hotShot

Dear Rain, 90% of what a BBO tourney host does, is call the create tourney dialog and later sub players that got lost. Most of those players lost, leave the tourney because they don't like their pickup partner (or because they have a bad connection). This can easyly be done by a playing TD most of the time. A playing TD should: 1) keep the number of tables small 2) give players at least 8 min/board 3) announce that he is a playing TD 4) keep an exclusion list with known tourney hoppers and troublemakers 5) allow players chat to tourney so that he can be contacted 6) keep an eye on what's going on 7) should announce (and do it of cause) that adjustments will be done after the last board is finished 8) find playing CO-TD's (at least one), this way one of them will be dummy and available The true problem is that players don't read the tourney description (or simply ignore it). What playing TD's should not do is: 1) make players contact abuse@.... for minor tourney trouble 2) ignore requests of players 3) sub players for calling TD 4) adjust results in favor of them, without very good reason And let me point that out: If i join a pay tourney, i expect some extra value. A non playing TD (who knows the bridge laws) might be one.

Notice that you have a 9♥-8♦ = 17 card double fit and opps have a 10♣-7♠=17 card double fit. If your partner tells you about your double fit, your opps will know that they have some sort of double fit too, and they might bid 6♣ with confidence. Information here helps opps more than you.

If a topic has more than one page, 'got to the first unread post' will bring you from page one to the page where the unread post is. If there is only one page it can not work.

www.bridgebase.com is not accesible at the moment, perhaps it moved to another IP-Number. The server you are getting connected to os just not working. So you will have to live without the help for a while. If you BBO connection is n longer working while the rest of the internet is working fine, there has to be a firewall blocking you. This might be a Personal Firewall like Zonealarm or the build-in one from Windows XP, but it is also posssbile that your provider has one installed and allows internet access only using a proxy server. You need to find out if you are blocked by a firewall and if it is true, there is a readme file in the BBO dir that tells you what to do.

Uday the system you applied to the intentional disconnects is good for BBO. But it might not fit the needs of "clubs". We run a series of small tournaments with a nice atmosphere, limited access and a playing TD's. So we would like to have players that have a "stable" connection. I excluded a player from my list for quiting 2 of 2 of our tourneys after the first board. Even if this were his only 2 disconnects, obviously he does not like my style. So for keeping my privat inclusion/exclusion lists up to date it would be nice, if missing players that are subbed by their partners would be reported to the TD as well.

The speech feature is great, but the language mix is irritating. At some parts my language setting works, at others it does not. Espacially suit and number (as Karl already mentioned) are in different languages.

The figures are about right! This does not mean that these contracts can be bid. Based on double dummy analysis and figures posted from bridge browser in another thread indicate that indeed more than 50% of the boards can make game or slam even against perfect double dummy defence. In real life a poor defence can bring that rate higher.

Your observation is right, and you should have expected it that way. 1) Players at the top level will usually find a good/working way to get the most tricks possible, without risking too much. So logically the imp swing depends on the contract they bid. Short: equivalent playing skill makes bidding the deciding factor 2) If a world class player can make 3NT in a hand and you can't, then you should not bid it. You will loose less imp's making 2NT, than loosing in 3 NT. 3) The most difficult things in bridge are: the opening lead competitive auctions it is logical that most swings are caused by one of the above. In both cases you have to make decisions without knowing all the facts. At the opening lead, you haven't seen the dummy yet, in competitive auctions bidding space is lost, that is needed to exchange information. If you have all informations you can decide, if your informations are incompleat you must guess. A guess can be wrong and will therefor create a swing.

If the table owner leaves his seat to become kib, then he stays table owner. He can take his seat back later. The table owner must leave the table, so that another player get to be owner. If he just closes his BBO window and does not log off, thn BBO will need about 2 minutes to realise the connection is lost. During this time the player might stay table host.

If you activate your chat-log, you can use a texteditor to search for the Message that player XXXXXXXXX has been replaced with YYYYYYYYYYY. This way you can find all the players you subbed without taking notes. Player who have been subbed by their partners are not shown. It would be nice if the TD/host would get a message too if a player is subbed by his partner.

pass in both cases.

After a preempt one should bid only with a solid opening. So 3♣ is not a good bid. South 3♠ bid is not a good bid either, because it does not describe his hand. South needs to play ♥ and only Aces are helpfull form north. The only way to make north realize that (without lots of aces on north hand) 4♥ is the place to be, is to bid 4♥ at once. So i would say 60% north 40% south.

Well a vugraph session has each board at both tables, so i guess your 12 boards have to be copyed to show both tables. Can't you simply save the the deals in a lin file (instead of using the vugraph file)? Or perhaps load the lin file you have to a teaching table perhaps you can delete the doubled deals there.

I also noticed a change in BBO's behaviour. It is my impression that i sometimes get several bids or played cards at once. If i play a card, sometimes nothing seems to happen and than all of a sudden I'm in the next trick. I need to review the last trick, to know what cards the others played. Can it be that due to the server load (i saw up to 7500 user online) the client/server connection can be interrupted, so that data have to be rerequested or the programm could freeze if the connection is stuck?

I'll pass! I could have shown majors using (weak) stayman, i could show ♠ probably with X over 2♥. So partner will expect me to have the minors. I don't want to be on the 3 level.

This is a transfer preempt. Assume that North will pass, since he does stop ♥ but not ♠. If pass by west is not forcing, than east has hardly any reason to bid on. In fact i think he is forced to pass, since he has the UI that partner might have forget the agreement. So adjust to 3♣=.

Assume you are a top player and you are playing a 100 boards team match. You know your game contract will make 60% of the time, you know you will face a similar decision again later in the match. So you bid game knowing that on the long run, your wins will be larger than your losses. Now assume you are playing MP's. Each board counts on its own. All boards have the same weight. This also means finger faults, severe and fatal errors count the same. Now your result does not depend on your ability to judge cards and your knowledge of statistcs. It depends on what the others do. An elaborated bidding system is not helping you, because the question is no longer: "Can the contract be made?" It is: "Will the others bid game too?" As an example think of a hand where you have to decide beween 3 and 4♠. If you think you can make 10 tricks with good play, it does not matter much if you bid 3 or 4, because if "the field" stops in 3♠, 3+1 is the same top as 4=. Bidding 4 might bring you from a shared top to a unique top gaining 1MP. But it can cost you all MP's for that board, if you are the only one in 4♠-1. It depends on the field which decision is right. You can gain or loose 1MP in a MP tourney just to the movement. If you are the best pair in the field, and the 2nd best pair is playing the board the same side as you do, you will share the top, loosing 1MP. If they are playing it on your opps side, both of you can have a (unique) top. This introduces some sort of randomness to a tourney. Note that you can see the quality of an MP tourney just looking at the percentages of the winner and the last. In a mixed field like on BBO one gets results from 80%-20%. In a strong field errors are rare so the result difference between the first and the last of a tourney will be small. A good tourney will have results between 55% for the winner and 45% for the last. This also means that every MP might make a difference. So loosing MP's to the movement can ruin your result. If you have a score programm avaible make this little test. Introduce the pairs champ1 and champ2 who win the top each board they play, except againt each other where they get 50%. Fill up the tourney to 7 tables with pairs of equal skill eq1-eq12. They will loose against the champs and play 50% against each other. What should we get? The champs should be shared 1st and the others shared 3rd. What do we get? Well the champs win, but the others get results that differ between 48% and 42% just depending on the movement. Because those who happen to play a board the same side as both champions will get less MP than those pairs playing on the other side. On the other hand in a mixed field, playing IMPs a weak pairs can make you win big numbers, introducing randomness to the result. All this summes up to: 1) In a very strong field (and playing a lot of boards) IMPs are a better measure of skill than MP's. 2) In a mixed field (and playing only a few boards) MPs limit randomness caused by opponents skill, but introduce a bias (by the movement) that the TD has to compensate by seating the top pairs.

Or it would be possible to play at a table with yourself. Do you really want to open this kind of pandorra's box?

A new suit after a fit is found should show controll in that suit. So i can't see what partners 4N can be other than RKCB so it's 5♥ to me.

Would it be difficult to sub a player with "sitout" if no sub is available, so that his partner can get a sub as soon as one is available?

How long does it take to agree on a system including the type of BW you will play? Do you really what to wait a few minutes each rounds so that opps can agree in detail about their system? In an individual tourney you don't have the time and most importently you have already seen your cards. So if my cards are so good that my first question to my new partner what kind of BW we play, that creates much more UI than just anouncing what kind of BW you decided to use. This is not a championship and you are taking this far to serious.

The double is sound, if your partnership has the playing skill to take your tricks. Obiously you have 2♥, 2♦, 1♣ and 1♠ trick for 2 down, with a little luck and expert knowledge you will find the ♥ ruff and the ♦ finesse for down 4. Of cause unless you lead a low ♣.

I can live with that suggestion, but there are 2 things that you should add: 1) The dialog should appear with some kind of sound! 2) You should consider the last finished board too. And if i may add an additional wish: Make this dialog available to TD's with a shorter timeout e.g. 30 sec. If a player is reported "inactive" the TD can "right click" this message and if it's not answered within 30 seconds the player is subbed.

Often if a kib sits at the table the software redeals automaticly. If not the player can simply type i was kibbing, i've seen all cards, would you like to redeal? Often i would think i'll make my contract against any defence and don't care about a player knowing all cards. Otherwise the host can redeal.

I think you are overreacting here. You could have asked what 4♣ is! I would have assumed that it is a splinter or control bid, even without alert and i would have executed my right to ask about the bidding!