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Messages - ian84

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46
With so many players having Mr Robert for p, they'd soon lead Hall of Fame for Monster Points.
So, ty - but no TY  ;) Mr Robert has been rejected from IAC!

Did you not take into account that I am recommending him to the club as my friend?

47
As a one-time professional computer programmer, I've always had some sympathy for them, and always make a point of talking to them...eg, wpp and ntp. I'm convinced they respond to my chat by playing better :)

I'm forever being asked, when you're playing in one of my tournies 'Surely Ken wants a real partner......put me in'. I can almost feel the funny looks I get when I gently explain to them that you've been playing with a Robot partner for a while, and perhaps you like it like that.
 

48
I spoke with Joe a couple of nights ago. As I couldnt get into the forum until yesterday my understanding over whats going on with the Pairs Ladder was skewed. It was my understanding that the Website pairs ladder wasnt working, and might not be fixed for a while.

And so I  had developed a spreadsheet which could be used in place of the website feature and talked it over with Joe, who seemed pleased in my interest.

You'll obviously need to confirm it with Joe, but I am happy to take over the admin of all Pairs and Team activity. If there's programming work still needing doing I may be able to help with that too. I was a mainframe programmer for most of my adult life and would be happy to get stuck into whatever computer language you use here.

49
Hi Oliver,
    It was certainly not my intention to promote the use of the pirate copy of Keyfast, in fact I led the effort to have it removed as a tool used by the BIL volunteers while I was a member of that club. My intention was merely to explain the history. Thx for the tip about Roger's software, which I was unaware of. I looked for quite a while for a suitable replacement for Keyfast and found nothing that was economically viable.

50
BBO Matters / Re: web version of BBO
« on: April 07, 2018, 12:32:57 PM »
Ahh so BBO have created a white list for the Netbridge server, I guess

51
Its not often that Robbie does well in these events so, I really don't see him earning worryingly large numbers of points. Also I believe we can restrict him to the lowest Monster point division

52
1. Chatlogs
In the Windows client, you can set it so your chatllog is automatically written continuously to a file on your computer. The Web version doesnt have this facility. In order to save a chatlog on the web version, right click in the chatlog, then press 'Ctrl+A' to select all the text, then 'Ctrl+C' to copy it to your pasteboard. Now open an MS-Word or Open source clone, left click at the start of the first page, then click on 'Edit/Paste Special then select 'Unformatted text'. You can now use 'File/Save As' to specify the filename and directory to use to store your new doc. If you just use 'File' it will store the doc to the default directory used by the application.

2. Chat management
Users such as Teachers, Teaching Assistants and TDs made use of a really good little chat management package called Keyfast to create scripts that could be sent to the chatbox either 1 click at a time or could be automated. The fact that the Keyfast software was a pirated copy of a version specially developed and given to the owner of the BIL club is niether here nor there, everyone used it :)

The web offering, the BBO Chat Manager is adequate for most peoples needs, the main drawback to it is that it supports only 1 file of chat-lines. Also, there are some very sophisticated features within Keyfast which some of the BIL teaching assistants use which cannot be emulated in the Web version, and is thus their main reason for sticking with the 'old' version.  Keyfast itself doesn't work on the Web version (or at least not the pirate copy that everyone has).

Other solutions: Many teachers like to prepare their teaching scripts as a Word doc, and copy and paste line-by-line from the Word doc into the chatbox on BBO. this has the benefit of being able to organise your files, but can be a little clunky switching between the Word doc and the BBO session.

3. Club facilities
In the old Windoze client, the Club-Owner BBO-Id is given extra capabilities on its associated table. There is a text file attached to the table, in which the BBO-Ids of all the Club members are stored. For Private clubs, this then allows only those Ids into the Club room, and can also be used to control admittance into Club tournaments. These membership control functions can be emulated on the BBO Web version, where an external text file needs to be created and utilised. This usually means that Creation of Club tournaments and events can only be done by one computer unless you duplicate the Club membership file across several computer, or use a shared file.

However, the major facility that is missing from the Web version is the ability to broadcast (by chat-only, chat+mail, or mail only) to the Club membership. In the Web version you can Chat 'To Club', but this in fact only transmits your chat message to those that are in the Club room at the time. And you can put out a mailshot to the entire club, but it requires the creation of a distribution list containing the name of each club member within the My BBO Manage friends function

(more to follow)
 

53
BBO Matters / Re: web version of BBO
« on: April 07, 2018, 09:44:28 AM »
For those who still like the old BBO Client, and need a copy it is I believe still available to download from BBO, though BBO themselves are actively discouraging its use by not making the link below easily available. In 2017 BBO declared its intention to phase it out completely, but there are still certain functions used by clubs that are still not available in the Web version, which they would need to sort out before they do so (asof today 7 April 2018, that still hasn't happened).

http://online.bridgebase.com/intro/download.php

If this link disappears I have a copy of the download, which can be made available for an extortionate fee  ;D

54
The IAC Café / Re: Two hands, one philosophy
« on: April 07, 2018, 08:26:09 AM »
The way I was taught that IM is intended to work is that its very much pushing towards 3NT, but you need to use the extra bidding space you have available to confirm that you have all the suits stopped. Thus I believe that in hand 1, Robbie should bid 2 !S rather than 2NT to show the partial  !S holding and the full stopper in !H. You then revert to 3 !D to deny any !S control and that should be the end of the story. So I'd suggest you pass this one onto BBO Help for the attention of Uday.

55
I knew his other Grandfather, who I thought was known as Robbie the Robot from Lost in Space, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Space
 ;D ;D ;D

56
Hi,
  As its quite the thing these days to enter a tourney with a Robot partner, I've created the BBO-ID Robert_Bot so that the IAC Admin can allocate Monsterpoints to Robot partners going forward. I tried Ro_Bott but unfortunately BBO had it covered.  This all depends, of course, on Grant Griffin approving him as a new IAC member. NO BBO logins, no hand records...its not looking too good for the poor chap.

57
I'm running an open mentoring session on Thursdays directly after Grant's session on Bidding Theory. For the past 2 weeks we've been looking at Stayman and transfers and I envisage at least another week, probably 2 on the topic. After that, I'm open to suggestions. The basic format of the session is bid, play and discuss, usually on a teaching table and using either pre-prepared hands, or specially generated ones using the Dealer generation facilities. The discussion is open to all participants, but we're lucky to often be visited by Mark Hugger(obsugar), Donna Stoker(DonnaS), Grant Griffin(GGriffin0), Joe Garcia(ylyxotee) and Todd Hole(masse24), whose contributions I gratefully acknowledge.

Any comments on the sessions, suggestions for improvements etc gratefully accepted. Also, I'd welcome suggestions for the next topic(s) that you'd all like to see covered. thx, Ian 

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