[Gerben42]

Hi, perhaps a good way to make it easier to create teamgames is to make sit-and-go team tournaments that start as soon as 4 pairs have signed up.

It will be:

* 8 boards
* No enemies of TD
* Barometer

The first player of the first pair is the TD (alternatively, the player with the most logins / fewest bans, something like that). As soon as 4 pairs sign up, the tourney start and the "partnership desk" is transferred to the new unstarted Team Match.

Alternatively, players can start a team tournament with an option "allow permission to join" (pairwise).

[DrTodd13]

This is roughly how I did things for the bridge server that I wrote. You do potentially want control of who your teammates are and that goes for people on the opposing team as well. In my system, you first formed a partnership then you found another existing partnership and formed a team. Then you could see a list of other teams wanting a game and could challenge one of them.

[Echognome]

Just thinking out loud here. Maybe it would be good if you could express your willingness to play a team game at a table. What I mean is, you sit at a table with your teammates. You can play, you can chat, whatever you want to do. Maybe the table can be in a separate team play waiting area. Or if at a table, you can click on the option of willing to play with this team. That way, you are not sitting around waiting for a team game as you can be playing hands until one comes up. Then the table host (also the team captain) can make challenges to other tables and the opposing team captains can accept or reject.

All that being said, having the traditional way is also good as you can "pull" people from various parts of bbo. So one of your teammates might be watching vugraph, another kibitzing a table, and another at the bidding table.

[DrTodd13]

The way I did my system was that you could have multiple chat windows open ala Yahoo Messenger, AIM, etc. These windows were (usually..can't private chat to partner during play, etc.) totally independent of whether you were at a table playing or not. These could be one-on-one private chats, multi-party chats or a number of special rooms. One such special room was the "I want a team game room." You could see a list of people in the room and see who their teammates were. You could then initiate a challenge and it would ask all the other 7 people involved if they accepted. While you're doing this you could be at a table playing with your teammates.

[Rossoneri]

Both ideas sound really good...

BBO doesn't seem to be very friendly to the multiple windows idea though...

[matmat]

i like everything but the barometer part. NO barometer, make the darn thing more realistic, (and also a lot more likely to last 8 boards)...