[GreenMan]

gordontd, on 2013-April-05, 10:01, said:

In practice what happens is that the club has a few tablets for use when there's a table with no smartphone. The system is such that a device can either be assigned to a table and it stays there, or it can be assigned to a moving pair. So, sometimes you'll have a spare device at a table, and other times you might have none. I don't think it happens often though that there are four people at a table with no smartphone or tablet.

And now we're back to the club providing the equipment. I don't see the advantage of this system over the club providing all the scoring hardware.

Seriously: Shouldn't the club have everything needed for the game? You don't tell your players to bring cards or chairs or bidding boxes. Why should they be expected to bring scoring devices?

[Vampyr]

gordontd, on 2013-April-05, 03:50, said:

It already exists. http://www.brianbridge.net. For those who don't have a smartphone, tablets are available at significantly less cost than most wireless scoring devices.

This is very interesting; I had thought that tablets were expensive, but have just discovered that small ones cost around £70. So this might be a good option if the subscriptions can be had cheaply. What would tablets (or smartphones) need in terms of a server?

And is theft a potential issue?

[mycroft]

GreenMan, on 2013-April-05, 11:37, said:

And now we're back to the club providing the equipment. I don't see the advantage of this system over the club providing all the scoring hardware.

Seriously: Shouldn't the club have everything needed for the game? You don't tell your players to bring cards or chairs or bidding boxes. Why should they be expected to bring scoring devices?

Our unit subsidised scoring device purchases by the clubs, quite significantly. If it weren't for that (in exchange, the unit appropriates the devices for its tournaments), they wouldn't be at half the clubs. And we're a pretty rich area, where bridge is concerned. The cost of 5 or so tablets and a router <<< 15 bridgemates and a specialised server.

If you're going to a club with 6 games a week, about 80 tables total, great. If it's an "once a week, need 4 tables to break even, game's between 3 and 5" game, buying the stuff won't recover its cost.

[gordontd]

GreenMan, on 2013-April-05, 11:37, said:

And now we're back to the club providing the equipment. I don't see the advantage of this system over the club providing all the scoring hardware.

Seriously: Shouldn't the club have everything needed for the game? You don't tell your players to bring cards or chairs or bidding boxes. Why should they be expected to bring scoring devices?

The advantage is price. For a small club that can't afford a Bridgemate setup, they can do something similar for a fraction of the cost.

[Vampyr]

mycroft, on 2013-April-05, 16:51, said:

The cost of 5 or so tablets and a router <<< 15 bridgemates and a specialised server.

I think realistically you would want a tablet for each table, and have a uniform rather than a piecemeal approach. Also then you could have a setup that specifies the players and the boards that need to be there. But the lack of wifi in most club premises would still be a problem. And the cost of data subscriptions would be ongoing, but perhaps a "family plan" or the like would help with that, since the usage would be very light.

Quote

If you're going to a club with 6 games a week, about 80 tables total, great. If it's an "once a week, need 4 tables to break even, game's between 3 and 5" game, buying the stuff won't recover its cost.

Our once-a-week club averages about 11 tables, we need 10 1/2 to break even, and we had no trouble at all purchasing a Duplimate and Bridgemates a few years ago. So I guess you need a margin of about half a table or a little more to buy equipment such as this.

[GreenMan]

mycroft, on 2013-April-05, 16:51, said:

If you're going to a club with 6 games a week, about 80 tables total, great. If it's an "once a week, need 4 tables to break even, game's between 3 and 5" game, buying the stuff won't recover its cost.

Are once-a-week 4-table games clamoring for electronic scoring?

[jillybean]

mycroft, on 2013-April-05, 09:57, said:

Given the inability of players who are told to turn the bloody things *off* at the club to do so, and get annoying rings heard clear across the room in the middle of playing 5♦, I'd wonder how much worse that would be if they were recommended on to use the scoreApp. Unless the scoreApp does the auto-muting of the ringer, but most phoneOSes are really unhappy about apps playing with basic phone settings.

Can you tell there's someone at one of my clubs who I believe should have a "3 IMP penalty when your phone goes off, multiplied by the number of times we've applied this penalty so far this month" rule attached to him?

There will always be bloody minded people who will ignore rules and social norms, seemingly just for the hell of it. I would guess that the majority of bridge players use their smart phones responsibly and put the phone on silent during a game. Deal with the players who don't, enforce the rules on phones or ignore it but using it as a reason not to progress and enhance the game is unreasonable.

[barmar]

GreenMan, on 2013-April-05, 11:37, said:

Seriously: Shouldn't the club have everything needed for the game? You don't tell your players to bring cards or chairs or bidding boxes. Why should they be expected to bring scoring devices?

At our club the players bring their own bidding boxes. We're a once-a-week, 8-9 table game, we play in a college classroom, and we don't have a storage area for equipment (the director brings the boards and computer on a little hand-cart).

[GreenMan]

barmar, on 2013-April-08, 08:27, said:

At our club the players bring their own bidding boxes. We're a once-a-week, 8-9 table game, we play in a college classroom, and we don't have a storage area for equipment (the director brings the boards and computer on a little hand-cart).

Off topic: I'm impressed you found a college classroom with tables suitable for bridge. Our campus club has to make do with rectangular tables about twice as long as they are wide. Is there a different department we should be checking with?

[barmar]

GreenMan, on 2013-April-08, 10:27, said:

Off topic: I'm impressed you found a college classroom with tables suitable for bridge. Our campus club has to make do with rectangular tables about twice as long as they are wide. Is there a different department we should be checking with?

They're not great, but we make do. We also have rectangular tables, so we put two of them together the long way to make something closer to square, but they're significantly bigger than traditional bridge tables.

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2013-April-08, 08:27, said:

At our club the players bring their own bidding boxes.

Including visitors?

[gordontd]

GreenMan, on 2013-April-05, 18:30, said:

Are once-a-week 4-table games clamoring for electronic scoring?

Enough that they provided the impetus for BriAn to exist.

[mycroft]

jillybean, on 2013-April-06, 15:28, said:

There will always be bloody minded people who will ignore rules and social norms, seemingly just for the hell of it. I would guess that the majority of bridge players use their smart phones responsibly and put the phone on silent during a game. Deal with the players who don't, enforce the rules on phones or ignore it but using it as a reason not to progress and enhance the game is unreasonable.

There are the one or two. And they're a real pain. But I agree they're irrelevant to this conversation (except for my frustration).

There are usually three phones going off in a session - and that's with people turning them off/silent/vibrate. Or leaving them in the car. I'm not trying to hinder progress; I'm as techie as they come. But asking those with phones to leave them on and run this app is asking for at least one more person a night to forget to turn the ringer off. Oh, and they'll answer the damn things, even on silent, when they see the call.

Yes, I'm a pessimist. I install and configure security software for a living. But I repeat myself. That doesn't mean I'm *wrong*.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2013-April-08, 13:26, said:

Including visitors?

Bidding boxes come in sets of 4, so you don't need everyone to bring their own. As long as at least 25% of the players bring bidding boxes, you have enough for the whole room. When club members first started doing this, we didn't have enough for everyone, but these days we almost always do (and occasionally have a surplus). When we don't, some tables revert to spoken bidding, it's not a disaster.

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2013-April-09, 09:59, said:

When we don't, some tables revert to spoken bidding, it's not a disaster.

Why not just have two boxes, at opposite corners to each other?

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2013-April-09, 18:23, said:

Why not just have two boxes, at opposite corners to each other?

We never thought of it before, but last night the director came up with that same solution when we were one set short. This was a barometer game, so spoken bidding would be really inappropriate since everyone was playing boards at about the same time (not exactly, since we didn't have enough boards for every table to have a full set, so we relayed between each pair of tables).