most). But, David Bird's point was that you won't get 'this' hand with this auction 5000 times in a lifetime to learn the best lead through experience. Why not use a computer simulation to see, over 5000 deals, which lead works best (given this hand and this auction)? What I am asking/suggesting is that computer simulation has already been invented/implemented, but use it for bidding as well as leads. Given 'this' hand and bidding, what is the best next bid? With this tool that I am proposing, create an enhanced GIB so that a player can: open the enhanced GIB, enter their hand and the bidding, and let GIB tell them what GIB would bid next. You could use a Bridgewinners poll or a variety of other options to answer this same question, but having GIB do it would provide an additional point of view. In fact, there are so many bidding polls on Bridgewinners, GIB could be set up to put in their 2 cents on each poll on Bridgewinners! Thoughts?

This topic has already had some discussion, but having read that discussion, I decided to start a new topic. This discussion is more oriented towards how to deal with 'average' when boards aren't played rather than subsequent pairing (of fast and slow players). Much like the chess clock, speedball bridge needs to be all about 'seconds consumed when it is your turn to bid/play'. It would seem trivial for BBO to maintain that data somewhere, so that when a round is over and the boards are not completed, there can be a 'presumption' of why it didn't complete based on history. Or, possibly better, if you have all of the data for that round, real time, then the actual time consumed for the 3 boards in question by each pair would be data that is available. That would be a determining factor as to why the boards were not completed. Anyway - if timing data is available, is it being stored for history? If it is not available, perhaps that is a feature that could easily be added. If it can be added, perhaps that is a piece of information that could also be available/viewable by the BBO players, not just the BBO staff. Bottom line, slow play in the speedball is most annoying and it would be nice to have data to adjudicate the results equitably. Bob Munson rmunson1

Yesterday in an individual event that was SAYC only, I had a robot partner. LHO opened 1NT. Robot (GIB) bid 2C (Capp) holding: S-8 H-84 D-AQT974 C-A987 We ended up in a not too unreasonable 3NT which failed. I held: S-Q643 H-AQJ D-6 C-K6532 But, thinking 2C was natural, I raised to 3C, GIB bid 3D, I bid 3NT, down 1 when the heart diamond squeeze didn't materialize (and clubs were 3-1). So, does GIB only have one way to play, and it will play that regardless of the conditions of contest?

Phil says 'wrong Forum' but what would be the right Forum? This Forum suggests: Report GIB bugs (new thread for a new bug please) Suggest systems that GIB should play Discuss GIB strategies Report..ahem, good plays by GIB

Lobby chat, on the old version, is an outstanding way to find your way to an appropriate table. The new version (take me to a table, any old table, perhaps with 3 novices) may be a great way to socialize and meet newer players, but it isn't the best way to find a game. Please reenable lobby chat on the new version of BBO.

[hv=d=s&v=e&s=sqj8732h3dq5c8743]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv]

After RHO preempts in partner's minor, is double 'cards' or primarily negative/takeout, or primarily penalty? One easy answer is 'requires partnership discussion' but how many of you have had this discussion with your partner? Assuming no prior discussion, what 'defaults' can be deployed to determine how partner will interpret your double?

There is much commentary (and two schools of thought) about the sandwich NT. After the bidding has proceeded 1X - P - 1Y - 1NT, the NT bidder will either have classic NT values or a shapely takeout for the other 2 suits (partnership agreement, pick one understanding or the other). But, I have never seen discussion about the 'Sandwich 2NT'!?! That is, after the bidding proceeds 1X - P - 2X - 2NT, is it universal that this is a takeout for the two lowest unbid suits, or might this be played as natural, strong with stoppers in 'X'? It would be impossible for the auction 1X - P - 2Y - 2NT to be anything other than a takeout of the other two suits - no matter how light they open and how soft their requirements are for new suits at the 2 level, no hand could justify a 'serious 2NT.' Comments welcome. I have searched but never seen this sequence documented as definitely being 'unusual' vs. 'strong NT' or 'subject to partnership agreement' as the sandwich 1NT is.