[pescetom]

Some doubts related to use of Saved Deals (with the HTML5 client).

1. Loading a .LIN file of 24 deals into a folder is surprisingly easy (thanks paulg for the video) and gives a reassuring yellow message about the number of deals loaded. Selecting the folder during tournament creation is even easier, but does not seem to elict any reassuring yellow message. If however I intentionally select an empty folder then when I press Create I get a falsely reassuring yellow message saying "Loading saved deals... please wait" and the tournament is not created (no further message). Can I deduce from all this that if the tournament does create then the saved deals have always been successfully loaded?


2. Having done this, my last tournament using Saved Deals exploded on launch, the error message was something like "Insufficient boards".
Perhaps the problem was not related to point 1 but to an edit I made. I created the tournament for 12 boards, 2 per round, but then just before the start I had only 5 tables instead of the 6 expected and so I edited the tournament to be 15 boards, 3 per round. This is something I routinely do with random hands tournaments, it didn't occur to me that Saved Deals might be different.
Am I right in guessing that "Create Tournament" silently loaded 12 of the 24 deals, "Edit Tournament" allowed me to increase the number of boards with no error/warning even though it had no intention to load any more deals, and "Load Tournament" was not philosophical enough to just play 12 boards or use random deals for the last 3?

3. If so, I guess the bypass to retain flexibility is to initially create for 24 boards and then immediately edit to 12, correct?

Obviously I'm keen to get this right to avoid disappointing registered players again. Thanks in advance.

[kenjay]

When you edited the tournament to play 15 boards you could have included random deals. Then, edit tournament again, but this time use your saved deals, and it will load in 15 hands, assuming the deal file is large enough.

[pescetom]

kenjay, on 2020-July-20, 03:36, said:

When you edited the tournament to play 15 boards you could have included random deals. Then, edit tournament again, but this time use your saved deals, and it will load in 15 hands, assuming the deal file is large enough.

Yes I can see that should work, although I would be worried about using it minutes before tournament start as loading saved deals does not always work correctly at first attempt (or at least it was so during Spring).
Do you think my alternative bypass of creating with a saved deal of (say) 24 boards and then editing to 12 boards then to 15 would work too?

[kenjay]

pescetom, on 2020-July-20, 07:19, said:

Yes I can see that should work, although I would be worried about using it minutes before tournament start as loading saved deals does not always work correctly at first attempt (or at least it was so during Spring).
Do you think my alternative bypass of creating with a saved deal of (say) 24 boards and then editing to 12 boards then to 15 would work too?

Well, I’m running my first Sims tournament tonight with many other clubs playing the same deals, so will load hands just before event start. Wouldn’t like to risk loading more than the event needs in case of failure. Maybe BBO support could offer some advice.

[gordontd]

kenjay, on 2020-July-20, 08:35, said:

Well, I’m running my first Sims tournament tonight with many other clubs playing the same deals, so will load hands just before event start. Wouldn’t like to risk loading more than the event needs in case of failure. Maybe BBO support could offer some advice.

Make sure you have uploaded the hands in advance of this - you need to go out afterwards and come back in before they are recognised. Then you can select "Use save deals" once you are sure what movement you are using.

[jnichols]

kenjay, on 2020-July-20, 08:35, said:

Well, I'm running my first Sims tournament tonight with many other clubs playing the same deals, so will load hands just before event start. Wouldn't like to risk loading more than the event needs in case of failure. Maybe BBO support could offer some advice.

I generate a "full" set of 36 boards and load them in every time. The problem with setting the "number of boards" in define tournament was fixed a couple of months ago. Used to be it would only load the number of hands specified in the tournament. Now it loads the entire set and uses as many as needed.

[pescetom]

jnichols, on 2020-July-20, 09:00, said:

I generate a "full" set of 36 boards and load them in every time. The problem with setting the "number of boards" in define tournament was fixed a couple of months ago. Used to be it would only load the number of hands specified in the tournament. Now it loads the entire set and uses as many as needed.

Which is of course the best solution, 24 boards is only 3 kb of text anyway.
Good to know, thanks. This topic is indeed a few months old.

[pescetom]

gordontd, on 2020-July-20, 08:57, said:

Make sure you have uploaded the hands in advance of this - you need to go out afterwards and come back in before they are recognised. Then you can select "Use save deals" once you are sure what movement you are using.

The bug whereby you could not use a newly created folder without logoff/logon was fixed - although there were also some situations where upload went well but the new folder was invalid (perhaps having to do with a long folder name) and logoff/logon made this emerge clearly, not sure if this was also fixed.

There are many other bugs in this area that I reported a few months ago - not sure if they were fixed or I have just developed safe habits to bypass them. Will have a play tomorrow and find out.

[kenjay]

gordontd, on 2020-July-20, 08:57, said:

Make sure you have uploaded the hands in advance of this - you need to go out afterwards and come back in before they are recognised. Then you can select "Use save deals" once you are sure what movement you are using.

The 36 hands were placed in a folder Over a week ago and I can see Each deal, so am assuming I can edit tournament now and just use saved deals.

[pgrice]

gordontd, on 2020-July-20, 08:57, said:

Make sure you have uploaded the hands in advance of this - you need to go out afterwards and come back in before they are recognised. Then you can select "Use save deals" once you are sure what movement you are using.

What does "go out" mean in this context? Leave the tournament lobby; go back to BBO Home screen; log out of the account; something else? Many of us are running our first pairs events with saved deals and need to avoid all the gotchas.

Thanx

[kenjay]

pgrice, on 2020-July-20, 10:28, said:

What does "go out" mean in this context? Leave the tournament lobby; go back to BBO Home screen; log out of the account; something else? Many of us are running our first pairs events with saved deals and need to avoid all the gotchas.

Thanx

Just edited my tournament, a 10 round howell, 2 boards/round. Used saved deals, chose folder and saved movement. The number of boards (20) is now greyed out. Hope that's a good sign

[gordontd]

pgrice, on 2020-July-20, 10:28, said:

What does "go out" mean in this context? Leave the tournament lobby; go back to BBO Home screen; log out of the account; something else? Many of us are running our first pairs events with saved deals and need to avoid all the gotchas.

Thanx

It sounds from other replies as though my advice is out of date, but if you find they don't show up in your folder, log out of BBO and then log back in.

[pescetom]

pgrice, on 2020-July-20, 10:28, said:

What does "go out" mean in this context? Leave the tournament lobby; go back to BBO Home screen; log out of the account; something else? Many of us are running our first pairs events with saved deals and need to avoid all the gotchas.

I wanted to experiment for you, but unfortunately I have a tournament already pending and I cannot create a second one.
From memory, my set of steps to avoid the gotchas, whether or not they have been fixed:
1) create a .LIN file with the desired hands
2) in account / deal archive, create a new folder and give it a (not very long) name
3) Import LIN file, select source file and make sure you get a yellow diagnostic message "nn hands were successfully uploaded into folder <name>"
4) Create Tournament, Deal Source = Use saved deals, Select folder, click on folder, Select - this time no diagnostic message means probable success, if it says "Uploading hands" or similar this means failure (!)
5) complete the tournament and press Create Tournament, make sure you get a yellow diagnostic message with number of tournament - silence implies failure
6) Close (if you fail to do this or Edit again without doing it you are looking for trouble).

Good luck

[kenjay]

pescetom, on 2020-July-20, 14:21, said:

I wanted to experiment for you, but unfortunately I have a tournament already pending and I cannot create a second one.
From memory, my set of steps to avoid the gotchas, whether or not they have been fixed:
1) create a .LIN file with the desired hands
2) in account / deal archive, create a new folder and give it a (not very long) name
3) Import LIN file, select source file and make sure you get a yellow diagnostic message "nn hands were successfully uploaded into folder <name>"
4) Create Tournament, Deal Source = Use saved deals, Select folder, click on folder, Select - this time no diagnostic message means probable success, if it says "Uploading hands" or similar this means failure (!)
5) complete the tournament and press Create Tournament, make sure you get a yellow diagnostic message with number of tournament - silence implies failure
6) Close (if you fail to do this or Edit again without doing it you are looking for trouble).

Good luck

Well, everything worked very well tonight. Except at tournament start when I went to a table to look at board 1. The spade holding in North wasn't what I expected from the deal file. Panic, but when board 2 appeared that was correct. Of course I had joined the table when a couple of spades had been played, hence the discrepancy Other than that, all went smoothly.

[pescetom]

kenjay, on 2020-July-20, 14:39, said:

Well, everything worked very well tonight. Except at tournament start when I went to a table to look at board 1. The spade holding in North wasn't what I expected from the deal file. Panic, but when board 2 appeared that was correct. Of course I had joined the table when a couple of spades had been played, hence the discrepancy

Reminds me of another bug, that when one clicks on the contract to see the auction during play the hands do not revert to 13 cards but continue to show only the cards unplayed at that point in play.