MyHands - how far back?

[1eyedjack]

How far back should you normally be able to go to view historical hands in MyHands database? I cannot find any records more than about a month old (perhaps 5 weeks). Is that a one-off, or should I normally expect the record to vanish after about 5 weeks?

[uday]

Most of the hands played on BBO are archived for later browsing on our "myhands" website. Specifically: all team games, tournaments, duplicate IMP and duplicate MP hands are archived. Moneybridge hands are archived "elsewhere" and there is currently no way to access those.

 

The web site for "myhands" is

 

http://online.bridgebase.com/myhands

 

 

How long do we keep these hands lying around? The answer has always been unclear for us. Generally, you can count on them being there for at least 2-3 weeks after they were played out. We do periodically discard hands from this website.

 

Someday, we'll figure out the hows & whys of keeping old hands around for longer periods of time. Until then, your best bet is to safeguard the hand records that BBO creates on your PC ( c:\bridge base online\hands ).

 

If you have a special need for hands that are much older, drop us a line -- support@ -- and we'll consider doing so. The process of fetching ancient hands from our archives is quite tedious, and it will generally take a bit of convincing.

[pclayton]

Most of the hands played on BBO are archived for later browsing on our "myhands" website. Specifically: all team games, tournaments, duplicate IMP and duplicate MP hands are archived. Moneybridge hands are archived "elsewhere" and there is currently no way to access those.

 

The web site for "myhands" is

 

http://online.bridgebase.com/myhands

 

 

How long do we keep these hands lying around? The answer has always been unclear for us. Generally, you can count on them being there for at least 2-3 weeks after they were played out. We do periodically discard hands from this website.

 

Someday, we'll figure out the hows & whys of keeping old hands around for longer periods of time. Until then, your best bet is to safeguard the hand records that BBO creates on your PC ( c:\bridge base online\hands ).

 

If you have a special need for hands that are much older, drop us a line -- support@ -- and we'll consider doing so. The process of fetching ancient hands from our archives is quite tedious, and it will generally take a bit of convincing.

One thing I did like about OKB was that you could get a quick analysis of your IMP and MP average for as long as the account was on; even if it was 5 years.

 

I think its pretty useful, since it gives you a fairly accurate evaluation how you stand against your peers.

[1eyedjack]

A couple of points of slight confusion remain.

 

Point 1

 

I don't possess the product myself, but I understand that Stephen Picket's "BridgeBrowser" makes use of an extensive database of BBO hands, which I got the impression went back further than is accessible on MyHands. Where does he get the data from?

 

Point 2

 

The hand records that are saved locally do not contain a complete traveller (indeed the hands will not generally have been played at all 16 tables at the point of saving locally). So if I want to keep a permanent local record of a complete traveller for a hand, is this possible? Would an offline web-ripper such as WebCopier be of use?

[uday]

"BridgeBrowser" is a commercial product. We try to feed it the hands from BBO monthly ( tho we're a couple of months behind at the moment ).

 

 

A program that spidered for your hands would probably work but would also be a bit of a pain to operate, i think.

[1eyedjack]

I finally got around to trying out webcopier on the myhands database for a specific tourney (in fact a 12 board teams match). Webcopier is the only offline web ripper that I have ever used, and it is likely that there is a superior product for the task.

 

Anyway, the result was almost successful and (with the one exception mentioned below) essentially painless.

 

My sole remaining problem is in the "result" column the suit symbols are substituted by question marks.

 

I note, for example, when viewing the source code for the page, one line in the original page shows:

 

<td class="result">4<span style="color:black">♣</span>E+1</td>

 

but in the ripped version it comes out as

 

<TD class=result>4<SPAN style="COLOR: black">?</SPAN>E+1</TD>

 

I don't know enough about html to work out what is going wrong, but the clue has to be in the mechanism by which the string "♣" is converted into a club symbol.

[1eyedjack]

Been playing around with webcopier since last post, with some peculiar results (re. card symbols).

 

By expanding the scope of the download I have now got it so that some pages (but not all) do show card symbols. And when I view the source code of those particular html files the narrative "♣" appears in the expected location. But nothing within that document appears to define how the string "♣" is supposed to be translated into a club symbol when it appears on the display in normal mode. Normally I would not worry about that, except that there are some OTHER pages where the suit symbols are NOT coming out (remaining as "?" in the source code) and when I use Notepad to edit THOSE html files and manually substitute "♣" for the original "?", then go back and open the edited html file normally, now I get neither the Club symbol, nor the question mark, but the text string &Clubs; is desplayed in full.

 

So, what is the feature of the html file that successfully translates &Clubs; to a club symbol on some files and not in others? On the file that "works" I did a search for the text string Clubs and the ONLY place within the file that it appears is in the body at the point where it needs to display the Club symbol. I was sort of expecting something in the header giving instructions that wherever it encounters &Clubs; subsequently in that document it should substitute a file such as Clubs.GIF from some other defined location, but I could find no other reference to the string Clubs.

 

Does anyone out there understand the problem as described?

[Gerardo]

That mechanism is an integral part of HTML, &char; is the way to encode certain characters which are not available by direct input (and some which are).

 

Also, the ♣ character is available in the Unicode character set, what font are you using to display it? Not all fonts support it properly.

 

As I recall, Arial does. Please try using it.

[raija]

Uday mentioned BRidgeBrowser in his post. Just if you don't know what it is, here is a link to their website and you can find out more about it: http://www.microtopia.ca/bridge/

Cheers,

Raija

[1eyedjack]

Thanks for the suggestion Raija, but I think I will pass for now. I am aware of BridgeBrowser, and every time I look at the web page I get daunted by the learning curve I would have to go through to use it. Without a doubt it is one of the most powerful tools around and if you want that kind of functionality it will be worth the investment in both time and money. But I am within a whisker of solving my particular problem without it and if I can go that extra inch I will be happy.

 

I am not convinced that BridgeBrowser would actually do what I am seeking to achieve anyway, which is to compile a folder of linked html files that summarise a set of completed hands and their associated travellers, that I could then pkzip and send to someone else who most definitely would NOT have bridgebrowser available for viewing them.

 

Furthermore, I gather that there can be a significant delay between the hand being played and Bridgebrowser's database being updated, and that delay may be unacceptable for my purposes.

 

I have no doubt that one day I will take the plunge and get bridgebrowser. Ben has done a good job promoting it with the example outputs that he has posted elsewhere in these forums.

[1eyedjack]

Gerardo, first may I thank you for taking the trouble to try and help with my problem. I am conscious that the root cause may be my non-BBO software used for ripping the pages and as such your goodwill in assisting is much appreciated.

 

I continue to have a problem with the issue of fonts, and this is likely to be caused by my total lack of experience in programming.

 

I have a choice of 2 ways of viewing web pages: MS Internet Explorer v 6, or the browser that is integrated into WebCopier. Neither program permits me to vary the font of the document being viewed (nor can I readily see how to determine what font is being displayed). As the font can potentially change within a page this comes as not a huge surprise to me.

 

I have one way of viewing the source code of web pages, and this works whichever browser I am using: Open the web page and select "Source" from the menu bar or by right clicking in the text. In either case it launches Notepad and the source code is displayed within it. The menu bar in Notepad DOES allow me to view/change the font. By default it always opens the document in Lucida Console font. However I suspect that this is only the font for displaying the source code within Notepad, not the font for displaying text in the browser view.

 

What does surprise me is that I cannot find any commands within the source code that give the appearance of setting the font to be displayed in normal browser view. I tried searching the entire Notepad page for a string "font" (without quotes) and no hits were found (I was just guessing that a "font=whatever" command would be the syntax).

 

Now here is where it starts to get odd again:

 

If I use MSIE to access the MyHands for a selection of hands and then simply "Save As" so I just save that page, and view the source of THAT page (in Notepad, Lucida Console font) then the card symbols are displayed (within Notepad) as the symbols themselves (not as the text string &Clubs; etc). So Lucida Console font is certainly capable of interpreting the card symbols.

 

But if I use MSIE to open ripped web pages acquired from Webcopier and view the source code in Notepad (again Lucida Console) then even for those pages where the card symbols DO appear as symbols in the browser view, the source code displays the card symbols as the text string &Clubs; etc, and not as symbols.

 

I may pay a visit to the Webcopier support forums.

[inquiry]

Thanks for the suggestion Raija, but I think I will pass for now. I am aware of BridgeBrowser, and every time I look at the web page I get daunted by the learning curve I would have to go through to use it. Without a doubt it is one of the most powerful tools around and if you want that kind of functionality it will be worth the investment in both time and money. But I am within a whisker of solving my particular problem without it and if I can go that extra inch I will be happy.

 

I am not convinced that BridgeBrowser would actually do what I am seeking to achieve anyway, which is to compile a folder of linked html files that summarise a set of completed hands and their associated travellers, that I could then pkzip and send to someone else who most definitely would NOT have bridgebrowser available for viewing them.

 

Furthermore, I gather that there can be a significant delay between the hand being played and Bridgebrowser's database being updated, and that delay may be unacceptable for my purposes.

 

I have no doubt that one day I will take the plunge and get bridgebrowser. Ben has done a good job promoting it with the example outputs that he has posted elsewhere in these forums.

1 eye jack... you can try the free homebase version of bridgebrowser, to see if it will do what you want. The learn curve isn't as step as it might seem, and each issue of the homebase newsletter The Press box, includes tutorial (step by step) in using it. It is a piece of cake to " to compile a folder of linked html files that summarise a set of completed hands and their associated travellers, that I could then pkzip and send to someone else who most definitely would NOT have bridgebrowser available for viewing them", in fact we use it for just that purpose.

 

The time delay, however, could be a problem.

 

For tutorials on using bridgebrowser, see so far:

 

The second issue of the pressbox has an illustrated article on getting started with bridgebrowser (page 7-9).

 

The third issue of the pressbox has an illustrated article on "your first search with bridgebrowser" (page 9-11).

 

The fourth issue (not out yet) is illustrated article on additional feature, including html output, double dummy replay, complete traveller, etc.

[Gerardo]

In the web pages, the symbols font (and all the others) are set using CSS.

 

so you see <span class=...... etc, and another file, with the .css extension, defines the properties applied to that class (including the font).

 

Perhaps webcopier doesn't look at this CSS file, and doesn't have the card symbols defined (would be surprising, but it is consistent with what you see)

[1eyedjack]

Thanks again Gerardo. Webcopier certainly does pick up a CSS file. I have left a query with the Webcopier support forums and will leave it at that for now until they respond.