Tremendous success for BBO

[Walddk]

The past two weeks have been a tremendous success for BBO. We set all kinds of records during the World Championships, the last being reached in the last set on Saturday where we had to stop for access to BBO on 9,899 users online.

 

Total online at one time: 9899

Total highest at one table: 7286

Total combined tables watching vugraph: 8386 (7041 at one table; 1345 at the other).

 

Who knows how many more we would have been if we had allowed more in? Currently, the server can't take any more, but as far as I know that will change when the next release is due in December.

 

Some of us remember how thrilled Fred was when we passed 100 users!

 

Thanks everyone for taking part in this, and thanks to Fred, Sheri and Uday for having created this site. What a treat for all of us - and it's even free. Unbelievable!

 

Roland

[pigpenz]

yes it was great! Watched the final four segments completely, it was a battle down to the final five boards.

 

oh that x♥ lead from QJX against 5♣'s :(

 

and could Meckstroth have played the q♣ when his parnter won the ace to get Rodwell to shift to a heart against 3NT?

 

Exciting it was :(

[pclayton]

Great job Uday, Fred and Sheri! And congratulations to Italy - well worth setting my alarm at 3AM this morning.

 

I hope that the media will pick up on the fact that the web site was maxed out and people had to be turned away from the site. Scarcity always creates interest.

 

I hope BBO can build on this event. I'd also be curious to see how big Uday will be scaling the site to accomodate more viewers.

[Walddk]

oh that x♥ lead from QJX against 5♣'s :(

 

and could Meckstroth have played the q♣ when his parnter won the ace to get Rodwell to shift to a heart against 3NT?

That would have been quite something, because the players might have been at the table still, playing extra boards!

 

The two boards gave Italy 12 and 6 IMPs respectively. The difference in the end? Yes, you guessed it: 18 IMPs! 268-250.

 

Roland

[guggie]

And many, many thanks to Roland for organizing, getting the operators, getting the commentators, creating the athmosphere.

This is a real great thing for bridgepromotion.

[DenisO]

Superb entertainment !- THANK YOU to Fred, Sheri and Uday for giving us BBO and to Roland and the whole Vugraph Team for a great fortnight :)

 

Denis

[mrdct]

It was great that technical problems that were causing the drop-outs in the first few days seemed to disappear. For planning of future events, I would very much like to know how this problem was resolved as it may be helpful for organisers of future events.

 

The other comment/plea I would like to make is for BBO fans to try to get involved when a major event (or even an interesting local event) comes to your part of the world. Producing BBO broadcasts is definately a "many hands make light work" affair and it would've been nice to have had coverage of few more tables at this event.

[Walddk]

The other comment/plea I would like to make is for BBO fans to try to get involved when a major event (or even an interesting local event) comes to your part of the world.  Producing BBO broadcasts is definately a "many hands make light work" affair and it would've been nice to have had coverage of few more tables at this event.

It would of course have been nice to have had more tables, but as guggie points out, the fact that we had fewer than we would have liked created a kind of "intimate" atmosphere at the tables. And we did have the odd bonus table(s) when it mattered.

 

Operators, commentators and spectators were a unit that created a perfect setting for a unique occasion.

 

I also agree with mrdct when he encourages local BBO'ers to get out there and help when we need it. How can it not be special to be operating at a table where the likes of Lauria, Versace, Rodwell and Meckstroth play? Even less than that will do. We had few operators at Estoril, but we still put on quite a show!

 

Roland

[pigpenz]

when you look for people to help out what is necessary?

[mrdct]

when you look for people to help out what is necessary?

If you have played more than 10 hands on BBO, have reasonably good eye-sight and moderate computer literacy (not completely essential) you are qualified.

 

You just need to email fred@bridgebase.com to get a vugraph operator ID and some basic instructions and you are ready to go. Why not give it a try for your next club teams championship final or similar?

 

Being a vugraph operator is quite a buzz. You have the best seat in house and are right at the heart of the action.

[uday]

It was great that technical problems that were causing the drop-outs in the first few days seemed to disappear. For planning of future events, I would very much like to know how this problem was resolved as it may be helpful for organisers of future events.

 

Was not at our end, unless our ISP fixed a problem we did not know we had. perhaps Zmud99 (Herve) or M. Newton from the WBF will know. I will bother them after they've had some days to unwind

[Chamaco]

I would like to make my compliments to all the Vugraph staff for the BB coverage.

 

We all know that this year resources were limited and there were quite a few troubles.

Despite this, the Vugraph shows were yet even better than previously.

 

A special words for the commentators: in the past I had spent a few critical words about some occasional commentaries I thought were not 100% satisfactory.

 

It in only fair today for me to say that I found awesome all the commentaries I had the chance to watch.

 

Very well done and thanks to all ! :)

[GeeGee]

Saturday was the first time I've used Vugraph, and I was glued to my chair for both sessions.

 

Many thanks to everyone involved for such a wonderful service.

[Finch]

A few comments on the 'number of tables' issue.

There's been a lot of apologies & explanations about why we couldn't have had more tables, and how it would have been to show more.

 

I disagree. I am very happy with what we had.

 

Towards the end there were, for example, sometimes three tables up showing 2 matches, one from the BB and one from the Venice Cup. A brief look at the number of spectators at each table showed that 90% of the people watching were looking at the one or two tables from the BB. So having the VC table(s) in addition was really no great benefit to BBO as a whole.

 

Similarly, I couldn't watch any of the semis, but I bet 90% of the people watching would have been watching the USA I v. USA II match even if you could have shown both.

 

It's nice to have choice over what to show - if the BB final had not been close, the VC or sensiors probably would have been better/more popular.

 

You only have a limited number of people who are both strong bridge players and really good commentators (people such as Michael Rosenberg, David Burn, Joey Silver, and of course the perfect commentator JAllerton). By showing only two tables (or indeed only one table) you can make the average standard of commentating very high, providing (IMO) a better product than having 20 commentators split across 4 tables, each of them of less good average standard.

 

If you have an excess of commentators to tables available for a multi-national event, is it possible to show the same table twice, with two sets of commentators? In particular, it would have been nice to have the BB final with both English and Italian commentary. Or even to show it 3 times with English, Italian and a third language (I'm not sure what would be best - French? Spanish? Chinese?)

 

It would have been nice to show more matches from the round robin at once, when people can opt to watch 'their' team, or choose who they want to follow. But to my mind that is a 'nice to have' rather than real added value, as long as you are showing a good match.

[muggle]

Excellent job by content providers.

 

And an impressive technical achievement to create such a stable online service that can handle 10K concurrent users with such aplomb.

[barmar]

When the server is at its limit and not letting new people on, could you display a message to that effect to users trying to login? I was trying to login yesterday morning to watch the end of the BB final, and it just sat in a loop saying "Connecting to server" and "Connection has been lost". I couldn't tell whether the problem was at my end or the server, until I ran a packet capture and saw that the server was accepting the connections and then immediately closing them, but this is not something a non-techie would be expected to do.

 

It should send back a message saying something like "Server is full, please try again later." I know you're going to bump up the capacity soon, but you should plan for the time when its capacity will be reached as well.

[uday]

We'll bump up the capacity when FG returns. This time, it is easy enough, and will be part of the next release in Dec.

 

I don't think I care much about the 'Server full' situation; the current client is graceless about dealing w/rejection, and I dont want to have to accept the connection (at a time when i am maxed out) only to have to spit back a 'No thanks'; with luck we won't see this again for at least a while, if then.

[han]

It was a great show, thanks to all involved.

 

I also agree with everything that Frances said, for me the broadcast was close to perfect.

[badderzboy]

People also forget that FG etc provide this incredible service free of charge to us all.

 

I watched most of the Bermuda Bowl in awe and still have fond memories of a 2 years ago when 5K+ watched the fateful mistake on the last hand.

 

To have over 8K+ people watching shows what an incredible service is provided.

 

We owe a massive debt of thanks to all including the commentators who I also believe were at times up at unsocialable hours to make a telling contribution!

 

Steve

[Walddk]

Being provocative is easy, so let's try this. Have we reached golf (Ryder Cup) status at bridge? Europe is dominant, USA comes second? I know that Europe had more chances to get top places in Estoril, but let's pretend that we add Canada to USA.

 

This is what you get if you give 1st place 5 points, 2nd place 3 points, 3rd place 2 points and 4th place 1 point:

 

Europe: 19 points

USA: 11 points

Asia: 3 points

 

Bermuda Bowl:

1. Europe (Italy)

2. USA (USA1)

3. USA (USA2)

4. Europe (Sweden)

 

Venice Cup:

1. Europe (France)

2. Europe (Germany)

3. Europe (Netherlands)

4. USA (USA1)

 

Seniors Bowl:

1. USA (USA1)

2. Asia (Indonesia)

3. Europe (Denmark)

4. Europe (Netherlands)

 

Seems like USA must wait to gain superiority until they get a little older ;)

 

Roland

 

P.S. Since two USA teams had to meet no later than the semi-finals, maximum points for the Americans would have been 7 of 11 in each category.

[Gerben42]

Being a vugraph operator is quite a buzz. You have the best seat in house and are right at the heart of the action.

 

Agree! Maastricht 2000 there was no such thing but I was scorer, then later I have been operator, both were great experiences!

 

I would just like to mention here that the RR made clear how small the differences are nowadays around the world. Countries from all continents either qualified or were in contention to do so up to the very end.

 

Another interesting statistic:

Nunes - Fantoni are now at the same time Bermuda Bowl, Olympiad and World Pairs champions!

[fred]

It was great that technical problems that were causing the drop-outs in the first few days seemed to disappear. For planning of future events, I would very much like to know how this problem was resolved as it may be helpful for organisers of future events.

There was a dedicated BBO server running on a PC at the playing site. This is not something we normally do, but the WBF wanted this in Estoril in order to eliminate reliance on the Internet for the purposes of the vugraph show for the audience at the playing site.

 

Originally this server was set up on the 2nd floor of the playing site. We subsequently learned (the hard way) that the local network at the playing site was not always stable when it came to sending signals between the 2nd floor and the 1st floor (which is where our operators' computers were generally located).

 

Herve (Zmud99) solved the problem by moving the server to the 1st floor.

 

I was busy either playing or resting during most of the past 18 days, but I was around enough to know the the vugraph show was considered a great success by the WBF officials, the players, and by the many spectators who were watching from Estoril.

 

Thanks to everyone involved, especially Herve and Roland and their respective teams for their outstanding efforts to make this possible!

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[DenisO]

Another interesting statistic:

Nunes - Fantoni are now at the same time Bermuda Bowl, Olympiad and World Pairs champions!

Yes their importance in the team has certainly risen over the lat 2 years. The number of final segments played by each pair in Monte Carlo and Estoril are shown below :

 

2003 -- L/V (7), B/D (6), F/N (3)

 

2005 -- L/V (6), B/D (4), F/N (6)

 

Denis