[csdenmark]

To me it is quite natural always to put up a cc for the system I play. I am very sorry not all players feel the same obligation to inform their opponents of basics of their system.

I know very well they are very difficult to read for opps. and often for artificial systems, where they are most needed, the convention cards on BBO dont work at all. Pity for that - I hope very much the layout will be changed. To state most of the bids as "other" provides very little, if any, relevant information.

Playing strong pass systems like Lambda, Beznazwy, Regres etc. it is completely impossible to give any info about the "pass-opening" where the 2-3 next bids are of crucial importance for opps.

I would very much like to have a cc-layout available which will enable me to give relevant information.

Claus - csdenmark    

[keylime]

I completely and whole-heartedly agree with you Claus. I feel that BBO should provide a WBF style template (NOT an ACBL template - will elaborate later in another thread) that is standard throughout the world. Maybe allow a back door in the code to send the files generated by popular CC editor's that could transcribe into the actual format? The CC here on BBO is a weakness - how does one put in the very relevant phrase "low level use of RKC Kickback" when describing Key Lime Precision, when you need to put in other items of note?

[fred]

While I certainly agree that the convention cards on BBO could be improved, I think it's time for a reality check:

We have over 25,000 members and probably well less than 100 of these like to play systems (such as strong pass) that are difficult to describe using the convention cards that we currently have.

In order to modify the convention cards so that "every" possible system could be represented, we would need something more complex than the WBF template. That would make life easier for the few "extreme scientists" that we have, but it would provide a great deal of unnecessary "noise" for the vast majority of the people who play on our site.

In my viewm one of the strengths of the convention card facility as it currently stands is that it is simple for almost everybody to fill out and to reference.

I am sure the convention card facility will be improved at some point in the future, but this is not exactly high priority. The only people who ever complain about the convention card are the few "extreme scientists" and those that want a convention card that looks exactly like the ACBL convention card (which is not going to happen).

Meanwhile, there are several other possible improvements that are requested again and again by our members (such as implementing tournaments). We will concentrate whatever development resources we have on doing the things that will benefit as many of our members as possible. If we get more requests about convention cards, then its priority will go up, but I don't think that is going to happen.

Hope this makes sense to you the scientists out there.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

Hi All

First and foremost, I agree with Fred that there are a number of features more important than implementing convention card editors.  [I'd love to see an option for team matches].  With this said and done, from my perspective, significant improvements could be made to BBO by making a relatively simple set of enhancements to the Convention Card utility.  

I 've started a separate thread in the forum for suggested feature set improvements.  

Short term, players always have the option to supplement the existing convention card utility with their own web pages:

As an example

http://web.mit.edu/~...O%20simple.html

[Mike]

I fullheartidly agree with Fred. Though like to explore and play different systems, I never used the cc and very probably will never use it whyle on-line. Simply, it is not practical. It makes the play unnecessary sloooow! If sombody else study it, makes thing even worse. It is of no use to spend  more work on it.  It is sophisticated enough that can not be used for fast consultation. At the same time BBO has excellent and fast method to ask what a bid ment. Who is unable to sail on uncharted waters, better to give up on-line game. Name the systems you play on the namecard other's section instead of listing gadgets. And of course, it is not bad if one  learns the very system beforehand the play.    

[keylime]

Fred I do have to say in defense of the CC - the pop-up that allows you to input responses after an opening bid is sound and practical. Is there anyway to allow more characters in the field in the lower right part of the card that you'd put other conventional cards?

I will state that in terms of CC's BBO is better than ACBL.com, which requires a great deal of typing to even attempt to articulate your system. I simply offered WBF's CC because in essence that's a standard for serious bridge players...

[fred]

Adding more space in which people can type is definitely a good and easily implemented (I hope) idea. I will try to include this in the next convention card. Thanks!

You are correct that the WBF convention card is a reasonable standard for serious players, but only if you define "serious" as the top .1% or so of all bridge players.

I would bet that the majority of BBO members have never played "live" duplicate bridge before, let alone seen a WBF convention card. Even some accomplished tournament players find the WBF convention card to be intimidating (like me for example).

I certainly would like serious players to feel welcome and play on our site, but catering to them at the expense of the masses seems like a bad idea to me.

Besides, serious players should be able to get along just fine without a serious convention card. Non-serious opps will not look at the convention card anyways and serious opps can ask if they really want to know what a bid means.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[keylime]

I must admit at least the software is written well when it comes to the alerting of bids - with two avenues to choose from that does help all players in certain ways.

Speaking of CC's, do you like/dislike the current ACBL CC? Is there some thing(s) that you'd like to see changed in it?

[hrothgar]

Quote

I must admit at least the software is written well when it comes to the alerting of bids - with two avenues to choose from that does help all players in certain ways.

Speaking of CC's, do you like/dislike the current ACBL CC? Is there some thing(s) that you'd like to see changed in it?

I believe that the existing ACBL card suffers from one significant defect.  It is incredibly difficult to describe any kind of strong club system using the ACBL card, let alone a system that uses artificial bids.

However, I think that a more significant question is whether we want to continue with a relatively limited display format such as flat text when hypertext is available.  I don't think that the best designed flat text convention card can compare to the display capabilities of hypertext.

[fred]

Speaking of CC's, do you like/dislike the current ACBL CC? Is there some thing(s) that you'd like to see changed in it?[/quote]

I think the ACBL CC gets the job done for the vast majority of ACBL members. As such, it is hard (for me at least) to be too critical of its design. I suspect that a radical change in the format of the ACBL CC would upset a lot of ACBL members.

On a slightly different subject, I think the ACBL practice of "announcements" is a complete monstrosity that should be completely eliminated (I am not holding my breath on this).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[keylime]

I think the policy about annoucements needs clarifiying - most of the club players here in Tampa don't announce the range unless it's a weak NT (or in my case, a super weak NT 10-12). That seems to be the general theme though - in Oklahoma same thing happened. I still like that everything's announced in terms of range - but was this done to protect everyone? Have mixed feelings about that...

I like the fact that a short club is announced, but not a short diamond opening (a la Precision) - I've had players get skiddish when I open a Precision 1D on a 4-4-1-4 handtype (in Key Lime Precision, we do not have a 2 level bid to show a shortage of diamonds). I think that requires an alert regardless of whether it's forcing or not.

I think the CC if you're playing SAYC or a decent 2/1 is ok - it's when you go off the beaten path so to speak is where you might encounter some trouble. However it's much better than most NBO's CC where you have to write a lot more content to protray the same meanings as a little box marked does on our card.

[BurnKryten]

I have a question - on the Zone when you move your mouse over a bid, it automatically shows the appropriate field from the CC.  Is this feature possible (or does it already exist) on BBO?  Last time I checked, it wasn't, but since CCs are rarely used on BBO, I'm not so sure.

I ask because my fiance and I play a strong club, weak NT, 4 card major, majors first always system.  I've gone through and created the appropriate CC, and we alert non-natural or unexpected bids, but it would be great to be able to have typed ahead of time what the common bids mean, like "1 spade is 12-15 hcp, 4+spades, could have longer minor", and have the opps easily access that information.  Frequently, it seems our CC goes unlooked at, and we have to manually type the explanation.  Worse, opps may be unaware of bids not alerted, such as natural signoffs over 1NT.

As it is, I always pre-alert opps with this: "Vanya and I play a strong club system, with weak NT and 4 card majors, and always open majors before minors."  I still worry about being able to provide proper disclosure to opps not familiar with this sort of system.  Although most bids are natural, there are common situations where I would like to provide opps with more complete information about our agreements.

Thanks!

John

[Tom]

Dear Fred (& the rest of BBO Staff),
        Please don't take this criticism too seriously, but in the words of the immortal bard, some BBO members 'doth protest too much' about the features BBO can provide, i.e. CCs and past tourney hands. The BBO site is so far and above any other site on the Net that it is impossible for me to comprehend how anyone can find anything other than praise to send to you. You and your staff have done more to promote not only Bridge, but a sense of peace and well-being among all the peoples of this imperfect world. If our so-called world leaders would only find a common place for agreements as we have to discuss bridge differences like BBO's chat rooms, what a wonderful world this could be. Thank you, Tom  

[fred]

Quote

Dear Fred (& the rest of BBO Staff),
        Please don't take this criticism too seriously, but in the words of the immortal bard, some BBO members 'doth protest too much' about the features BBO can provide, i.e. CCs and past tourney hands. The BBO site is so far and above any other site on the Net that it is impossible for me to comprehend how anyone can find anything other than praise to send to you. You and your staff have done more to promote not only Bridge, but a sense of peace and well-being among all the peoples of this imperfect world. If our so-called world leaders would only find a common place for agreements as we have to discuss bridge differences like BBO's chat rooms, what a wonderful world this could be. Thank you, Tom  

Thanks for your ongoing support, Tom. I am glad you like BBO so much already, but we definitely plan to continue to improve the software. The pace of change has been slow during the past 6 months or so as I have been involved in another project (one that actually makes money). Good news is that this project is almost finished and I will seen be devoting most of my waking hours to BBO once again.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

Quote

I fullheartidly agree with Fred. Though like to explore and play different systems, I never used the cc and very probably will never use it whyle on-line. Simply, it is not practical. It makes the play unnecessary sloooow!

This approach does not work well if the opponents are using methods that require written defenses.

As an example, most American players are not familiar with conventional preemptive openings such as a multi-2D or a Wilkosz 2D.

I believe that the current WBF policy that allows players to consult written defenses to conventional opening bids represents an appropriate compromise.  Players get to play what they want.  The opposiing partnership are able to guaruntee that they are both referencing the same set of defensive methods.

However, this requires some written mechanism to provide the opponents with written defenses.

A hypertext based convention card seems the best way to accomplish this.

[hrothgar]

Quote

On a slightly different subject, I think the ACBL practice of "announcements" is a complete monstrosity that should be completely eliminated (I am not holding my breath on this).

I think that announcements are a mixed bag.

In an online playing environment, where partner doesn't see announcements, I think that these are a significant enhancement to the game.

For face to face play, announcements seem good in theory, but are problematic in practice.  Too few people have any understanding what should [and should not] be announced.  Accordingly, the system causes problems.

[keylime]

I'd like to see the ACBL allow all players to be able to reference their CC's to minimize on system forgets - and that would lower the perceived number of "fixes" we all get due to a forget. Also, system notes should be allowed at the table without penalty to inform the opponents of anything that they normally don't encounter at the club game.

[hrothgar]

Quote

I'd like to see the ACBL allow all players to be able to reference their CC's to minimize on system forgets - and that would lower the perceived number of "fixes" we all get due to a forget.

Wow

I disagree with this one completely.

First, it would seem to directly contradict the Laws of Bridge which specifically forbid mechanical aids.

More significantly, I love to pay complex methods.  However, even I draw a line at the point that players can't remember what they're playing.

Simply put, if you cant remember your methods, you probably shuld be playing something simpilier.

[keylime]

Alas, I get the seasoned citizens (55+) that forget such 2/1 basics like NMF, Drury, and Jacoby 2NT! That's why I would want that provision granted so that everyone enjoys the same level of protection.

Also, the ACBL needs to institute the rule that many European NBO's have and mandate the handing of CC's before a round begins.

[hrothgar]

Hi All

I posted a new version of my MOSCITO convention card at

http://web.mit.edu/~...www/MOSCITO.htm

Based on user feedback I wanted to accomplish a couple things.  First, I wanted to add additional information such as defensive carding, leads, etc.

Second, I moved the extremely detailed system information to a secondary link.

As always, comments are appreciated.