AAAAARGHHH! NOOOOOO!

[1eyedjack]

So if 99% of my games are IT's and acbl robodups, my BBO skill will slowly go away?

I'm fine with that.

Have I missed something? I thought that BBOSkill stopped updating a year or so ago, maybe longer.

[ahydra]

I don't play in BBO tournaments, but something puzzles me when reading some comments in this thread. Why re-use hands at all rather than deal new hands afresh for each tournament? (Chances are I'm missing something about the way the tournaments work)

 

ahydra

[ArtK78]

I don't play in BBO tournaments, but something puzzles me when reading some comments in this thread. Why re-use hands at all rather than deal new hands afresh for each tournament? (Chances are I'm missing something about the way the tournaments work)

 

ahydra

The instant tournaments use hands that have been played before so that the player can get an instant score on the hand compared to 14 other results.

[1eyedjack]

I don't play in BBO tournaments, but something puzzles me when reading some comments in this thread. Why re-use hands at all rather than deal new hands afresh for each tournament? (Chances are I'm missing something about the way the tournaments work)

 

ahydra

The main attractions of Instant tourneys are

 

1) There is no delay between entering the tournament and commencement of play

2) There is no delay between completion of a hand within the tournament and a complete movement score

3) Likewise there is no delay at the end of the final hand to getting a tournament result.

4) There is a much longer "clock" before the tournament expires, should you wish to take a break in mid tournament for (say) food or whatever.

5) You are assured of 15 table comparisons where at antisocial hours (for most BBO-ers) you struggle at a live tourney to get players.

 

In order to benefit from these attractions it is evident that the complete set of tournament hands must at some time have been dealt and played by the other 15 tables prior to your registering, so it has to have been a historically completed tournament in which you have not yourself played originally.

 

The main downside to this arrangement is that the other tables are likely to have been played with a different version of GIB, and there is no guarantee that GIB will take the same action at your table as it did at other tables from an identical initial position.

[helene_t]

TBH I think these complaints are a bit over the top. BBO is under time pressure to comply with ACBL requirements and then they make some changes which require some minor changes by third parties also. It will probably be sorted soon. If not, the criticism may be better directed at the ACBL and/or at the third parties.

[barmar]

Also, another improvement would be to use longer cookies for authorization. For something as low risk as this, there's no reason to require logging back in frequently. Having it last a month would be quite sufficient and much more usable.

It uses PHP's built-in session feature. I believe this uses normal session cookies, I don't know if there's a way to extend their life.

[Mbodell]

The main attractions of Instant tourneys are

 

And note, in live play, there are instant matchpoint events too. They often use sessions from some other country from 30+ years ago, but you get instant results for each score. This isn't an online-only thing.

[Wayne_LV]

TBH I think these complaints are a bit over the top. BBO is under time pressure to comply with ACBL requirements and then they make some changes which require some minor changes by third parties also. It will probably be sorted soon. If not, the criticism may be better directed at the ACBL and/or at the third parties.

 

You are right, the ACBL is stupid for allowing master points to be awarded with Robots at the table.

[ArtK78]

You are right, the ACBL is stupid for allowing master points to be awarded with Robots at the table.

That is certainly one opinion.

[1eyedjack]

That is certainly one opinion.

Speaking from a purely selfish perspective it is one that I share, and I doubt that Wayne and I are alone.

I am not, nor have any ambitions to be, an ACBL member, and as such ACBL masterpoints are of no interest to me.

So you will appreciate that it is a source of irritation *to me* that features which are of benefit to me (and to other players the world over outside of USA) are cast aside in order to kowtow to the demands of the ACBL.

 

I suspect that for all BBO's pretence at being a truly international organisation the lure of the ACBL revenue stream is just too tempting to resist. I perceive a risk that as ACBL exerts ever greater financial influence over BBO, so BBO will become ever more financially dependent upon ACBL, spiralling inter an ever closer union that provides ACBL with de facto power to dictate BBO policy.

[Bbradley62]

I think having ACBL Robodupes awarding masterpoints is an excellent idea; they award points to players who do better than other players under identical circumstances. It sounds like ACBL has realized that it's silly to award masterpoints to players playing with/against revised robots. If ACBL doesn't like the idea of instant tournaments using hands that players might have seen, then they shouldn't run instant tournaments.

[42krunner]

Have I missed something? I thought that BBOSkill stopped updating a year or so ago, maybe longer.

 

That explains why I'm not improving!

[42krunner]

Is the ACBL upset by ACBL instant robo-dups? That would be rather silly, since it's a steady cash cow.

[hawkwind]

Reading through the thread I now understand your thinking behind this change but.............................

 

I am among those that download hands for analysis using "Double Dummy Solver" by Bridge Captain.

 

This is now broken.

 

While I appreciate that you cannot be responsible for third party applications, this particular app provides extra functionality permitting analysis across a quantity of hands which is a great help when trying to eliminate general weaknesses and "blind spots". I don't know whether you at any time integrate third party products into core BBO, if you do I would recommend DDS.

 

If I've read this thread correctly I understand that you are aware of the issue and are hoping to help resolve it.

 

That would be appreciated.

 

On a practical level it's a shame that this change was made without warning as I would have downloaded June to date (precautionary) if I had known in advance. I would also have suggested that you delayed this change a few days which would have allowed everyone using DDS to retrieve a full month's data prior to change.

 

A final thought given that your action appears inspired by the worthy motive of preventing cheating. Wouldn't the analysis available from DDS help you identify cheats?

[Wayne_LV]

What am I missing?

 

What is the difference between logging in and seeing the Robot tournaments and not logging in and seeing the Robot tournaments?

[diana_eva]

What am I missing?

 

What is the difference between logging in and seeing the Robot tournaments and not logging in and seeing the Robot tournaments?

 

You can see your own. You can't see some of the other people's robot tourneys (instants and robot duplicates).

[ThymePuns]

Then what would they show? It sounds like the point of this exercise is to prevent people from knowing "if I hold this exact hand in an Instant Dupe, I will know where all the other cards are".

A placeholder that showed the hand was played but basically nothing else. Two reasons for this.

1) A better user experience where you hide only what you need to until you log. It will be faster when you aren't looking for a robo hand, but you haven't to do a "am I logged in?" check every time you're not seeing a hand you expected (which would often be a time selection problem). It's better to list everything you before logging in so that when you do log in, you haven't lost your place, so to speak.

2) Uniquely for me, I also want to use this to load the number of hands a user has played as we'll use this as part of our youth program.

[ThymePuns]

It uses PHP's built-in session feature. I believe this uses normal session cookies, I don't know if there's a way to extend their life.

You can just use persistent cookies instead of session cookies. You wouldn't do that if you were logging into anything important since it's not very secure, but shouldn't be any problem for something this low risk.

[jandrew]

You can just use persistent cookies instead of session cookies. You wouldn't do that if you were logging into anything important since it's not very secure, but shouldn't be any problem for something this low risk.

I support this.

 

A persistent cookie (at least, say, six months) would have the desired effect without the current annoyance. By this I mean that you will recognise the previous recent login and bypass the username check and launch straight into the program with the saved username.

 

I know that it is not the end of the world, but I am just a little p******d off at the extra effort of entering my username on every login to the hands archive.

 

And ......... I have a suggestion :

 

Now that you have the username, could you not use that as a "default" for the user to be 'looked up'. After all, it is usually me that I am looking up.

 

Every key stroke saved is welcome when you only have one hand.

[barmar]

Now that you have the username, could you not use that as a "default" for the user to be 'looked up'. After all, it is usually me that I am looking up.

I knew there was something I was meaning to do. Thanks for the reminder.

[barmar]

A persistent cookie (at least, say, six months) would have the desired effect without the current annoyance. By this I mean that you will recognise the previous recent login and bypass the username check and launch straight into the program with the saved username.

This has been implemented now. There's a "keep me logged in" checkbox on the login page, and it keeps you logged in for a month. The expiration time gets pushed back every time you use the page, so you'll stay logged in permanently as long as you use myhands at least once a month.

[barmar]

Now that you have the username, could you not use that as a "default" for the user to be 'looked up'. After all, it is usually me that I am looking up.

And when I was writing the last reply, I saw that I forgot about this. So I just did it.

[jandrew]

This has been implemented now. There's a "keep me logged in" checkbox on the login page, and it keeps you logged in for a month. The expiration time gets pushed back every time you use the page, so you'll stay logged in permanently as long as you use myhands at least once a month.

 

View Postjandrew, on 2015-July-07, 09:51, said:

 

Now that you have the username, could you not use that as a "default" for the user to be 'looked up'. After all, it is usually me that I am looking up.

 

And when I was writing the last reply, I saw that I forgot about this. So I just did it.

 

This is wonderful - super - and so much easier.

Thanks a bunch.

[paulg]

There is a new release available of the Double Dummy Solver that works again with myhands. It's a little bit clunky but I suspect that most will cope without a problem if they read the instructions!

[1eyedjack]

I have been involved in testing this, and it works for me on Win 8.1 and IE11.

 

Just a word of warning. It may just be me, but if it goes into hour-glass mode and "program not responding" while downloading the files, leave it for a good 5 minutes or so before giving up. With me I kept giving up too early, but after resolving to leave it and have a cup of tea it did eventually wake up and complete. Seemed to be a problem only if the download was large.