FM75

Also for largest possible cards... Options, More Options, and make sure "Big cards" is checked. :)

Thanks for the link. To save others some "debugging time" here is a list of things that do not work: vulnerable dealer any of the actions (this should be obvious from seeing what they do) Is vulnerability really only random?

There are two options to getting people to play - 1) invite your friends and 2) just wait. Recently I was experimenting with opening team games with no players - only to document how it works - and kept having to refuse entries. As to the card size, I am pretty sure that you can make the cards larger in web version than windows client. 1) You can drag the divider between the table and chat down so that only one line of chat can be seen. Then 2) Select results button at the bottom of the table (when it is red you are in results mode). Then 3) click the results tab at the far right. You will then be in almost full screen for just the cards. Click the results tab at the end of each hand if you want to look at the results, then click it again to see really full sized cards.

Just some random comments on this thread: The ratio of US to World Bermuda Cup wins very closely approximates the ratio of the two populations. (not sure what the "bridge playing" populations are.) The rules of the Bermuda Cup allow two US teams, but are prejudiced against them winning by preventing both from reaching the final. The number of wins by China and India supports the professional hypothesis. The "got better results after switching from x to y" should be expected regardless of x and y. The fact that a change was made suggests a player intent upon improvement. That player would likely improve if he continued x. :) Perhaps discussion of systems' tolerance for errors (severity of the failure) and the probability of errors is under-discussed.

Now that we have the ability to upload .lin files I have heard from a number of people who have done so. (I mainly use a Mac, but know how the windows client saves hands). It is easy to send a hand either as a handviewer link, or via "bbo mail" - which appears to just simplify the sending of a handviewer link. As more people upload files, they are likely to want to be able to share them, or possibly even share entire folders of hands. (I was just asked about this today.) Of course one could manually copy a file using the hand editor. If the hand was played recently or in a tournament, one can find the .lin file from the BBO hand/tournament search page. Suggestion 1 - In the handviewer - add a "save hand to folder" option. Suggestion 2 - In hands and results - add a "share folder" option. Alternatively, the ability to download hands (Export LIN file) could be used. BBO members could then store the hand using DropBox, or some favorite cloud storage - eliminating the need to worry about hard-drive failures. And they could use regular e-mail to share hands via the "Import LIN file" option of My hand folders.

Here is a suggestion that may get Chrome Browser working for BBO. I tried it on my friend's Windows 7 laptop this morning and it worked. Clear the browser cache - just cache - no need to clear anything else. Not sure why, but perhaps there are some .swf file downloads that have been updated, but that you are not getting from the server. I got this idea when the announced "Teaching Board Options" failed to work yesterday and a fix was posted on BBO to clear it up.

Choice of team name - BBF Regs is maybe too close to BBF Rags. -- Great idea! Good luck putting it together! (Have you asked Fred for any sponsorship money? ;) He could at least give you space on the ad billboard... ) $0.02

Thanks, Fred Also no need to panic unless we have a Black Swan event dramatically increasing the popularity of bridge in the general population and they flock wildly to BBO as the premier provider of bridge. :) If that happens, then BBO will have a problem that it would dearly like to have to solve - and the funds to do it. For those of us who prefer the browser, could we get the same monthly incentive pricing on robots as the BBOWinners? If we buy robots on BBOWin, do they run in BBOWin, or on the servers? (i.e. if I use bbowin to buy robots, do I get to use them on browser?) BBO Fan and another Fred

As a result of various CC activities lately, I was forced to use BBOWin (5.2.6). Since I only wanted to work on a CC, I clicked Cancel on the dialog box that said it was downloading the thousands of online users. I guess you aren't supposed to do that, because it cancels the program and not just the download. The next day I was thinking about how silly that behavior was, and I was suddenly struck with the realization that it probably explains why when someone loses a connection, you see him online but it takes him a very long time to rejoin the table. I am wondering about Web version. Does it do the same odd thing, but just not expose it, while it does its moving dots display on the login screen? If so, wouldn't it be better to do that "in the background", i.e. on a separate thread. It seems like it would be a priority to get a player back to his table (especially in a tournament or teaching table), rather than downloading user lists for "friend/enemy" management.

Have you tried Options, and unclicking display cards? Then you get the suits always in order from spades to clubs and just the number/letter of each card.

My friend's mentor sent her instructions on building a convention card (old style) using BBOWin. After she built it, I tried to help her upload it to BBO. This was the only time she had ever used BBOWin. She had to download it to build the card. Unfortunately the format seems to be incompatible with the "work convention card", Open, Open, Use... way of sending it up to BBO in BBOWin. Is there some sort of conversion program, or filter that can translate the "Old Style CC" into one that can be uploaded? Or a spec of one versus the other, so that I might be able to build such a filter myself?

I reported this exact same problem separately. Note that BillHiggin described IE in Windows 7 as working for BBO. So it is not really a Flash installation problem per se. If it were, then Google Chrome would work as well as IE. Flash support apparently is somehow "built-in" to browsers. If you have a Windows 7 installation, you might just try confirming what we have reported for yourself. This problem has persisted since late November 2011. Updating Chrome to the latest and greatest does not solve the problem. This is a real pain, because Chrome is far and away faster for almost anything on the web, especially if it has a significant amount of javascript in it. Chrome and BBO work fine AFAIK on XP, and Mac, but not on Windows 7.

By the way, "Save all deals" does not work entirely the way one might expect. Tried it last night at the end of a lesson on Precision. Sad to say, it only saved the deals where I was one of the players. I think it is fair to expect that it would save the deals from the first hand to the point at which you used the "Save all deals" button. If you were a player for each deal then you get what you want. If you were only kibbing, I think you get nothing.

Yes. The IAC web-site has a number of pre-built CCs for Precision. You can easily download them on a Mac or Linux machine using a browser of your choice. In Post 5 of this thread, I give instructions for this circuitous process. Once you have uploaded the card(s), you are good to go. Now you can use Mac, PC, Linux, or even a Chrome Book, (and possibly Android tablets ?) to use the card(s) on BBO. Thanks for listening Barmar. :)

Instructions for uploading a convention card from PC These are similar to the instructions posted in another thread. Run BBOWin (Bridge Base Online) Application Login Wait while it loads player list - You might think you could click "Cancel" since you do not care about that - Don't click "Cancel" Near lower left corner of window, click the green "CONV." button. Work convention card Look for Other Convention Cards (this will open a file open dialog box in windows. Navigate to the directory where you have the FDCC file stored (has .bss extension) If you do not see it, enter "*.*" in the File name: field and click open Click on desired file Click Open Click Use ("Use" here apparently means "send the file to BBO", not actually use the convention card, though maybe it does use it if you stay logged in) You should then see "Your convention card has been received" in the chat window If you want to load more cards click Open and repeat steps 6 through 12 until you have loaded all of the cards that you want Close the "Work Convention Card" dialog box. Exit Bridge Base Online Your convention card(s) should now be available to use on the browser. To test them you will actually have to get to a table where you have a partner and opponents - opponents can be robots, but partner can't be. Once you have a deal you should see the alerts if you are at a Teaching Table. At a regular table, presumably only the opponents see the alerts.

If by "My Hands", you mean "Hands and Results, Recent Hands", no it is not listed. I am able to get other hands played on 31-Dec-2011, but not the hands that were played at a teaching table (with Marty Bergen). Perhaps this is a problem with the "Teaching Table". I just opened one, played a game and closed it. Tried retrieving it both via "Hands and Results..." and the "Hand Records" link. It is not available.

If I understand correctly, the only way to get a full disclosure convention card loaded into BBO is to use BBOWin, with an odd series of step to upload it. That would be pretty difficult to do without access to a PC. IMO, the most logical fix would be to add an "Upload Convention Card" button to the Convention Card screen. It could pop up a file upload form similar to the way "New ACBL CC" works. If it is hard to do in the Flash client, maybe in the interim it could be supported here or here. It should be a fairly simple matter to add a link on either of the two web pages that contains a link to a form that would upload a file, given user, password and whatever other info might be needed to store a convention card. That would allow Mac users, Chrome Book users, etc. the ability to do it naturally.

Trying to understand... I do have a PC laptop, which I virtually never use. If it did not have the declarer play book/software I would never use it. I could easily move the FD file to that, almost as easily login to bbo on it using BBOWin, which I have only used maybe 3 times. If I went through that exercise AND loaded up the FD file, would that CC then be listed on my convention cards when I log in using the web? And would it automatically alert bids? Thanks. My other question is, is there some way to do this directly using BBO or their web page? The normal way would be to upload a file with a web form. I just saw the instructions near the bottom of the link mentioned above. Will try that. It is a year old, now.

If you have an FD file, is it possible to activate it somehow using browser version? Some way to upload the file into the CC section?

At the table, the hand shown was my RHO's hand. After she bid 4♥, my only problem, with a void in hearts, was figuring out whether it was a club slam or diamond slam and getting there. 7♦ was cold, but we ended up with second from top making 6♦+1 doubled! 4♥ was too much information.

[hv=pc=n&e=sq65hkj87543dtc42&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1dp2n]133|200[/hv] I preempt light. Partner is intermediate, plays 2/1, and we both have typical gadgets. Opponents are intermediates and LHO seems a tad aggressive. Pass, 3H, 4H?

[hv=pc=n&s=sa97hdkqj865cakj8&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1dp2n4h]133|200[/hv] Partner was an "intermediate pickup partner" with some of the usual "tools", including "learning Micheals and negative doubles". I think I went a bit awry here. In retrospect, expecting 5N to be recognized as "pick a slam" was probably wrong. Partner with a balanced hand consistent with her bid passed. Fortunately my RHO chose to double bringing us back to life. She had already helped in my decision to reach a slam by bidding 4♥. The other options I considered were the obvious 4♠ or 5♥ control bid, unilaterally bidding 6♦, and bidding 6♣ hoping for that to be right or be corrected to 6♦s. So based only on the limited information available to you about your partner - her bidding and play was consistent with description to that point - What would you do?

Well that could just be a nice example of confirmation bias (hospital staff often believe that more crazy people get admitted during a full moon), or survivorship bias - perhaps caused by your altering your play against an ex post selected opponent that did beat you a few times, and as a result continues to do so. If this opponent is really that far below average, maybe you are playing him rather than your system.

OK - I am not familiar with NFB. So how much less can responder have to make a free bid, as opposed to forcing bid, OR less and still make an NFB and not an alternative bid? Replace the A with Q? Is that enough in either example?

Or look at alternative programs. Since you are on PC, you have several really good alternatives. Check their terms of use.