[hanp]

Have you, regular forum contributor, ever lost your key? I recently did. I'm going to suggest a new notation for bridge hands that will greatly reduce this commonly occuring problem.

Suppose you hold

AK7654
AJ6
A2
QJ

Of course in most discussions the spots cards are not relevant, so we use a quicker, but equally long notation. I propose that we use numbers to indicate the number of spotcards. In the new notation, the above hand would be written as:

AK4
AJ1
A1
QJ0

Much shorter! Not only that, it also helps to save the environment when printing and it is more intuitive. Here are some more eamples:

We'll write QJ97 or QJ8 for QJ98765432.

We'll write A23 for A8652.

A100 for A10 tight.

To make the notation etra short, we can often leave off the number of spotcards of the longest suit without creating confusion. For example, when we write AJ2 Q J2 1, it is clear that we hold 4-5-3-1 shape, just as when we would say "ace-king and two small, hearts headed by the queen, jack and two diamonds and a small club" in casual conversation.

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

[IdiotVig]

hanp, on Sep 8 2010, 06:07 AM, said:

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

I love the idea. While this suggestion destroys the brevity of the system, why not put the length in parentheses to avoid ambiguity with spots altogether? You could even omit the (0).

Would AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ look that unwieldy?

[gwnn]

Or we could just use winzip. Tough luck for people who can't read hex

[hanp]

IdiotVig, on Sep 8 2010, 06:28 AM, said:

hanp, on Sep 8 2010, 06:07 AM, said:

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

I love the idea. While this suggestion destroys the brevity of the system, why not put the length in parentheses to avoid ambiguity with spots altogether? You could even omit the (0).

Would AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ look that unwieldy?

The idea of the notation is to make it shorter, not etra long.

[Free]

You only need 96 bits to write an entire deal, 2 extra for vulnerability and 2 extra for dealer. That's 12.5 bytes, so you still have 4 bits left (since we only use bytes anyway) to select which hands you want of that deal. Why waste so many bytes on writing a single hand? 13 bytes is enough to show full deals, 1 hand, any 2 hands, or even any 3 hands.

Btw, by starting a forum discussion like this, the environment will get damaged so severely that even using the suggested notation can never restore it. You should be ashamed!

[gwnn]

At least we should stop using the enter button so much (it is 2 bytes). It's really obvious that if I write AKQ4K542 or something the spades stopped after the 4 and the hearts have begun. Voids can be shown by a space and in the unlikely scenario that the smallest card in one suit is higher than the highest card in the next suit then you can use a semicolon or a dash.

[helene_t]

Please zip before posting. Also, instead of posting ascii text, rename to .bmp and post as image. That way each byte is one pixel (or quarter pixel using real colors) rather than a whole wasteful 12x18 (or whatever) character.

[gordontd]

hanp, on Sep 8 2010, 12:07 PM, said:

A100 for A10 tight.

AT

[gnasher]

gwnn, on Sep 8 2010, 01:13 PM, said:

At least we should stop using the enter button so much (it is 2 bytes).

Only on Windows. Maybe BBO would consider switching to a Unix server, so that if anyone does wastefully use a newline the damage will be reduced by 50%?

[TimG]

hanp, on Sep 8 2010, 06:07 AM, said:

Suppose you hold

AK7654
AJ6
A2
QJ

Of course in most discussions the spots cards are not relevant, so we use a quicker, but equally long notation. I propose that we use numbers to indicate the number of spotcards. In the new notation, the above hand would be written as:

AK4
AJ1
A1
QJ0

How about:

AK6
AJ3
A2
QJ2

Would it hurt the environment if extra spaces are added:

AK 6
AJ 3
A 2
QJ 2

[kfay]

gwnn, on Sep 8 2010, 06:45 AM, said:

Or we could just use winzip. Tough luck for people who can't read he

FYP

But Csaba may be right. You could one-line the whole thing. Zero is necessary to denote the start of a new suit after some honor sequence, and v or a space could designate a void.

e.g. AK0Q0 10 for a five club preempt

[gnasher]

TimG, on Sep 8 2010, 02:22 PM, said:

How about:

AK6
AJ3
A2
QJ2

That would wastefully use an extra character whenever you have a 10-card suit.

[hanp]

Yes, notice that in my notation AK1010 is not a possibility.

[Free]

hanp, on Sep 8 2010, 03:20 PM, said:

Yes, notice that in my notation AK1010 is not a possibility.

You can also just use the T for 10, and use a point as a seperator between suits. That way, if you print it, it saves ink. And if you use Arial or something similar, then you can even put more hands on 1 piece of paper!

The suggestion to use winzip clearly shows some have no idea how winzip works. Please try to compress a file of 11 bytes, let me know the compression rate. You probably expand your file at least 10 times...

[pooltuna]

IdiotVig, on Sep 8 2010, 06:28 AM, said:

hanp, on Sep 8 2010, 06:07 AM, said:

I propose that, unless we want to give the spotcards eplicitly, we all use the new "-factor notation".

I love the idea. While this suggestion destroys the brevity of the system, why not put the length in parentheses to avoid ambiguity with spots altogether? You could even omit the (0).

Would AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ look that unwieldy?

use the one that is shorter to minimize keystrokes

AK(4) AJ(1) A(1) QJ
AKxxxx AJx Ax QJ

[helene_t]

AK(4) is confusing. When people say "four to AK" they mean AKxx, not AKxxxx.

[inquiry]

AK4 for AKxxxx might be confused for AK4 (your AK1).

How about AK4 for AK4 and 4AK for AKxxxx...

But then 4AK 3Q 1 2 is sort of hard to read.

[Simplicity]

Good work. Sadly the suit combination

A3

QJ5

Has become much trickier.

[cherdanno]

I really like the idea, to save some space and some bandwidth. I would, however, suggest to modify it a little, to be more intuitive. Instead of AK5, I would write AK7 (that makes it easier to insert a spot later, e.g. AK97). Also, to distinguish it from the old notation. maybe it's better to write AK-7. Or maybe AK-7th, that would be more close to how people describe this in words.

Actually, now that I think about it more, maybe it's even better to write AK-seventh? Then it's really impossible to mistake it for s.th. else.

[jdonn]

I think someone should list every possible suit holding in order from most to least likely (ties broken by popular vote) and then assign them each a number starting with 1. Voids are of course 0. So the example hand might be something like

936
49
73
195