[Deanrover]

Click to Read About Full Disclosure

This has the potential to be a very valuable tool. Have had an ephemeral look at FD:

i) It would nice to say what a bid denies as well as what it promises. E.g. 1♣ - 1N denies a 4cM. The description area is available for this, but being able to enter this info in "logic" format would be beneficial.

ii) Hopefully some individual or group will produce "sayc" "2/1" "precision" FD files which can be d/l from bridgebase.com and then played around with by the individual. What would also be nice is if it was programmed so that you could download ewxtensions to your current system, e.g. you could download sayc but then download "inverse bergen", "grand slam force" FD files and merge them with your sayc file to produce a hirsute system. Otherwise it is just gonna get too tricky for the average user.

What would be great is if this became the standard convention card program. So, before a tournament, partnerships are required to submit their CCs in FD format. FD would then present these in a printoffable format. Just think how great this would be when watching vugraph - BBO automatically displays the meaning of Meckwell's bids!

Good work. BBO is the Google of bridge.

[hrothgar]

Needless to say, I'm thrilled about the introduction of this program. As with any radical improvement in functionality I'm sure that there will be some growing pains. None-the-less, I hope that the introduction of this application will yield enormous benefits to the user base. (At the very least, the Forums will have something new to argue about)

Deanrover has identified a very important point:

Most players follow the path of least resistance - they won't bother to create their own system templates. Rather, they will prefer to use the standard systems provided by thrid parties. Its in all of our interest to ensure that good templates are quickly made available ASAP for various "standard" systems. In an ideal world, the Bridge World would create a BWS bidding template, while the EBU would support standard English, and the Poles WJ2005. I suspect that it will take some time before this comes to fruition.

it will be interesting to see whether other bidding systems are able to establish themselves in a vacant ecosystem.

[fred]

Deanrover, on Sep 2 2005, 06:47 PM, said:

This has the potential to be a very valuable tool. Have had an ephemeral look at FD:

i) It would nice to say what a bid denies as well as what it promises. E.g. 1♣ - 1N denies a 4cM. The description area is available for this, but being able to enter this info in "logic" format would be beneficial.

ii) Hopefully some individual or group will produce "sayc" "2/1" "precision" FD files which can be d/l from bridgebase.com and then played around with by the individual. What would also be nice is if it was programmed so that you could download ewxtensions to your current system, e.g. you could download sayc but then download "inverse bergen", "grand slam force" FD files and merge them with your sayc file to produce a hirsute system. Otherwise it is just gonna get too tricky for the average user.

What would be great is if this became the standard convention card program. So, before a tournament, partnerships are required to submit their CCs in FD format. FD would then present these in a printoffable format. Just think how great this would be when watching vugraph - BBO automatically displays the meaning of Meckwell's bids!

Good work. BBO is the Google of bridge.

With respect to i), there is virtually no limit to how far I can go in terms of checkboxes, listboxes, radio buttons, etc (ie what you call "logic format") for things like more specific distributional info, HCP range, Zar range, Good suit/Bad suit, promises/denies control in suit x...

To really do this properly I would have to do the sort of thing we now have in BBO Partnership Bidding where you can formally define (in a limited way in this case) several possible hand types for a player to have (which are related to each other via "or"). I haven't given it that much thought, but it would no doubt be best to be able to express "and" and "not" as well in various places).

The primary advantage of doing this would be integration with a hand generator (especially since most users will not want to get this sophisticated with their definitions to say nothing of their agreements and these people will find all the additional "logic format" controls to be noise).

My answer to this is to try to limit the "logic format" controls to things that people rate to care about. Most likely there are already good hand generators that handle all the other stuff. For people who want to go there I can always provide a "hook" to files for such a program that people can enter in the FD definition screen.

About ii), yes I hope (and expect!) groups of people to work on such projects, hopefully in the spirit of "open source". You can already add, say, a Bergen module to an existing system via the Merge command on the File menu.

Most likely this will become the standard BBO convention card facility in one form or another. It will certainly eliminate the need to look at an opp's convention card after a bid you want to know about has been made (since the software can auto-explain that bid to you). If you want to explore other possible bids or get an overview of the opponents' system, you could use a program like FD integrated into BBO (probably a stripped down version with no editing capabilities that is streamlined so that the average BBO member could deal with it).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[DrTodd13]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for all the effort in putting this tool together. I can understand that you didn't put it together for the benefit of forcing pass players so it doesn't suprise me that I can't figure out how to show our strong opening pass. Any ideas?

thanks,

Todd

[fred]

DrTodd13, on Sep 2 2005, 08:44 PM, said:

Hi Fred,

Thanks for all the effort in putting this tool together. I can understand that you didn't put it together for the benefit of forcing pass players so it doesn't suprise me that I can't figure out how to show our strong opening pass. Any ideas?

thanks,

Todd

Sorry Todd but currently there is no way to define the meanings of passes that take place before the opening bid.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mr1303]

I like it a lot. Just goes to show how much there is to a system file.

Incidently, can we make the opponents compete?

[scoob]

fred, i think i may be in love with you

[mr1303]

OK, bug no. 1. I've just tried saving my work, and moving to a new computer, same network. I can't now reopen the file off of the network hard drive.

[fred]

mr1303, on Sep 3 2005, 03:59 PM, said:

I like it a lot. Just goes to show how much there is to a system file.

Incidently, can we make the opponents compete?

Uncheck the "constructive" command on the Settings menu.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mink]

Thanks Fred!

This will be great for opps when playing against a pair who has defined their system very well.

I found one bug so far: when trying do describe a double I was not able to click in the first column - it always remained "no agreement".

And an inconvenience: When saving a file the default directory is "my documents" (or whatever it is called in English, it is "Eigene Dateien" in German), but when opening a file the directory where the program is located is displayed.

General remarks: I doubt that many will undertake the effort of defining their whole system using this tool. Rather, I expect that there will be a library of systems and conventions from where I can pick what I like and compile the definition of what my partner and I play. Of course we might change some of the meanings of system or convention bids.

Very nice when we do this the first time. But when I plan to play with the same partner after a break of some weeks, I will surely want to review what we changed. But if this involves going through all these bids, I will probably overlook a change and never remember it.

My suggestion to resolve this problem: When defining a system or a convention that is going to be stored in the Library, it should be possible to attach a name to this. Associated with this name, it should be possible to give a link to a website where an informal description of the system/convention can be found. When compiling an individual system by merging definitions from the library, each bid should retain a link to the name of the conventions it belongs to. When displaying the description to opps, this system or convention name should always be displayed with the bid, and a click on this name should display the associated website. So, when playing and looking at the description of one of my bids, you will always see that it belongs to this or that system or convention and therefore is nothing unusual provided you know this system or convention. In contrast, if you see a bid where no convention name is displayed, you know that this must have been individually designed by opps and maybe requires a closer look. Maybe such bids should be highlighted, but in a different way than an alert.

Consequently, in the Full Disclosure editor there should be a command to browse through all the bids that did not come from a library. And there should be a list of the system/conventions included.

I believe right now the Full Disclosure Edior cannot be used to define carding; this should be added in the final version.

Regarding pickup partnerships, I still think that my suggestion dated mid July is still worth considering, and it would combine nicely with this Full Disclosure concept, provided the standard library for the common systems and conventions is located at some defined central place.

Karl

[Deanrover]

Fred - are you accepting suggestions for alternative names than "full disclosure"? Don't really like the name......

[hrothgar]

Deanrover, on Sep 4 2005, 05:47 AM, said:

Fred - are you accepting suggestions for alternative names than "full disclosure"? Don't really like the name......

I'm partial to the name "Munin"

[The god Odin had two ravens who sat on his shoulder and brought him news of the world. One was named "thought". The other was named "memory". "Munin" was memory...]

[badderzboy]

This seems incredibly powerful,

Is it worth co-ordinating our efforts to define the 'normal' systems and conventions like stayman/tfrs etc then it becomes a menu for people to choose and build their system card using the merge facility.

Fred, have you thought of creating a web-page in Bridgebase where standard cards can be downloaded ?

I've created a 2NT puppet Stayman card and OGUST card for example and will draw up a standard English card (based on EBU)with the typical opening bids and typical initial responses and a Benji ACOL card for starters


Steve

[fred]

Deanrover, on Sep 4 2005, 02:47 AM, said:

Fred - are you accepting suggestions for alternative names than "full disclosure"? Don't really like the name......

Yes please feel free to suggestion new names. I am not crazy about "Full Disclosure" either (but it is starting to grow on me).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

badderzboy, on Sep 4 2005, 12:33 PM, said:

Fred, have you thought of creating a web-page in Bridgebase where standard cards can be downloaded ?

Yes, we will certainly create such a web page (and also make it possible to download various FD files through BBO itself).

I am not sure if members of the BBO staff and going to get involved in creating these files themselves. I hope that groups of volunteers will form for this purpose.

However, FD is still too young to start a project like that. The file format could still change and the program needs more testing until I am confident that it is stable enough to be used for a major project (like creating an SAYC file for example).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[david_c]

A really excellent idea - if this is integrated into BBO it will make life so much easier for those of us playing non-standard systems (and for our opponents too, of course).

Anyway, here are a few things that are bothering me, playing around with this program.

In the "disposition" section of the description:

1. "constructive" is mis-spelt as "contructive"
2. I feel that there are some bids which don't fit any of the categories very well. In particular I'd like a "negative" or "waiting" or "relay" - describing these things simply as "forcing" doesn't seem right.

When the "max length" is set to "any", I'd much prefer this to be displayed as "5+ ♥s" (for example) rather than "5-Any ♥s".

I also think the way the program deals with changes to the dealer and vulnerability is a bit counter-intuitive ... I can't seem to define a variable 1NT without going down a level first. And is there a way of deleting these branches once they have been created?

[fred]

Thanks for your comments, David.

I will fix the spelling of constructive in the next version and I like your idea of "5+" instead of "5-any". Any thoughts on a better way to express "0+". Maybe "Any" or "Any #" is best in this case.

Most likely we will add some more options to "disposition" at some point. "Asking bid" and "response to asking bid" (which can be used to describe Blackwood bids and response for example) would also be useful.

Agree I have to find a way to make it more intuitive to change the dealer and vul.

Currently there is no way to delete a branch of the tree, but when a file is saved the branches that contain no information are not included in the file. Do you really think an explicit "delete" command is necessary?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Clinch]

This is shaping up to be a great tool; thanks!

I have a feeling it's going to make us (well me, for one) understand how murkily-defined many of our bidding sequences are beyond the ground floor. But truly a fantastic partnership builder - better than e-Harmony any day

I'm just an incy-wincy bit concerned about the disclaimer around the file format - does this mean that any input we make now will *almost certainly* need rekeying when the platform gets stabilised?

I like the name "Full Disclosure"; seems to fit nicely with "Deep Finesse". Just don't call it Zero Tolerance!

Peter.
New York, NY.

[fred]

Clinch, on Sep 4 2005, 05:02 PM, said:

I'm just an incy-wincy bit concerned about the disclaimer around the file format - does this mean that any input we make now will *almost certainly* need rekeying when the platform gets stabilised?

I think "almost certainly" is an overbid. "Not unlikely" is how I would characterize it.

Most likely the file format will not change in any dramatic way. Most likely, if it does change, those of you with good computer skills will be able to edit your existing files manually (using Notepad for example) in order to get them to work.

If I was the one making the decision, I would wait at least a few days before starting to do any work that I care about, but there is a good chance that whatever serious work you do now, will be usable "forever".

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[david_c]

fred, on Sep 4 2005, 05:54 PM, said:

Agree I have to find a way to make it more intuitive to change the dealer and vul.

More intuitive (in my opinion) would be this:

Clicking on 1NT (for example) brings up the definition of this bid. Part of the definition would be what vulnerability and position it applies at. So to create a variable no-trump I could type in "15-17" as the description, then look for a box which says "applies to: any vul" and change this to "applies to: we vul". Then there would be some way of creating a new definition for the 1NT opening, and (ideally) this would automatically come up with "applies to: we not vul" at the top.

The other thing that is a problem at the moment is that I would like to say something like this:

any position: 1♠ = 5+ spades, 10-16 points
1st and 2nd position: 1♠:2♣ = artificial game force
3rd and 4th position: 1♠:2♣ = 3-card spade support, maximum pass

but the program seems to be forcing me to do it like this:

1st and 2nd position: 1♠ = 5+ spades, 10-16 points
3rd and 4th position: 1♠ = 5+ spades, 10-16 points
1st and 2nd position: 1♠:2♣ = artificial game force
3rd and 4th position: 1♠:2♣ = 3-card spade support, maximum pass

It would be much nicer if there was only one copy of the 1♠ opening, and the "branching" only happened when you looked at the responses.

Last thing: please, can we have a "dealer: 1 or 2" (and "dealer: 3 or 4") rather than having to do 1 and 2 separately?