-factor notation

[hanp]

Have you, regular forum contributor, ever lost your key? I recently did. I'm going to suggest a new notation for bridge hands that will greatly reduce this commonly occuring problem.

 

Suppose you hold

 

AK7654

AJ6

A2

QJ

 

Of course in most discussions the spots cards are not relevant, so we use a quicker, but equally long notation. I propose that we use numbers to indicate the number of spotcards. In the new notation, the above hand would be written as:

 

AK4

AJ1

A1

QJ0

 

Much shorter! Not only that, it also helps to save the environment when printing and it is more intuitive. Here are some more eamples:

 

We'll write QJ97 or QJ8 for QJ98765432.

 

We'll write A23 for A8652.

 

A100 for A10 tight.

 

To make the notation etra short, we can often leave off the number of spotcards of the longest suit without creating confusion. For example, when we write AJ2 Q J2 1, it is clear that we hold 4-5-3-1 shape, just as when we would say "ace-king and two small, hearts headed by the queen, jack and two diamonds and a small club" in casual conversation.

 

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

[IdiotVig]

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

 

I love the idea. While this suggestion destroys the brevity of the system, why not put the length in parentheses to avoid ambiguity with spots altogether? You could even omit the (0).

 

Would AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ look that unwieldy?

[gwnn]

Or we could just use winzip. Tough luck for people who can't read hex

[hanp]

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

 

I love the idea. While this suggestion destroys the brevity of the system, why not put the length in parentheses to avoid ambiguity with spots altogether? You could even omit the (0).

 

Would AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ look that unwieldy?

The idea of the notation is to make it shorter, not etra long.

[Free]

You only need 96 bits to write an entire deal, 2 extra for vulnerability and 2 extra for dealer. That's 12.5 bytes, so you still have 4 bits left (since we only use bytes anyway) to select which hands you want of that deal. Why waste so many bytes on writing a single hand? 13 bytes is enough to show full deals, 1 hand, any 2 hands, or even any 3 hands.

 

Btw, by starting a forum discussion like this, the environment will get damaged so severely that even using the suggested notation can never restore it. You should be ashamed!

[gwnn]

At least we should stop using the enter button so much (it is 2 bytes). It's really obvious that if I write AKQ4K542 or something the spades stopped after the 4 and the hearts have begun. Voids can be shown by a space and in the unlikely scenario that the smallest card in one suit is higher than the highest card in the next suit then you can use a semicolon or a dash.

[helene_t]

Please zip before posting. Also, instead of posting ascii text, rename to .bmp and post as image. That way each byte is one pixel (or quarter pixel using real colors) rather than a whole wasteful 12x18 (or whatever) character.

[gordontd]

A100 for A10 tight.

AT

[gnasher]

At least we should stop using the enter button so much (it is 2 bytes).

Only on Windows. Maybe BBO would consider switching to a Unix server, so that if anyone does wastefully use a newline the damage will be reduced by 50%?

[TimG]

Suppose you hold

 

AK7654

AJ6

A2

QJ

 

Of course in most discussions the spots cards are not relevant, so we use a quicker, but equally long notation. I propose that we use numbers to indicate the number of spotcards. In the new notation, the above hand would be written as:

 

AK4

AJ1

A1

QJ0

How about:

 

AK6

AJ3

A2

QJ2

 

Would it hurt the environment if extra spaces are added:

 

AK 6

AJ 3

A 2

QJ 2

[kfay]

Or we could just use winzip. Tough luck for people who can't read he

FYP

 

But Csaba may be right. You could one-line the whole thing. Zero is necessary to denote the start of a new suit after some honor sequence, and v or a space could designate a void.

 

e.g. AK0Q0 10 for a five club preempt

[gnasher]

How about:

 

AK6

AJ3

A2

QJ2

That would wastefully use an extra character whenever you have a 10-card suit.

[hanp]

Yes, notice that in my notation AK1010 is not a possibility.

[Free]

Yes, notice that in my notation AK1010 is not a possibility.

You can also just use the T for 10, and use a point as a seperator between suits. That way, if you print it, it saves ink. And if you use Arial or something similar, then you can even put more hands on 1 piece of paper!

 

The suggestion to use winzip clearly shows some have no idea how winzip works. Please try to compress a file of 11 bytes, let me know the compression rate. You probably expand your file at least 10 times...

[pooltuna]

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

 

I love the idea. While this suggestion destroys the brevity of the system, why not put the length in parentheses to avoid ambiguity with spots altogether? You could even omit the (0).

 

Would AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ look that unwieldy?

use the one that is shorter to minimize keystrokes

 

AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ

AKxxxx AJx Ax QJ

[helene_t]

AK(4) is confusing. When people say "four to AK" they mean AKxx, not AKxxxx.

[inquiry]

AK4 for AKxxxx might be confused for AK4 (your AK1).

 

How about AK4 for AK4 and 4AK for AKxxxx...

 

But then 4AK 3Q 1 2 is sort of hard to read.

[Simplicity]

Good work. Sadly the suit combination

 

A3

 

QJ5

 

Has become much trickier.

[cherdanno]

I really like the idea, to save some space and some bandwidth. I would, however, suggest to modify it a little, to be more intuitive. Instead of AK5, I would write AK7 (that makes it easier to insert a spot later, e.g. AK97). Also, to distinguish it from the old notation. maybe it's better to write AK-7. Or maybe AK-7th, that would be more close to how people describe this in words.

 

Actually, now that I think about it more, maybe it's even better to write AK-seventh? Then it's really impossible to mistake it for s.th. else.

[jdonn]

I think someone should list every possible suit holding in order from most to least likely (ties broken by popular vote) and then assign them each a number starting with 1. Voids are of course 0. So the example hand might be something like

 

936

49

73

195

[helene_t]

Instead of writing random posts on BBF, it is much more compact just to post the seed for the random text generator, then others can reproduce the random text if they are interested.

 

Josh's idea reminds me of the two brothers who kept telling each others the same jokes again and again. So to economize, they decided to number the jokes. So instead of telling a whole lengthy joke, just give the jokes number:

 

Brother A: 45!

(Brother B laughed hysterically since joke 45 was really funny)

Brother B: 12!

(Brother A giggled since joke 12 was a little naughty)

Brother A: 233!

(Brother B rolled over from laughing, since he hadn't heard joke 233 before!)

[kfay]

Instead of writing random posts on BBF, it is much more compact just to post the seed for the random text generator, then others can reproduce the random text if they are interested.

 

Josh's idea reminds me of the two brothers who kept telling each others the same jokes again and again. So to economize, they decided to number the jokes. So instead of telling a whole lengthy joke, just give the jokes number:

 

Brother A: 45!

(Brother B laughed hysterically since joke 45 was really funny)

Brother B: 12!

(Brother A giggled since joke 12 was a little naughty)

Brother A: 233!

(Brother B rolled over from laughing, since he hadn't heard joke 233 before!)

This isn't how I remember the joke, I recall something like:

 

A man is sentenced to life in prison. On his first night he hears his fellow inmates calling out numbers into the darkness, eliciting laughter from those who were still awake.

 

Finally, after someone yelled out, "Number 17!!" to which his cellmate laughed, remarking, "yeah, yeah, that's a good one!" he asked what was going on.

 

"Well, when you're in the joint for so long eventually you've heard them all, so we just decided to assign numbers to all the jokes we know."

 

The man decided to give it a go so after some silence he called out, "Number 54!!" but no one laughed.

 

"What did I do wrong?" he asked.

 

"Brother," his cellmate responded, "some people just don't know how to tell a joke."

[peachy]

I prefer the way hands are currently presented. No suit symbols, in order of SHDC, and all spots showing if they are known, with lower case x's for spots that are not known. Particularly for defensive problems, and sometimes for bidding as well, the actual spot cards should be included because they often matter.

 

I am starting to get a feeling I've been had, for answering this post...

[ArtK78]

I prefer the way hands are currently presented. No suit symbols, in order of SHDC, and all spots showing if they are known, with lower case x's for spots that are not known. Particularly for defensive problems, and sometimes for bidding as well, the actual spot cards should be included because they often matter.

 

I am starting to get a feeling I've been had, for answering this post...

I have the same feeling for just reading it!

[Siegmund]

I have occasionally written AK-6 AJ-3 etc. in the past (and much prefer "6" to "4" for AKxxxx.)

 

Still, there doesn't seem to be any real gain, long as we count the x's right. And PLEASE use T for tens. I don't know how many times I've thought somebody had a seven-card suit, A-K-one-zero-x-x-x, because I saw 7 characters on the screen.