Wireless Scoring

[inquiry]

Dealing machine. Hands down.

 

In the old days, I could remember every hand (and most key spots) after a session until I had time to get a notepad and write them down. Now, I am lucky if I can remember one or two hands at best.

[mike777]

as I said many posts ago...

 

 

1) people love free stuff that is not the important question.

2) the important question is what is your return after expenses and your investment of capital, time...etc?

 

efficient use of capital....guys...is a good thing...not an evil thing that so many posters assume.

 

 

So many posters mainly say ....customers love free or really cheap stuff...ya and so ?

 

 

even if you are nonprofit dont you want to use your very very limited capital in the very most efficient way?

 

so many of these posts just ignore this.

[Vampyr]

 

so many of these posts just ignore this.

 

No, I suspect that people don't know what you are talking about.

[mike777]

No, I suspect that people don't know what you are talking about.

 

 

 

cap. at its essence says use your limited, very limited capital in the most effective way.

 

 

 

At the edges...margins......we debate......how that is not 100% PERFECT

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but you make an excellent point

[barmar]

I doubt that most bridge clubs are intended to be big money makers. Many bridge clubs in the US are member-owned, not-for-profit organizations. Others are just a tiny part of a retirement community. And even the independent clubs are not usually going for the big bucks. They're run by bridge enthusiasts for the benefit of the community. As long as they don't lose money, they're succeeding.

 

If you have $1,000 to spend, and you can spend it on either duplimate or bridgemate, you don't need to do a financial analysis. You just try to decide which one will make the club more enjoyable.

[mike777]

I doubt that most bridge clubs are intended to be big money makers. Many bridge clubs in the US are member-owned, not-for-profit organizations. Others are just a tiny part of a retirement community. And even the independent clubs are not usually going for the big bucks. They're run by bridge enthusiasts for the benefit of the community. As long as they don't lose money, they're succeeding.

 

If you have $1,000 to spend, and you can spend it on either duplimate or bridgemate, you don't need to do a financial analysis. You just try to decide which one will make the club more enjoyable.

 

 

NO

 

Is this your club?

 

do you just spend a random, as you say, bucks or are you just insanely rich: then please make your local club 100% free

 

 

again everyone loves free stuff....do you just want your club to hve free stuff?

 

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Let me put this another way.......are you are owner or part owner of a club?

 

 

If yes.....do you work for 100% free? or do want to make money in 2014 or 2015? I mean even one euro?

 

 

or do you work for ego.so people think you are a great charity guy?

 

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My only point is return:.......If you think buying this stuff is ok...great....I am with you all the way...

[barmar]

I'm a member of a non-profit, membership-run club, that's my only direct experience. We have one game a week, with 8-10 tables, and charge $2 for students and $5 for non-students. And we have a Duplimate (the club manager bought it a few years ago, and the club is paying him back over time). On the other hand, we don't spend money on refreshments like most clubs do.

 

P.S. What's with all the extra blank lines in your messages? They're as annoying as Lurpoa's ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ stuff.

[mike777]

I'm a member of a non-profit, membership-run club, that's my only direct experience. We have one game a week, with 8-10 tables, and charge $2 for students and $5 for non-students. And we have a Duplimate (the club manager bought it a few years ago, and the club is paying him back over time). On the other hand, we don't spend money on refreshments like most clubs do.

 

P.S. What's with all the extra blank lines in your messages? They're as annoying as Lurpoa's ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ stuff.

 

 

fwiw what are your expenses?

what are your revenues?

 

I assume you have a mort

gage and ins and a zillion local fees ontop ot thatI assume you have a zillion ongoing fees just to mow the lawn

 

------------------

 

 

In any event barmar if you think the cost is worth the return just say so but you dont..

 

I dont mean to be disrespectful........ if your return is ok....ok but please just say so........

[barmar]

fwiw what are your expenses?

what are your revenues?

 

I assume you have a mortgage and ins and a zillion local fees ontop ot thatI assume you have a zillion ongoing fees just to mow the lawn

Yes, I do. What do my personal expenses have to do with this? The bridge club I belong to doesn't have a mortgage, insurance, or a lawn. The club doesn't spend much for the playing space -- we're nominally associated with the MIT Math Department, and that allows us to use classrooms for a very low fee (we used to be a student organization, but we had trouble ensuring that a sufficient percentage of the club was students).

 

I've seen the club's financial reports. Finances of a bridge club seem pretty simple. Income and expenses are very predictable, assuming your table count is fairly consistent. It's then easy to see how much spare cash the club has, and decide whether you want to spend it on some new gadget.

[barmar]

In any event barmar if you think the cost is worth the return just say so but you dont..

The "return" is in how much fun the players have. How do you put a $ value on that?

 

As you said, you have to decide how to spend your limited capital budget. Well, what else is a bridge club going to spend it on? The OP's situation was that they have enough money for either a duplicating machine or wireless scoring devices, but not both, so they're looking for advice on which one is preferable. What's so wrong with that? You don't need to make a spreadsheet for this decision.

[mike777]

It's then easy to see how much spare cash the club has, and decide whether you want to spend it on some new gadget.

 

 

 

 

great that is the main point yes?

 

btw if you dont pay the mort..ins ..taxes for your club...who does?

[mike777]

As you said, you have to decide how to spend your limited capital budget. Well, what else is a bridge club going to spend it on? The OP's situation was that they have enough money for either a duplicating machine or wireless scoring devices, but not both, so they're looking for advice on which one is preferable. What's so wrong with that? You don't need to make a spreadsheet for this decision

 

 

 

you dont?...you assume alot

 

in fact is seems a spreadsheet is perfect....just use important spreadsheats numbers..not crap....

 

 

If you dont know how to put important stuff into numbers...than that is the problem...yes?..not the spreadsheat

 

If you have a crappy algorithm ..then use a better one.

 

--

 

in any event dont waste money on something with ngative return

[mike777]

again what is the main question?

 

 

1) what is your return?

2) what do people want free?

 

iF THIS IS YOUR MONEY....OK.....YOU DECIDE...

 

 

 

AS THE OWNER you decide at some point...often with imperfect information

[blackshoe]

You take the travelers home, and enter everything when you get it fixed.

 

I still remember how to matchpoint by hand (although I'd have to think a little about factoring), but we no longer have any of those big score sheets where you enter all the matchpoints and add them up.

You can still buy them from Baron=Barclay. Also, you can create a spreadsheet with the same format. That's what I would do, assuming it was the scoring program and not the computer that was the problem.

[barmar]

btw if you dont pay the mort..ins ..taxes for your club...who does?

No one. Like I said, our club plays in a college classroom, it doesn't own any property. The cost of using the room is either free or very low, I don't remember.

 

Of the other nearby clubs, one plays in a church, one plays in an American Legion Hall, one is in a synagogue, and one rents space in an office building. I expect this latter one has the largest expenses for space, they're also probably the largest club in the Boston area (the Bridge Spot in Woburn).

[barmar]

You can still buy them from Baron=Barclay. Also, you can create a spreadsheet with the same format. That's what I would do, assuming it was the scoring program and not the computer that was the problem.

I know we CAN, but AFAIK we don't. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the director has some of them at home.

 

Our club doesn't have any storage space at the playing site, the director has to bring the supplies from home every time. So he only brings what's absolutely necessary.

[blackshoe]

One club here, the largest, has one afternoon game a week. They pay about $140 a session for rent in a synagogue. Two other clubs each have one game a week in another synagogue, where they pay (I think) about $100 a session. The fourth club has three games a week, and recently moved from the $140 place to the other one. "Club," for our English readers, has a different meaning than I think you're used to — our clubs don't have members, really, it's just pretty much the same people playing at all of them. They're usually owned by the person who directs, and are open to anyone who wants to pay the per-game card fee, currently about $7 per person. Table counts range from about 7 to around 30 or so. Most games run 10 to 15 tables.

 

The $100 place has been very generous with space - we have a room for the games, and two offices (one of which was originally a closet - no windows. We use it to store the boards, and the duplimate machine is set up there). The other place gave us a much smaller closet.

 

There are a couple of other games in town, at a community center in a different suburb (both synagogues are in the 'burbs, too - there are no games in downtown Rochester).

 

I'm told that the Friday night game, now defunct, was once the biggest in town. It closed down because it dwindled to about 4 tables - some of its regulars just quit driving at night. That game was in a church, the rent was about $50 a session, and at 4 tables it was barely breaking even. Most of our games these days are in the daytime.

 

I sympathize with your club director, Barry. Hauling supplies around is a pain.

[Frager]

Dealing Machines v Manually Dealt Hands.

 

My Bridge club has a dealing machine on trial and it has led to a lot of discussion both for and against.

 

1. Some people find the hands interesting and challenging. There are very few dull flat hands. There are lots of five and six card suits, singletons and voids.

2. Others find these types of hands very difficult. They prefer the more “normal” hands that were generated by manually dealt hands.

3. Beginners find machine dealt hands difficult to bid. They don’t seem to fit into any of the categories of hands they were taught in their lessons. This has made things very difficult for their teachers.

4. The fear is that the continued use of machine dealt hands will cause some people to give up bridge altogether. No one wants that.

5. Hand records are not an issue.

 

I see the last post on this topic was in July 2012.

 

If more people have bought dealing machines since then I would like to hear of their experiences.

[Finch]

I seriously can't remember the last time I played at a club which didn't use a dealing machine. Even small clubs have bought them (or shared the purchase).

Your points 2 and 3 indicate two possibilities:

- either people are shuffling extremely badly if they really think there is such a difference between machine and hand dealt, or

- the perception that the hands are completely different is incorrect

 

I've seen (in the past, not recently) a lot of the second - people believe that computer-dealt hands are really freaky and remember the distributional hands but forget the boring 1NT-3NT deals.

[Trinidad]

I can hardly believe that in the 21st century hand records are not an issue.

 

Hand records have many advantages:

1. 
    
   
2. Players can look over the hands at the end of the evening or when they are home. They can email their partners with questions if they want to.
   
3. A major consequence of 1): Players do not need to discuss the hands at the table, because they can discuss them later. There is less of a reason to ask your partner why he played the ♣J and didn't find the obvious heart return. This means that the atmosphere at the table is often much more friendly in events where there are hand records. And when an unpleasant discussion flares up, one can almost always extinguish it by saying: "Let's look at it later.". In practice, "later" means that everybody involved can llok at things more objectively, the hormone levels are lower and any dispute can easily be resolved in a friendly way.
   
4. A consequence of 2): Since postmortems are not needed, the play is going much faster. Time and energy can be devoted to a difficult bridge hand or talking about the grandchildren. It does not go into having conflicts with partner.
   
5. Players can actually learn from their mistakes: They see the hand record and the results that other pairs obtained on the hand and they can ask themselves, at a convenient time with a cup of tea, what others must have done better than what they did. Without hand records this is practically impossible. You need t be a high level player to remember the hands you played and then there is probably not so much that you can learn from the rest of the field.
   
6. In many cases, it is much easier for a TD to rule if he has a record of the hand. He will just write down the auction and sit in front of his monitor to check what happened, rather than having to write down who bid what with what hand.
   

To be honest, I haven't played without hand records for the past 10 years. Before that, I played pairs with hand records and teams without. I really missed the hand records in those team games.

 

But in the unlikely event that hand records are really not an issue then there is no reason to invest in a duplication machine. Having hand records is the primary reason to have one.

 

Rik

[Cthulhu D]

Not having hand records is dumb. Like, that is the biggest single amenity. I wouldn't play at a club that didn't have hand records.

[Frager]

Are copies of the hand records printed for everyone?

[1eyedjack]

I am curious to get a feel for the actual cost. So far I gather from the OP that they are about equal, and that the OP has funds for one but not the other.

 

At one site that I googled the dealing machines cost from 298 euros to 3450 euros + VAT in each case.

 

http://www.jannersten.se/pdf/DUPPRICE.pdf

 

At another site wireless scoring was priced up by annual subscription, at GBP£35 to £120 per year

 

http://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwoe/bw.cgi?club=bw&pid=display_page4

 

Comparing costs on a like for like basis is not trivial. But these do not look remotely similar to me.

 

 

 

[gordontd]

I am curious to get a feel for the actual cost. So far I gather from the OP that they are about equal, and that the OP has funds for one but not the other.

 

At one site that I googled the dealing machines cost from 298 euros to 3450 euros + VAT in each case.

 

http://www.jannersten.se/pdf/DUPPRICE.pdf

 

At another site wireless scoring was priced up by annual subscription, at GBP£35 to £120 per year

 

http://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwoe/bw.cgi?club=bw&pid=display_page4

 

Comparing costs on a like for like basis is not trivial. But these do not look remotely similar to me.

Bridgewebs is a website service, not wireless scoring.

[gordontd]

Are copies of the hand records printed for everyone?

They are everywhere I've been (unless they run out).