[broze]

I don't know how many of these ideas have been suggested before or whether any of them are possible but I've made a list of things that have frustrated me about the new software and some ideas for improvement. Let me know what you think?


Sound options

1) Be able to select which sounds are turned on. I find the "it's your turn" sound to be incredibly useful and the "playing cards" animation sound incredibly annoying. I suggest it be an option which ones we have turned on.

Hand editor/viewer options

2a) The ability to hide certain hands for review purposes. For example if you are going through a hand and you want to try to play it yourself and find the best line, you may not wish to play double dummy. There should be an option to, for example, hide the EW hands.

2b) If a friend sends me a deal I want to be able to export it straight to the hand editor to play through it. This is not currently an option.

2c) Sometimes BBO quits mid-edit because you've been logged on for too long and it thinks your away from your keyboard and you can lose your work on a hand.

2d) There should also be the option to to rotate a deal at any time, that you've created in the hand editor. It's a bore when you realise you've entered it the wrong way round and you have to do it all again.

General Notes

3) Instead of claim rejected, have “claim cancelled” when you cancel a claim, just so the opponents know it was not their partner that rejected but declarer who cancelled.

Bugs

4) When I’m sitting host at a table and there are two free spaces to fill and “permission required to play” is selected, I select one from a group of requests in the popup box and it box disappears, leaving one space still empty.

Ideas

5) The pickup games on this site can be almost unusable. Without exaggeration at least 50% of the games I join from the "Help me find a game" window are frozen because the host of the table is unresponsive. It is farcical to have people joining this table over and over again only to find that they have to leave because the host is not moving. To fix this there could be an option to evict the host from a table when all the members of the table vote him off. Either when they are clearly inactive or abusive; I see no disadvantages to this. Either that, or an extended lack of response should count heavily against the player in their board completion rate. Something has to change.


I've thought of plenty more but I'll leave it at this for now. Let me know what you think.

[BunnyGo]

Welcome to the forum. These are all interesting suggestions, many of which have been said before, but it's always good to be reminded of them.

I will say that suggestion 2a is already implemented. If you click on the hand you wish to be playing from (either declarer or defense) it will only show you the hands that person could see.

[Bbradley62]

broze, on 2011-March-21, 06:40, said:

I find the sounds for the cards moving incredibly annoying but I find the "ding" noise indicating when it is my go to be incredibly useful. As far as I can see the only option regarding the sound is to turn it all on or all off. Is there any way to turn off just the noises for card animation? And if not would you consider implementing it?

broze, on 2011-July-16, 05:49, said:

Be able to select which sounds are turned on. I find the "it's your turn" sound to be incredibly useful and the "playing cards" animation sound incredibly annoying. I suggest it be an option which ones we have turned on.

I thought this one sounded familiar; I upvoted it when it was first posted, and I'm surprised that no one else did.

[Bbradley62]

broze, on 2011-July-16, 05:49, said:

Sometimes BBO quits mid-edit because you've been logged on for too long and it thinks your away from your keyboard and you can lose your work on a hand.

Bbradley62, on 2011-January-28, 17:50, said:

Having completed a tournament a while ago, I am reviewing my results, including clicking on each board and looking at other scores, etc. At some point, I have clicked on the name of my partner, to get his profile so I can type notes. As I am typing these notes, I get a message that BBO thinks I'm away from my computer. Why is that, when I'm clicking around a lot. What do I have to be doing for BBO to be aware that I am there?

I think we're identifying the same situation here. It would still be nice to get an answer as to what activities will avoid the "you are away" message.

[Bbradley62]

broze, on 2011-July-16, 05:49, said:

... there could be an option to evict the host from a table when all the members of the table vote him off.

This has been suggested repeatedly and over a long period of time:

catepillar, on 2007-July-19, 14:51, said:

I was just playing a hand, in which the host left his computer, but was still logged on to BBO. Just a simple suggestion, but I think that there should be a way to vote the host off the table without the host's permission.

More recently:

Rain, on 2011-February-24, 13:33, said:

DougOut, on 2011-February-21, 11:58, said:

... allow the other 3 players to cast a vote to kick the host off of the table.

Rain, on 2011-February-23, 11:42, said:

Inactive hosts are kicked automatically right now. It's just that to be sure we are actually kicking an inactive host, there needs to be a relatively long period of inactivity.

Voting is not easy to implement, so we must think along the lines of other solutions. Suggestions welcome always.

Bbradley62, on 2011-February-23, 22:19, said:

How is inactivity currently measured? If my partner declares a hand painfully slowly and I don't touch the keyboard for 10 minutes, I hope that time is not counted against me. But, when it's my turn to act, I would think that 2 minutes is sufficient. I like Echonome's suggestion that hosting rights should simply transfer to the next person and the inactive host would not be removed. This way, if the host has excused himself to answer the doorbell, the others can wait for him, but someone who has simply disappeared can be booted by the new host. While we're talking about transferring hosting rights, I'd like to repeat a previous suggestion of mine, which is to allow a host to transfer hosting rights to the next person without leaving the table, since some people simply don't want to host.

As I understand it, the problem is that the old BBO version is very rigid and inflexible. That's why we can't implement many changes, or have had to restrict visibly different stuff (client changes) to new BBO only. That would explain why voting is very hard to do, hence not possible.

I think hosting rights transfer choice is not possible also because of the reason above - unless it's somehow restrictable to new BBO version, which is hard to do because of the intermingling of the 2 versions. This is because having to choose to transfer means it has to be visible in client somehow.

• Automatically transferring is possible.
  
• Automatically kicking is possible (currently done). I don't know specific details, but it's not a straightforward measurement of inactivity like Express tourney (Express is 60 sec before kicked).

We can choose to go either routes, and are actually thinking of improving this logic right now. So this topic came up at the perfect time.
I imagine auto kicking is better than auto transferring, because it involves a logic improvement of something already in place. Also, it seems to save the new host 1 step.

Since February was "the perfect time" for this discussion, was anything decided?

[imerhy]

I don't like the new software. I still play on the old one (downloaded) which is much more easier, colorful and pleasant to play.

[broze]

BunnyGo, on 2011-July-16, 06:25, said:

I will say that suggestion 2a is already implemented. If you click on the hand you wish to be playing from (either declarer or defense) it will only show you the hands that person could see.

Excellent, thank you - must have missed that one.

Bbradley62, on 2011-July-16, 08:57, said:

I thought this one sounded familiar; I upvoted it when it was first posted, and I'm surprised that no one else did.

Thanks again! I must say that out of all the suggestions here I find this the most irritating site issue and I'm amazed that it hasn't been adressed after so long on this site! It's surely such a simple change!

[broze]

imerhy, on 2011-July-16, 12:35, said:

I don't like the new software. I still play on the old one (downloaded) which is much more easier, colorful and pleasant to play.

I actually disagree! I love the new software but I think it has some innate failings. For example, why are we unable to minimize new windows we pop up (a particular annoyance to creators of team matches and tournaments) and why is dummy no longer able to see all of the hands while their partner is playing? There are certainly a myriad of improvements that must be made but I have faith.

[fred]

Thanks for some good suggestions, Broze. Most likely some of them will see the light of day in some future version of the web-client.

Regarding your latest post...

We intentionally hide the defenders' hands from the dummy in the web-client due to a long history of bad behavior by some dummies (in both senses of the word) who are able to see all 4 hands in the Windows client. Making design decisions that "punish" the majority in an attempt to keep a small percentage of habitual abusers at bay is not really our style, but it seemed like the right thing to do in this case.

The concept of minimizing popup windows in a web application isn't really workable because there is nowhere for the minimized window to go. For example, it can't "leave the browser" and end up on the Windows Start bar.

In fact, the development environment we used to create the BBO web-client does not even support the notion of minimizable popups. No doubt I could figure out a way to override this behavior and find some not-completely-terrible way to display the icons of minimized windows. But it happens to be the case that the people who design the toolkits that programmers like me use know a lot more about how the elements in such toolkits *should* behave than I do - it is generally a bad idea for a programmer to mess with such things.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[broze]

Thanks for the response Fred! And for clarifying a few things - I know your team are always brainstorming and that these issues must come up but I had to get them off my chest.

I see what you mean about minimising the windows. Mostly I like the web-based interface but like I say when setting up team matches etc. all those windows can get rather bothersome, especially when using my small-monitored notebook.

Keep up the good work.

broze

[Colinton]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I've got a couple of suggestions:-

1) - I'm still learning the game, and I've been criticised by more established players for not knowing certain 'styles' or 'conventions' (I dont't know what the correct term is) such as 5-card majors. Would it be possible to have a facility such that at the end of a game, there can be a bit of a post-mortem where all 4 hands are shown, and the 'chat' function can then be used to discuss the game?

2) - The "notes" space allocated to each player is (IMHO) inadequate. When explaining what systems a player is aware of, he/she uses a huge number of abbreviations, most of which I don't know. A larger space, enabling English to be used, would be more than welcome.

Nick

[Bbradley62]

Nick: Based on the Notes in your profile:

Quote

1NT=12-14pts blncd; 1X=12-19pts; 2X = 20+; Inform Dbl; Stayman; Blackwood 4NT & NOTHING ELSE - YET!

it appears that you've been learning the game from someone who is making up his own system of bids. You should check out the BIL (Beginner/Intermediate Lounge) on BBO. They likely play SAYC (Standard American Yellow Card) which is generally considered an elementary building-blocks system.

[barmar]

Colinton, on 2011-December-22, 13:19, said:

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I've got a couple of suggestions:-

1) - I'm still learning the game, and I've been criticised by more established players for not knowing certain 'styles' or 'conventions' (I dont't know what the correct term is) such as 5-card majors. Would it be possible to have a facility such that at the end of a game, there can be a bit of a post-mortem where all 4 hands are shown, and the 'chat' function can then be used to discuss the game?

If you're using the web version of BBO, the last hand you played should appear in the lower right corner. In the download version, I think you have to click on the hand and select "Bridge Movie", but I'm not sure I remember correctly.

In either case, you can certainly discuss it in chat if the other players are willing. However, they may be more interested in getting on with the play of the next hand than teaching you. As Bradley said, you'll probably find more willing players, and less criticism, in the BIL.

[zenko]

Bbradley62, on 2011-December-22, 13:51, said:

Nick: Based on the Notes in your profile:
it appears that you've been learning the game from someone who is making up his own system of bids. You should check out the BIL (Beginner/Intermediate Lounge) on BBO. They likely play SAYC (Standard American Yellow Card) which is generally considered an elementary building-blocks system.

Whats excatly wrong/strange with that system? It is bare bones but any player familiar with Weak NT should be able to handle it. And for those who are not, playing with Bradley can be great chance to learn a bit about it, which is certanly useful since sooner or later they will have to play vs somebody who plays it (like me for example), instead of patronising him.

[Colinton]

Bbradley62, on 2011-December-22, 13:51, said:

Nick: Based on the notes in your profile, it appears that you've been learning the game from someone who is making up his own system of bids. You should check out the BIL (Beginner/Intermediate Lounge) on BBO. They likely play SAYC (Standard American Yellow Card) which is generally considered an elementary building-blocks system.

I fail to understand the relevance of this reply to my original queries/suggestions. Even as a novice/beginner, I am more than aware that there are several bidding systems in use, as I commented on my first post. Although I didn't mention it on my profile, the system I'm using is Acol based (If I wasn't limited in profile space, I would have said this, but I can't). The Bridge books I have read, the taped TV programmes I've watched and the night school classes I've been attending (to Scottish Bridge Union standards) since late September have all been Acol based. Therefore I play Acol. I know of SAYC and other conventions, but I want to get a better grip of the basics (to local standards) before I start exploring other systems.
If the profile space allocated to each and every player could be expanded, then each players individual style(s) of play could be adequately explained without resorting to abbreviating the abbreviations.

[Bbradley62]

There is an ACOL Bridge Club that you can play in instead of the Main (or Relaxed) Bridge Club if you specifically want to find ACOL players. From the BBO home page, select [List all tables], then [All Public and Private Clubs], then [The ACOL Bridge Club (public)].

Alternatively, you can get the list of tables in the Main (or Relaxed) Bridge Club and look for people who play ACOL. [Take me to the first seat available] is very unlikely to put you at a table where you want to be.