[nikos59]

Hi all

The Vugraph project proudly presents a major new offering,
the 1957 Bermuda Bowl, in lin and pbn format:

http://www.sarantako...raph/v1957.html

All 224 hands from the North America v. Italy match, taken
from the official handbook, in lin and pbn format, thanks to
our good friend Denis O'Kane (who has also done the
1955 BB previously).

It would be fitting to say that we offer this event, which marked
the first victory of the Blue Team, as a tribute to the recent
victory of the Italian team in Estoril, but actually it is a mere
coincidence.

Before Denis took over,
I had started to input those files myself but I only had completed
two segments of the 18. Entering data manually from books is
rather tedious and there are a lot of great bridge championships
of the past that wait to be converted in lin format, so I would
like to appeal to all Vugraph fans.

You can also help, even entering one segment is useful.
The deal is as follows: you email me at sarant-at-pt-dot-lu
and I send you scanned pages from an old
Bermuda Bowl. You enter the hands, bidding and play and you
send me back the pbn or lin file. I do the editing etc.

How to input data? Denis is using GIB to enter the data (setting
all four players as humans). The BBO online viewer offers also
a movie facility (I am told). Bridge Manager, another program,
may also help.

Which data? I would suggest the 1959 BB to begin with but
if you have a preference you are welcome to work on this;
please do ask me for the relevant
books -I have all the Bermuda Bowls from 1954 and all
the Olympiads from 1964 (i.e. missing the first one).
(I am not proposing the 1958 BB because I have the book
in very bad photocopies which are almost un-scannable; if you
have the original book and want to scan it etc. you are
most welcome:-)
I also have books about some Australian and US national events, also
the 1938 World Champ' book (Austrians v Culbertson) and some
books about old matches. You could also suggest books to
convert, provided they cover an event fully.

When? If you do want to help, you had better hurry because my
scanner, my bridge books and myself are seldom all in the same
place.

While I do not expect an avalanche of offers, I do hope there
will be some interest. I have already an implied offer (you know
who you are) about the 1993 Bermuda Bowl.

Thanks in advance
Nikos Sarantakos

[mrdct]

Here's an idea:

How about running some "virtually live" replays of old Bermuda Bowl finals on BBO such that the data entry can be done as a BBO vugraph broadcast and people and commentators can watch.

The play could be much faster than usual too, perhaps 4 minutes per board.

Would be quite good for training new operators too.

[nikos59]

Why, this sounds interesting! I don't know about the logistics of the
matter, but operators need only have a copy of the hand records
(with bidding and play), no?
And the hands themselves will be unknown to the great majority
of the spectators.
Any comments?

nikos

[Rebound]

I think it's a fantastic idea and somehow doubt I will be alone in my opinion

[mrdct]

Getting the hand records into .dup format may require a fair bit of effort, but I'm willing to put my hand up to do it for one old BB final.

[mrdct]

It occurs to me that it will be problematic to do BBO vugraph of pre-1987 Bermuda Bowl finals because the scoring for non-vul doubled undertricks was different.

Perhaps it would be better to work backwards from a recent, but pre-internet vugraph Bermuda Bowl finals.

[DenisO]

I agree this sounds a very interesting idea. I wonder if you could expand on how you see it working eg what needs to be prepared in advance - obviously the .dup files but would the actual bidding and play records also need inputting?

I've created the .lin files for the 1955 BB and most of the 1957 event and there is a *lot* of effort involved especially inputting the card play. The more recent books are not as complete as the older books in giving all the hands of the final.

I'm not sure when the transition occurred but the two books I've done were essentially factual records, whereas the later books have much excellent bidding commentary and play analysis but unfortunately do miss out some of the less interesting hands.

Denis

[nikos59]

Yes, the scoring difference is an obvious problem but
restricting the field to post-1987 events makes for a
too narrow selection (we already have all the big events
after 1996). In the old matches that have already been
converted (1955 and 1957 finals) the modern scoring is
used -these matches not only used old scoring but also
total points. Obviously, a non-vul. action that was
reasonable under the old scoring looks reckless under
the new one, but I can live with this.

There are also other problems: the event has to be
one where we have full records; even the official
book in some years does not contain full records
(I remember Edgar Kaplan criticizing this). Then,
there is the big problem of implied spot cards, i.e.
the book report says "declarer drew trumps in
three rounds then played a heart to the king" without
mentioning spot cards unless it makes a difference.
So the operators must have done some homework.

All this being said, I wonder which match would
you people would consider as an appropriate match
to replay?

Nikos

[mrdct]

If 1996 onwards has already been done, how about targetting 1989 (Brazil v USA), 1991 (Iceland v Poland), 1993 (Netherlands v Norway) and 1995 (USA v Canada incl Fred).

Incomplete descriptions of the play wont be a major problem as we always have the claim button or can take some poetic licence with the spot cards. I think preparing the .dup files will be quite labourious, but there wont be any need to do any "homework" on the play as the virtual operator will have plenty of time to work out what the play was during the virtual show as he tries to stretch the play out to 3 or 4 minutes per hand.

[nikos59]

As I said, 1996 onwards exists already in .pbn/lin format.
There also exists the 1992 Olympiad thanks to Gianni Baldi.
An eminent BBO member has already volunteered to type
the 1991 BB final (Yokohama) and I had sent him the first scanned pages
from the book. This was in response to my original post that began
this thread, so it was before mrdct suggests the Virtual Vugraph.
Today, as I was scanning some more pages to have available,
I discovered in my horror that even in the final not all hands are
covered -for instance segment four omits three deals (only
reference: board 57 was a flat game but x-y got carried by
their relays and went to 6H, down one, 11 imps to Poland).

Now I fully realize why Kaplan was so vehement against this practice.
Brian Senior may have the missing data, but it's a needle in a
haystack.

The 1989 book (Perth) is complete, all 176 hands.
The 1993 book (Santiago) is also complete, but there is
already someone who may
want to do the conversion or who may already have some data
in electronic format. I also have myself some .gam and .dea
files from the round robin and I don't know what to do with them
(open them with a text editor works).
The 1995 book (Beijing with Fred) is complete
but my own copy is not in very good
condition, because my then baby daughter has entered her
comments on the bidding in many pages.

As Denis OKane has pointed out, older books were less
readable but more factual, reporters going out of their way
to avoid criticizing and to mention spot cards.

nikos

[DenisO]

Seems to me that the 1995 Final would be a good one to try first. It should prove very popular with Fred in it and the match was in doubt until late in the final segment. The US team was essentialy the same (Soloway replacing Woolf) that won in 2003 and lost in 2005 and for Canada we have some very well known BBO cooomentators in Eric Kokish and Joey Silver + Fred

We need volunteers to produce the .dup files -pbn would do also as they can be converted - but we also need people who have the book and are willing to scan - hope copyright doesn't rear its ugly head. Nikos's copy is child marked but I'm sure he wouldn't be too happy at scanning all 160 deals of the final.

Depending on required timescale I'll volunteer to do 2 or 3 segments if someone will email me the deals.

Denis

[roghog]

Just to clarify the steps involved:

(1) Scan the match that we will broadcast
(2) Distribute the scans to volunteer inputters, who will enter the hands. Not the players' names, bidding, etc. - that will come later. [I use Kaj's Word macros to produce PBN files, but I'm sure there are other possibilities.]
(3) Agree the broadcast times, and ask Roland to publicise it and arrange expert commentators
(4) Distribute the scans and the files to the volunteer VuGraph operators
(5) The volunteer operators will present the match as a live broadcast. They will load the hands from the files and enter the players' names. Then, referring to the scans, they will enter the bidding and play, accompanied by commentary from Roland's experts
(6) We capture the broadcast file to be stored on Nikos' site for posterity

I'll certainly help. Particularly with the live broadcast.

Despite the scoring changes over the years, I think the older matches will make fascinating broadcasts (even if the records aren't complete). But I'm at peace to start with something more recent.

Roger