Club bridge, hand records missing

[mycroft]

There is a paper somewhere on the web ...

... that must be true then.

Well, three minutes of googling gets me that paper somewhere on the web. Hmm, in a peer-reviewed journal of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. I read it once many years ago (when I was at university and had access to the journal itself, not just the abstract).

 

Wikipaedia (yeah, I know, but I'm only quoting it for the references) gives some of the discussion since then. Seems to be in MAD magazine quality places like Stanford University technical papers and the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

</sarcasm>

 

Side note for JoAnne - until very recently, normal operation in other parts of the world was to sort the hands before replacing, rather than shuffle. [Edit: after every round, not just at the end. I got a few calls Out East from people who freaked out at round 2 that "my hand is sorted!" sitting next-roundish from one English Gentleman; I explained to them that likely the next 24 would be too, and they usually calmed down.]

 

Jilly: 1) bluejak once stated (paraphrased - I use it a lot, so it now sounds like me):

"there are three kinds of nights.

1) hands with wild breaks, distributional monsters, etc. that are computer dealt. These nights are 'those damned computer hands again.'

2) hands with wild breaks, distributional monsters, etc. that are hand dealt. These nights are 'boy the cards were freaky tonight.'

3) hands that are pretty flat, things aren't odd, finesses work 65% of the time, and so on. These nights are 'pretty boring set of hands tonight, eh?' Please note: they show up when computers deal and when humans deal."

 

Yes, because of inadequate shuffling, human-dealt hands tend to be flatter than random, and if you're used to that - especially if you're always playing in a club where everyone shuffles once, cuts, and deals - getting the normal distributional vagarities is tough to get used to. No-one here worries about that, of course, because they all play online. I make sure to shuffle "enough" my hands, as do my partners. We play systems that work best if all hands are represented. Strangely enough, when I run a Howell (and shuffle 9-15 of the boards myself), I rarely hear about a boring set of hands...

 

2) I'm sorry, I'm easily bored, and very frustrated when I get bored. I realize it can be an important job to hand-enter 3/4 of all 27 boards (or 32, I guess), but I literally would pay my entire directing salary for a year for a dealing machine *just so I wouldn't have to do it every session*. Any other benefits would be gravy.

[jillybean]

Thanks :P The games I play tend to be "shuffle, deal and play" and I might add, everyone does it differently - my mother has been know to deal in 3's, to ensure they get "interesting hands" (true!). But I do hear players complaining of computer dealt hands and wondered how much is fact or imaginary.

 

Dealing machines obviously deal the cards, can it also generate a file of the hands dealt?

[blackshoe]

The one I'm familiar with (duplimate) deals the hand from a file generated by dealmaster pro (it might be able to use files from other programs, I'm not sure).

[NickRW]

Strangely enough, when I run a Howell (and shuffle 9-15 of the boards myself), I rarely hear about a boring set of hands...

Yes, if I direct on a Monday or Friday session, it is normally a Mitchell or some variant thereof - but if I get roped in for a Thursday session they never have enough pairs - so it is a Howell and I like to shuffle as many of the decks as I can myself - often there is time - don't necessarily deal them - just shuffle and present an idle player with the deck and empty board saying, "Deal that please".

 

Nick

[jnichols]

Dealing machines obviously deal the cards, can it also generate a file of the hands dealt?

 

The Duplimate machine can deal from a file produced by Dealmaster (and various other "dealing" programs). I haven't used it but I suspect it can also produce random deals and provide a file.

 

I use the Dealer4 machine - It can deal from a file (Dealmaster, etc.) or generate the random deals and produce a file and print the hand records.