Full Disclosure Question

[badderzboy]

Hi Fred,

 

I love FD and can see limitless possbilities for it and have loved 'playing' with it so far.

 

One of them as a teaching aid now is there any scope/intention for BBO to automatically interface with FD to show what the next bids should mean or will the end-user need to update the bidding into FD in line with the live auction?

 

The other side of the coin is the negative inferences for opps will if they are able to see the potential rebids and meanings but there is the danger of MI if they rely on it ughhhh!

 

It will also prevent MI calls in tourneys etc or allow people to override with a manual alert if the call is incorrect and they don't realise until opps have bid?

 

Thanks

 

Steve

[inquiry]

I think Fred might answer later, but clearly the intention is to show your opponents your bidding agreements (at whatever depth you have). So your opponents will be able to see the bid you made (along with explaination) and presumably the meaning of bids you didn't make and the meaning of possible bids you might make. In otherwords, they will have access to the non-editor version of your FD convention cards.

 

Rather or not YOU and YOUR partner should have access to your own FD cc is a different matter. The reason people don't play highly complex systems is that the memory drain is too much. Those who work hard to remember complex agreements should be reward for their effort. The laws of bridge do not allow memory aids. The reality is, however, you can open your FD cc on your home computer (even if the system blocked it during play) so this will happen.

 

BTW, the new carding agreement thing is GREAT... gonna love that when it is impliment. The problem I see it, sadly, is people don't fill out the much simplier current CC on BBO, how in the world are we going to enforce them filling out the new FD one? Well, hopefully most people will agree to play some simple FD card

[fred]

Thanks for your FD-enthusiasm, Steve.

 

If I understand your question correctly, the answer is "yes".

 

When someone playing on BBO is in the middle of an auction and asks to look at a convention card (either his or the opps'), FD will be invoked for the current bidding sequence. The user will then be able to study possible continuations (they will all be righ there in the FD window) or examine the meanings of bids that were not made (by using "go up" from within FD) in order to draw negative inferences.

 

It is true that having the ability to look at your own convention card (especially in such details) is not exactly kosher under the laws of bridge. Given that there is no way we can prevent this when people play online (they can always consult their system notes in a separate application or run a standalone copy of FD on their own convention card if they want), I figure that we might as well let people take full advantage of this facility. Hopefully the result will be that people will learn their systems better and have fewer misunderstandings.

 

There are several areas in which the rules of online bridge cannot be the same as they are in "real life" bridge. This is just the nature of the beast and it really does not concern me (especially since we can't do anything about it).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[badderzboy]

Thats great news Fred,

 

My main reason for asking is that I've started to help in the BIL as a new BIL grad and will be starting to Mentor some Acol players and I have a reasonable acol card set up by being able to send it to the mentees they can practice bidding with it and during play!

 

Its much easier to see something tangible that in situation A bid this and so on

 

One of the other advantages of FD that I see is to give BILlies confidence when they are bidding online to a 'fixed' CC card with some level of detail and also allow teachers / mentors to discuss systems where people can actually see what their bids should mean b4 they make them which is much easier to do.

 

Is there any word on a basic SAYC card I know peoples feelings but most BILlies play it often!

 

It will also hopefully stop some of the result swings when pick-up partnerships play if of course people can be bothered to set up the CC of course.

 

The only danger is the MI issues if people say they are playing one thing and start doing something different

 

The issue about being able to look at your CC is true but when I started I had it on the desk in front of me - only helps online of course not in f2f competition

 

I have always viewed playing online as a learning experience combined with opportunity to play with friends anytime around the world and FD will enhance it even more.

 

Steve

[Gerardo]

Online Laws

 

Laws of Online Bridge

(changes only, marked vs. relevant subsections of Laws of

Duplicate Contract Bridge – 1997 Edition)

 

[snip]

 

LAW 40 - PARTNERSHIP UNDERSTANDINGS

E.Convention Card

2.Referring to Opponents’ Convention Card

During the auction and play, any player except dummy may refer to his

opponents’ convention card at his own turn to call or play, but not to his

own. If permitted by the sponsoring organisation, in special events such as

individual tournaments or tournaments using specified systems, a player

may refer to his own convention card. *

* Except as permitted in L40E2-Online, a player is not entitled, during the

auction and play periods, to any aids to his memory, calculation or

technique. However, sponsoring organisations may designate unusual

methods and allow written defenses against opponents' unusual methods

to be referred to at the table.

 

[snip]

[cicus]

I think Fred might answer later, but clearly the intention is to show your opponents your bidding agreements (at whatever depth you have). So your opponents will be able to see the bid you made (along with explaination) and presumably the meaning of bids you didn't make and the meaning of possible bids you might make. In otherwords, they will have access to the non-editor version of your FD convention cards.

 

Rather or not YOU and YOUR partner should have access to your own FD cc is a different matter. The reason people don't play highly complex systems is that the memory drain is too much. Those who work hard to remember complex agreements should be reward for their effort. The laws of bridge do not allow memory aids. The reality is, however, you can open your FD cc on your home computer (even if the system blocked it during play) so this will happen.

 

BTW, the new carding agreement thing is GREAT... gonna love that when it is impliment. The problem I see it, sadly, is people don't fill out the much simplier current CC on BBO, how in the world are we going to enforce them filling out the new FD one? Well, hopefully most people will agree to play some simple FD card

I enjoy constructing my CC with FD and by now I have a quite comprehensive CC at my disposal. Now I would like to make it visible for the opponents so that I don't have to alert and write long explanations. Is that possible, and how to do it? And how do I check that my opononts do see the explanations? Yes, they will complain if they don't...

 

Gábor

[fred]

I think Fred might answer later, but clearly the intention is to show your opponents your bidding agreements (at whatever depth you have). So your opponents will be able to see the bid you made (along with explaination) and presumably the meaning of bids you didn't make and the meaning of possible bids you might make. In otherwords, they will have access to the non-editor version of your FD convention cards.

 

Rather or not YOU and YOUR partner should have access to your own FD cc is a different matter. The reason people don't play highly complex systems is that the memory drain is too much. Those who work hard to remember complex agreements should be reward for their effort. The laws of bridge do not allow memory aids. The reality is, however, you can open your FD cc on your home computer (even if the system blocked it during play) so this will happen.

 

BTW, the new carding agreement thing is GREAT... gonna love that when it is impliment. The problem I see it, sadly, is people don't fill out the much simplier current CC on BBO, how in the world are we going to enforce them filling out the new FD one? Well, hopefully most people will agree to play some simple FD card

I enjoy constructing my CC with FD and by now I have a quite comprehensive CC at my disposal. Now I would like to make it visible for the opponents so that I don't have to alert and write long explanations. Is that possible, and how to do it? And how do I check that my opononts do see the explanations? Yes, they will complain if they don't...

 

Gábor

Currently there is no way to do this. In order for this to happen we will need to complete the necessary work on the BBO server (sorry - this is taking longer than I had exepected) and your opponents will have to have an FD-enabled version of BBO. Unless you are playing against 2 of the 200 or so people who have been regularly downloading and installing the latest version, your opponents will not have an appropriate version of BBO until we start the next "autoupgrade" process (or perhaps the one after that).

 

We are not exactly in a big hurry to get FD out there to the masses. There are still several unresolved issues and we want to make sure we resolve them properly. FD's success on BBO will largely be a function of whether or not our average members can deal with it and first impressions are important. We are usually not too concerned if we introduce a new feature via autoupgrade that still needs some work. That will not be the case for FD - we want to get it right the first time.

 

Also, it will be much more attractive for us to release FD once there are at least reasonable FD files available for a few default systems.

 

Given that I have playing in bridge tournaments during roughly 4 of the next 8 weeks, my guess is that the FD-enabled of BBO will not be part of an autoupgrade until mid-December at the earliest.

 

Fred Gtielman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com