[blackshoe]

It's historical, Josh. When ACBLScore became the scoring tool of choice, directors here immediately latched on to using pickup slips. The players didn't want to give up their travellers, and the directors didn't want to give up their pickup slips, so they compromised. Enough players have now come to the conclusion that this was a bad idea that we (directors) think/hope we can wean everybody off travellers. So far, results are mostly positive, though I still occassionally hear complaints from a few players - usually the ones who waste the most time with the things.

[Elianna]

matmat, on May 12 2008, 03:58 PM, said:

i could swear the travellers at my club have a column for "tricks won" and one for "down"

i'll have to look... but if it is as i remember it, it is ridiculous.

If it's the club that I'm thinking of, I think that you're right.

[barmar]

pclayton, on May 12 2008, 06:05 PM, said:

rogerclee, on May 12 2008, 12:52 PM, said:

I play pretty much exclusively in California tournaments and have never heard of this point. In fact, I think "4♠+1" is silly, and have always written "4♠+5" .

This has never come up in the nationals I have been to though.

It won't since you'll always use tickets for the pair events.

But pickup slips in the US have the same columns as travelers.

The US scheme of "made" and "down" has always seemed appropriate to me, because this is what your score is based on. If you make your contract, your score comes from the number of tricks you took and whether you bid game/slam, NOT from the number of overtricks you made. E.g. 4♠+5 and 5♠+5 get the same score, so +5 is the most relevant thing to write. If you go down, your score is based on the number of undertricks, not the contract, so -1 is the most relevant thing to write.

[Rossoneri]

No bridgemates in my country yet.

NCBO and everywhere else I've been has contract column and tricks column.

People usually either just write the contract and number of tricks taken like 4S 11 or they are like me and write 4S+1 11

I have yet to seen "4S+5" though we usually like to say "making five?" at the end of the play.

[helene_t]

In the Netherlands, we always write +1 and -1, and I think that is standard in Denmark as well. In the UK usually 11 and 9, although the Bridgemates were programmed to ask for +1 and -1 in both the two Bridgemate-using clubs I have played at.

Nice to know that the North Americans are struggling with regional harmonization as much as we Europeans are

[andy_h]

Cascade, on May 13 2008, 09:54 AM, said:

The standard in Australia which I like (note I am in NZ not Australia) is:

4S 9 for 4S down one

4S 11 for 4S up one

etc

Yeap! Though when I was in NZ quite a number of New Zealanders were getting cranky at me for writing it that way as it looked too bizarre and would really prefer me to write 1 and circle it when it was 1 off.

[JoAnneM]

Why would you do it anyway but what is customary and accepted in your club? Who cares what is "correct". As long as the people that you are dealing with, and not the whole world, know what you are doing, then that is the way you should do it.

BTW, that is one of my pet peeves - people that have to be "correct"

[JanM]

The Bridgemates actually have three options - -x/=/+x, number of tricks taken or what they call "American" where if the contract is set, you do -x, if it is made exactly, = and if there are overtricks, the number made, so if declarer takes 11 tricks in 4♠ the score is entered as "5." I discovered this at the Cavendish, when one of the players at the table where I was the Vugraph operator said that the Bridgemate "wouldn't accept" the score when they had made an overtrick - he had entered +1 and the Bridgemate wouldn't accept it. I did the same and it worked no better for me. We called the director who explained that they were using "American" scoring and he had to enter a 5 in as the score.

Afterwards, I asked some of the players what they thought of it and several said they liked it - it is consistent with what you say if you're talking about the result on a board - "I was in 4 spades making 5" is the way most of us describe it verbally.

[JoAnneM]

Maybe there should be a separate thread for Bridgemate. I brought the subject up at our last District Board Meeting and the consensus was that it is too early - that they are still too "buggy". But they were at the Reno Sectional and they worked perfectly. Of course the director there was Dianne Barton-Payne and she has had special training with them.

I wonder what other experiences people here have had with them. I am looking at bottom line savings for Regionals. I figure the savings in caddies would pay for the machines in about four years - at their current cost.

[Mbodell]

JoAnneM, on May 14 2008, 09:42 PM, said:

Maybe there should be a separate thread for Bridgemate. I brought the subject up at our last District Board Meeting and the consensus was that it is too early - that they are still too "buggy". But they were at the Reno Sectional and they worked perfectly. Of course the director there was Dianne Barton-Payne and she has had special training with them.

I wonder what other experiences people here have had with them. I am looking at bottom line savings for Regionals. I figure the savings in caddies would pay for the machines in about four years - at their current cost.

I like them. I think most of the issues people might have will go away with use. I.e., how to handle skipped boards/late plays/etc.

[skjaeran]

JoAnneM, on May 15 2008, 07:42 AM, said:

Maybe there should be a separate thread for Bridgemate. I brought the subject up at our last District Board Meeting and the consensus was that it is too early - that they are still too "buggy". But they were at the Reno Sectional and they worked perfectly. Of course the director there was Dianne Barton-Payne and she has had special training with them.

I wonder what other experiences people here have had with them. I am looking at bottom line savings for Regionals. I figure the savings in caddies would pay for the machines in about four years - at their current cost.

The bridgemates aren't buggy at all. If they're working they're working perfectly. (A single bridgemate unit might be defect, of course. Then you just excange it with a working unit.)

If there's problems, it's with the scoring program and it's interface with the Bridgemate Pro Control Software.

We've used the bridgemates at our annual bridge festival for two years now, in our Premier League (and lots of heats of the lower leagues) in the same period. Lots of clubs use them too. I don't think I've ever heard of a problem arising from the bridgemates or the Pro Control Software. They're very easy to use - both as a player and as a TD/scorer.

[JanM]

The Bridgemates worked very well at the Cavendish. They were used only for the Pairs, because the programming to interface with ACBLScore has been done. For teams, you need different programming. We're (or rather Kitty Cooper, our wonderful website programmer is) working on that for the USBF Championships this year right now. I'm hoping that everything will go smoothly at all 3 events and that the results from the Round Robins will be posted more promptly than they have been in the past. We already post the KO results as soon as they're confirmed, and show most of the tables on BBO, so bridgemates won't change that.

[Walddk]

I am sure Kitty does a fine job with Bridgemate, but it is hardly a triumph that the USBF uses the device three years after it was first introduced at the 1st European Open Bridge Championships in Tenerife, Spain, in June 2005.

It was a success from the word go, so why it has taken this long is difficult to understand.

And as Richard (hrothgar) points out, we haven't seen anything of the kind in ACBL events yet. Whether it will take 20 years (as he predicts) or not remains to be seen.

Roland

[JanM]

I am sorry if you thought I was claiming "a triumph." Certainly had we known 3 years ago that ACBL wouldn't be buying Bridgemates, USBF would have made arrangements to have them sooner.
ACBL has been looking at them, and I know that some clubs have purchased them already. Hopefully, they'll be used in major tournaments here soon.

[matmat]

Walddk, on May 15 2008, 03:13 PM, said:

And as Richard (hrothgar) points out, we haven't seen anything of the kind in ACBL events yet. Whether it will take 20 years (as he predicts) or not remains to be seen.

Roland

quit simple really. directors would rather appear busy entering scores at some 20 year old PC than doing other, more useful things like actually ruling the game correctly or making sure people aren't cheating.

[JoAnneM]

Wow, where is all this coming from? So what if you had them three years ago. We are looking at them now. Didn't know it was a contest. I have found this in other conversations too - the rest of the world and then ACBL - it is so fourth grade.

The machines are being used in ACBL tournaments, Regionals and Sectionals, and their popularity is growing. I am very happy to hear about the Cavendish. Every success I can present to my BOD brings us that much closer to buying them for our District.

[JoAnneM]

Oh, one more thing. Our club is non-profit, we charge $3 per game. We just replaced our bidding boxes at a huge expense which included personal donations from members (I purchased 3 tables worth). So buy scoring machines is far beyond our financial hopes.

I just looked at a traveler. The columns say "made" and "down" so "made" 5 and "down" 1 seem quite reasonable. If the columns were headed "+" and "-" the way other would make sense.

[ArtK78]

JoAnneM, on May 15 2008, 05:37 PM, said:

Oh, one more thing.  Our club is non-profit, we charge $3 per game.  We just replaced our bidding boxes at a huge expense which included personal donations from members (I purchased 3 tables worth).  So buy scoring machines is far beyond our financial hopes.

I just looked at a traveler.  The columns say "made" and "down" so "made" 5 and "down" 1 seem quite reasonable.  If the columns were headed  "+" and "-" the way other would make sense.

$3 per session? Wow. I don't go to club games that often anymore, but when I go, they are $6, $7, $8 per session.

I haven't paid $3 for a club game session in many years.

That is one of the many advantages of the ACBL games on BBO - $1 per session, the speedball games last only 60 minutes, no driving to and from the game....

[matmat]

JoAnneM, on May 15 2008, 05:31 PM, said:

Wow, where is all this coming from?  So what if you had them three years ago.  We are looking at them now.  Didn't know it was a contest.  I have found this in other conversations too - the rest of the world and then ACBL - it is so fourth grade.

It's not a contest, really. it's just more that the acbl appears to be shuffling its feet when it comes to a lot of improvements and implementing orthogonal policies with little or negative impact on the enjoyment or integrity of the game.

[ArtK78]

matmat, on May 15 2008, 05:42 PM, said:

JoAnneM, on May 15 2008, 05:31 PM, said:

Wow, where is all this coming from?  So what if you had them three years ago.  We are looking at them now.  Didn't know it was a contest.  I have found this in other conversations too - the rest of the world and then ACBL - it is so fourth grade.

It's not a contest, really. it's just more that the acbl appears to be shuffling its feet when it comes to a lot of improvements and implementing orthogonal policies with little impact on the enjoyment or integrity of the game.

Main Entry: or·thog·o·nal
Pronunciation: \ȯr-ˈthä-gə-nəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French, from Latin orthogonius, from Greek orthogōnios, from orth- + gōnia angle — more at -gon
Date: 1612
1 a: intersecting or lying at right angles b: having perpendicular slopes or tangents at the point of intersection <orthogonal curves>
2: having a sum of products or an integral that is zero or sometimes one under specified conditions: as aof real-valued functions : having the integral of the product of each pair of functions over a specific interval equal to zero bof vectors : having the scalar product equal to zero cof a square matrix : having the sum of products of corresponding elements in any two rows or any two columns equal to one if the rows or columns are the same and equal to zero otherwise : having a transpose with which the product equals the identity matrix
3of a linear transformation : having a matrix that is orthogonal : preserving length and distance
4: composed of mutually orthogonal elements <an orthogonal basis of a vector space>
5: statistically independent
— or·thog·o·nal·i·ty \-ˌthä-gə-ˈna-lə-tē\ noun
— or·thog·o·nal·ly \-ˈthä-gə-nəl-ē\ adverb

Learn something new every day!

(I wonder if the Board of Directors sits around and someone says "Let's implement some new orthogonal policies!)

Sorry, Matmat. For some reason, your use of the term "orthogonal" struck me as hilarious. I am a tax attorney, and it would never occur to me to use that term.