[David A P]

MY friend has registered and can get online and when he clicks casual he can see the correct page (i.e. Casual at the top) but I can not see him on friends list or invite him to play. What does he need to do?

[barmar]

Make sure both of you are using the new HTML or mobile version of the client. The Flash version can't go to the new casual server.

[David A P]

Thanks for the reply, we have typed in the web address and get the BBO screen with the background picture of the people playing bridge and when he clicks on “Play bridge now” another background picture appears and he then gets a blank screen whereas I get the log in screen. He is on a Mac Book using Safari.

[stevenagy]

It seems that when you are logged in, you are in BBO2 (or whichever is the competitive server). When you click casual, you are transferred to another server. Apparently, we can't see people logged into the other server. This seems like a bit of a problem, which will hopefully be addressed shortly, but it was a big architecture overhaul that was implemented a few weeks back.

[roymbl]

I have a similar problem. When I log on to bbo, I see some friends. If I then go to casual play, bbo seems to reconnect, and I see different friends online, and the previous friends are no longer there. This happens using both an ipad air with the latest bbo app, and an android laptop via the bbo website.

[mycroft]

roymbi, that is exactly what is happening.

As stevenagy said, BBO is working to "reconnect" the two servers. It will happen in time.

They had to do something to reduce the capacity limit they were continually hitting (something about tripling your average userbase in two weeks, can't think how that works). This was what they could do "simply" and quickly. They knew it would cause problems, until they could reconnect the two, and until they could decommission the flash client (which can't see the new server).

If you have a set game, or a set pairing, "meet in casual at 1900" instead of "meet at 1900" is the motto.

[roymbl]

Thank you for reply, Mycroft.
Getting a response here is very good, compared to contacting support@ bridgebase.com , which seems almost impossible !!

[mycroft]

You're welcome. But:

Better yet would have been searching the forums first where this has been answered, frequently by people actually at BBO, repeatedly in the last month or so.

Another thing that has hit capacity at BBO has been support queries. I'm actually amazed at how on-the-ball barmar and diana_eva have been in these forums in their Copious Free Time. But I also know that all that time spent here saying the same thing over again for those who didn't search, is time they didn't spend designing and coding the solution to these issues.

[roymbl]

Thank you again.
I didnt know these forums existed until this week!
Maybe BBO should point people here first before asking them to contact support @ bridgebase.com?
Thanks again.

[gbb483]

Its all very well saying people should search here, but I know from experience how difficult it is to construct an adequately terse 'search' string which still returns useful results. It's always going to be easier for most people to explain their problems in a paragraph than in three or four words and hope the search engine is up to it.

It reminds of the old joke about Micro$oft and their 'help' files (factually correct, but totally useless as they tell you what you already know).

https://www.reddit.c...ngle_passenger/

[roymbl]

You have a point, Gbb !🙂

[mycroft]

Searching for "casual can't find" (my first try was "casual can't see", but that got hit by the minimum length word requirement that is really annoying for bridge, but is a function of the old version of the forum software) got me a list where literally half of the first 14 posts were variations of "I can't see a friend when I click casual", and one was even entitled "casual explained".

That search box is on every single page, even this page, even the main page. It's *easier* than figuring out how to create a new post.