Overheard at the Spingold

[Phil]

Are you sure that you and your partner were actually being given the option to change your bid rather than just answering such a question?

 

Yes I am. In the first instance, my partner made the last call, and I was taken away from the table and asked if I'd like to change my call. I responded no(?).

[Phil]

My experience is that the national Fast Pairs is the one event where this is fairly common.

 

I wrote about this a few years ago after looking at the recaps after the 1st day in Toronoto. You can read about it here:

 

Fast? Pairs

 

In Toronto, there were 12 pairs penalized in the evening session.

 

In Atlanta, here is a summary of the evening session (51 top):

 

73.0 - 1

51.0 - 2

21.5 - 2

8.5 - 24

5.1 - 1

 

The most frequent penalty was 8.5 or 1/6 board.

 

I did hear a cell phone ring twice, which might account for a few of the penalties.

 

In summary, the directors did a much better job enforcing the time this year, or maybe it was the humidity and southern cooking that was slowing players down :P

[blackshoe]

Someone was penalized 73 MPs? Was that over several boards, or just one one?

 

The "standard" penalty for a violation of the phone regs is a full top, and I see two of those, which would account for the twice you heard a cell phone ring.

 

Ten percent of a top is the "standard" PP in England, and I've often thought it should be standard here. Looks like at least one TD in Atlanta thought the same. I don't get 1/6 of a top though. :unsure:

[Phil]

Someone was penalized 73 MPs? Was that over several boards, or just one one?

 

The "standard" penalty for a violation of the phone regs is a full top, and I see two of those, which would account for the twice you heard a cell phone ring.

 

Ten percent of a top is the "standard" PP in England, and I've often thought it should be standard here. Looks like at least one TD in Atlanta thought the same. I don't get 1/6 of a top though. :unsure:

 

I don't think it was for a single board. My guess is it was a full board for one slow hand plus 1/2 board for a hand not quite as slow. Roughly speaking.

[barmar]

In the National Swiss, people were asking what the orange dots were next to some of the team names. A director said that they were teams that had time warnings against them, for turning in the results late. I don't know if any of them turned into actual penalties due to repetition.

[Mbodell]

In the National Swiss, people were asking what the orange dots were next to some of the team names. A director said that they were teams that had time warnings against them, for turning in the results late. I don't know if any of them turned into actual penalties due to repetition.

 

Nice. That's how they track the swiss team here with the same idea of first time is warning, second time is VP penalty.

[Phil]

If you are ever late reporting, get your teammates card, compare for the played hands and report *some* score. After you get the actual result, turn in a corrected one.

[jillybean]

If you are ever late reporting, get your teammates card, compare for the played hands and report *some* score. After you get the actual result, turn in a corrected one.

!

[barmar]

If you are ever late reporting, get your teammates card, compare for the played hands and report *some* score. After you get the actual result, turn in a corrected one.

I suppose it's hard to be caught, but it can't really be legal to turn in a score you don't know to be correct. You also have to get the opponents to go along with this scheme.

 

Anyway, if they ever start using electronic scoring in the national Swiss events, you won't have this trick available. They really need to do this, as waiting for the directors to enter all the scores and do all the pairing adds about 2 hours to the event. We had to find a substitute for one of the players on our team because he wouldn't be able to make his flight home if he played the last round (if we were doing well he would have rescheduled his flight and stayed, but we were near the bottom of the field so the sub took over).

[billw55]

Anyway, if they ever start using electronic scoring in the national Swiss events, you won't have this trick available. They really need to do this, as waiting for the directors to enter all the scores and do all the pairing adds about 2 hours to the event. We had to find a substitute for one of the players on our team because he wouldn't be able to make his flight home if he played the last round (if we were doing well he would have rescheduled his flight and stayed, but we were near the bottom of the field so the sub took over).

It's not like they have a shortage of bridgemates. Maybe the software does not allow for so many tables yet? There must be a good reason, since using them would be so much better.

[Phil]

I suppose it's hard to be caught, but it can't really be legal to turn in a score you don't know to be correct. You also have to get the opponents to go along with this scheme.

 

So both teams avoid a penalty for the late reporting? Seems like people's interests are aligned. Many times you don't even bother getting a signed pickup slip anyway. This is a case of begging for forgiveness instead of asking for permission.

 

I've actually never done this but I witnessed this when I kibbed the Senior Swiss.

[blackshoe]

Funny. I've never signed, or seen the other team sign, a team score slip. In fact, what the ACBL's General Conditions of Contest for Swiss Teams say is

The captain of the winning team (both captains in case of a tie) must report the result of the match in IMPs as soon as it is known, by bringing both his/her reporting form and the one filled out by the opposing captain to the reporting station

.

Nothing about signing them, and I don't recall a space on the slip for it. I have had TDs tell me they only want the winning team's slip - they don't want to see the losing team's. I suppose this is because they don't want to get confused.

 

I didn't look at more specific CoC for Team games, so they may have such a provision.

 

Actually, in the very first team game I played in the US, I was "elected" captain by virtue of the fact I was the only male on the team. I had no clue about this rule, or the way things were supposed to work. One of our matches, which we won, the captain of the opposing team offered to take the score slips up. Since I didn't know the rule, I let her do it. The director scored this match as a win for the other team. I didn't find this out until we were on the way home, and one of my teammates asked "didn't we win this match?" seeing on the results printout we'd "lost" it. It took me several weeks to get hold of the TD — first he was out of town, then he was sick, then he was out of town again — and by then he'd thrown all the paperwork away and we were out of luck. I've learned my lesson though — if my team wins a match, our captain will be turning in the score.

[barmar]

It's not like they have a shortage of bridgemates. Maybe the software does not allow for so many tables yet? There must be a good reason, since using them would be so much better.

Does BridgeMate support Swiss Teams? In the past, they've only use BridgePad (the silver devices with the flip covers) for team games, but only for the regional events. But ACBL has stopped using BridgePad at Nationals; someone told me that they had too many problems with them and switched to using BridgeMate exclusively. So they went back to manual scoring for all the Swiss Team events. I guess we're now waiting for BridgeMate to implement Swiss Team support, or BridgePad to resolve the problems so that ACBL will start using them again.

 

They used BridgeMate in a side BAM that I played in. It worked for sending the scores to the directors, but had other problems. It didn't understand about cross-overs, so displayed the wrong names for the EW pairs that should be arriving at the table (the directors turned off the player name display). And at the end, when we displayed our score, it didn't match the recap at all (it said we were 50%, we were actually about 67%).

[blackshoe]

I wonder what problems the ACBL had with Bridgepads. We use them here, and while we've had the occasional problem, as far as I know it's usually been down to the director being unfamiliar with them.

[gnasher]

Does BridgeMate support Swiss Teams?

BridgeMate supports Swiss Teams, but ACBLScore doesn't support BridgeMates for Swiss Teams:

 

http://www.bridgemate.us/User%20Guides.php?subpage=Team%20Games%20using%20Bridgemates

 

"While ACBLscore does not currently support 'Remote score entry' for team games, most other scoring programs used around the world have integrated the use of Bridgemates for team games."

[pran]

We have been using Bridgemate for years in Norway, the system is very flexible and I cannot imagine any movement in bridge that is not supported by the Bridgemate system.

 

Whether the scoring program used includes the necessary support is of course a different question.

[GreenMan]

I'd be surprised if the ACBL isn't trying to remedy this incompatibility; I doubt they like the delays and extra work of manually entering scores any more than the players do.

[jillybean]

My impression is that the ACBL are techno dinosaurs, I would be surprised if catching up in the technology area has any priority at all.

[GreenMan]

Yeah, the last word that comes to mind when you say ACBL is "nimble".

[jeffford76]

My (completely uninformed) guess is that they are waiting to add support in the software until they finish ACBLScore+, rather than devoting energies on two fronts.

[barmar]

"While ACBLscore does not currently support 'Remote score entry' for team games, most other scoring programs used around the world have integrated the use of Bridgemates for team games."

Yet somehow it works with BridgePads.

 

Let's hope this gets resolved in ACBLScore+.

[blackshoe]

Let's hope ACBLSCore+ hits the streets sometime before 2020.

[barmar]

Let's hope ACBLSCore+ hits the streets sometime before 2020.

I ran into Nicholas in Atlanta, and I got the impression he's in the home stretch.

 

I asked a director this weekend about why ACBL dumped BridgePads at Nationals. He said, "Because they suck" (exact quote); I didn't press for details. I asked about how they'd managed in the past to use them for Swiss Teams, when ACBLScore doesn't support remote entry. He explained that BridgePad comes with its own software for running Swiss Teams. When the event is over, they copy the results into ACBLScore. BridgeMate doesn't have analogous software.

[mycroft]

One of the big issues we've had with BridgePads is that in a big room, especially with two computers receiving scores, the dropout rate is very high. Another one is that if the BridgeMate software refuses to start a session, you kill it, check all the connections, restart it, and it works; if the BridgePad software refuses to start, it's black candles and goat's blood time.

 

One minor - but incredibly annoying - issue with the Pads is that the "N/S put in score" button and the "E/W agree" button are the same. *Everybody* double-hits "NEXT" at least once, many frequently (and the odd one consistently, because how could he be wrong?)

 

But they do work well for Swiss Teams, and their software integrates into ACBLScore for Swiss Teams.

[aguahombre]

if the BridgePad software refuses to start, it's black candles and goat's blood time.

I have found that, after checking the plug-ins at both the remote and the laptop, I can simply delete and recreate the sections (not the session) ---and the remote will enable. Takes about 20 seconds per section.