[jillybean]

Virtual screens? These players want to sit and chat and admire each others __(fill in the blank)___.

Technology will of course eliminate insufficient, inadmissible, out of turn bids and plays and other mechanical errors. I am not sure how well you could hide tempo breaks while sitting at a table. What it won't do is eliminate the sighs, groans, scowls, eyes raised to heaven,foot tapping, finger drumming antics of players.
But it is a step in the right direction.

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2024-August-24, 16:38, said:

Virtual screens? These players want to sit and chat and admire each others __(fill in the blank)___.

Technology will of course eliminate insufficient, inadmissible, out of turn bids and plays and other mechanical errors. I am not sure how well you could hide tempo breaks while sitting at a table. What it won't do is eliminate the sighs, groans, scowls, eyes raised to heaven,foot tapping, finger drumming antics of players.
But it is a step in the right direction.

Maybe we're thinking about different ways of organizing play in a club, I don't see four people sitting around a table with tablets: that makes no sense once you have the play on a tablet, for the very reasons you list here, plus mobility issues. We can eliminate all that UI you list. For instance by assigning a room to all Norths, and so on. Or a room to all Norths and Easts together, if you want to be more sociable (and now you can even admire my __ without our respective partners noticing). We can also handle people with health problems (or simply in NZ for a while) playing from home too.

The reason we need virtual screens all the same is to manage disclosure and explanations correctly, plus as part of the tempo management: but we eliminate the sighs and smirks by moving partner to a different room (as well as full audio/video/text screening during play).

People will probably want a bluetooth headset to be able to give voice to text explanations or to discuss with TD. That's something our players have left over from Realbridge days anyway.

[pescetom]

Returning closer to ground, what I do see in the very short term as a useful (less than) half way house is moving only the bidding onto personal devices.

Not so much for club play (the pushback/benefits ratio is too high), but for regional level play with screens in place. Getting rid of trays would eliminate many intriguing director calls but also gain about a minute per board, in what are extremely long events (I might even catch the 20.25 train home).

It is decidedly feasible, as the players are of decent level and would readily recognize the advantages, plus bidding is not as screen hungry as play and could comfortably be done with an "ordinary" large personal phone (if the interface is well implemented).

Unfortunately the pushback so far is not from the players themselves, but Directors and RA (but then it is indeed the thin end of a wedge, and some are sincerely convinced that the end of bidding boxes and cards will be the end of bridge, rather than a new beginning).

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2024-August-25, 11:08, said:

Maybe we're thinking about different ways of organizing play in a club.

Yes, we are thinking about different applications here. I am thinking of using technology to make running the game easier, eliminating mechanical errors and offering accessibility features , all the while maintaining the social aspect of sitting across from your dear partner and 2 opponents.
Your reason seems to be to minimize cheating and make it more difficult to break the Laws. A great reason!

[mycroft]

If you are going to put everybody in their own room, etc, then why leave the house? I mean, the bar after, but still.

If you are going to move to screen bidding with tablets - which I absolutely think might be fun - but real card play, there might be something there. Removing all the mechanical infractions in the bidding (well, it might be obvious that she *tried* to bid out of turn, but...) and having timing and reviewable written explanations seems like an unalloyed advantage. Now, you just have to get people to pay for it (if it's BYOD, how do you know they haven't rigged those Ds to C?)

But there are many many people who want FtF so they can keep their "table feel", not that they use it to read their partner, oh no. And they are very unhappy when the opponents do. And how do they know that? Their table feel tells them there's information, and the other opponent does something that "was obviously" guided by that same tell. But again, they never do that with *their* partner.

There are those who actually like playing with cards. There are those who actually like playing in the clubs. And there are a lot - A LOT - of players who *don't* want to be playing bridge as if it was televised or was the national championships - a whole bunch of them play in non-ACBL-sanctioned clubs because of "every little mistake or slight hitch treated as a personal offence, can't we just play bridge?"

There are those who say "as long as you realize it isn't bridge, you can enjoy a night at the club". And they do have a point. But I actually kind of like it occasionally. Yes, I have issues with club directors who can't get a revoke ruling right, sure, because of who I am. But you know what? "I can accept it, or I can find another game, or I can direct myself." And sometimes, what I want is a club game I don't have to run.

Tournaments? Yeah, that's a whole different thing, and I can really see that. The club game, though?

Note, I am *not* pooh-poohing this. Please, try. See what happens. Would I like playing this way? Yes (though I can think of at least two of my regular partners who wouldn't). Can I see the advantages? Of course. I just also see all the people who complain about how rule-bound and serious and lawyerly "some players in the club game" already are, and why can't we just play bridge?

Now, the irony of this conversation in a thread started from a Regional ruling - especially a team game where the RoW has laughed at the ACBL as long as I've been directing over "hand-shuffled?" - is not lost on me.

[pescetom]

I agree about the irony. And oddly enough, the pushback against my idea of moving bidding to the app came from regional and national level TDs, not from players. Or maybe not so odd, perhaps they don't want to eliminate half of their job just to make it a better and faster game.


As for club survival, it worries me too, but not as much as it did immediately after covid. I've seen many clubs struggle or even die in the last few years, but they tend to get absorbed into a nearby club (whether formally or not) and it's not always a change for the worse. In the large cities, Rome has gone from 5-6 large clubs to just two, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Turin follow suit. And all this convergence despite RA membership having stabilized post covid, with most clubs smaller than they were but still back to the same number of tables as pre-covid.

Which of course suggests that the role and perception of a club is changing, with covid only accelerating a trend of virtualization, centralisation and marginalisation that has roots in the impact of internet on society as a whole. And while electronic play mirrors that change, I suspect it will come to clubs gradually and not be the breakwater that conservatives might fear.

Not that I know as many "cards or nothing" players as you seem to. Most of our club were quite happy to play online during covid, and some were upset that we stopped. What everyone agreed was that the social experience of playing online even with cameras and voice was no substitute for actually being with people at the club, and from that point of view I don't think a well run club has much to fear from changes in the way we play, or even freedom to play from home. It's adding value to the experience that will make a difference, not whether we play with cards or not.

[mycroft]

Well, I'm now in a different world than you or Jillybean. I will admit, I didn't see this before I started snowbirding either.

Calgary has, and always has had, a vibrant bridge community. We could have 50 tables in three clubs on a Friday afternoon; there was one major club that had games every weekday, and every evening except Sunday (some were limited games). Others had one or two big games each week; one or two had 5 or 6 tables. The club in the Other City had about 9 games a week, including Saturday Rubber and a strong money IMP Pairs one evening - and a couple of "refugee" clubs did run. Red Deer (in the middle) had a thriving club with 5 or 6 games a week, with the biggest game about 12 tables or so.

Now - we have one location for bridge, with afternoon games every day, one evening game that struggles to get 4 tables, and once a month something interesting on Saturday. I hear stories about other clubs, but I don't speak Cantonese, I'm male, and the rest - well, they don't want my system there, they don't want my attitude there, and frankly, they don't want my skill there either. The others seem to have dropped by 40-50%, too.

But where I winter - sure, it pushed 6 tables in the summer, three days a week. In the winter, though, there was one game with two 7 table flights, two games with 18-20 tables, and one that got about 8 (but was very strong). It now is one game struggling to make 3 tables, and two about 10-12, and the Friday game is off - during the season. In the summer, they cancel at least one of the games each week. And unlike other places, when the club was closed and we played virtually, even though the snowbirds could play from their Northern locations during the off-season, instead of 20 tables we were getting 12 (but instead of 5 or 6 we were getting 10, true).

And sure, "consolidate". But the nearest other club is a 5 hour drive (West, East or South-East. Your choice (*)). Even in Alberta, the nearest club is 90 minutes away at best, if you're not in Calgary.

So - I don't want to be a conservative. I definitely don't want to be reactionary. I think that progress is great. I think that better patterns in higher level events to minimize problems and reduce "extra help" is a powerful plus. In the clubs, at least out of the big cities, I *do* want to be conservative, though - if there are changes to be made, make them slowly and after discussions with the players, and maybe "this week we'll try, so people can see what it's actually like, then we'll discuss", especially if we don't have experience from other clubs to look at. You want to get better, yes. You want to avoid losing players, though, more than that, in these places - I know, either way, but how many "I wish this game was tighter, and I might leave and just play set games online" players do the clubs have, over the "I come out twice a week, but now that they're griping about what we're doing every week, and CHANGING what I'm used to, maybe I just won't today" ones? In one club, I'd say it's about 1 to 4. There - I would be very careful. Other places, where there is another club to go to, and people can settle into "enjoy bridge" and "serious club" and "online, but with a bar to go to after" - go for it. Find out how much better it is, so that you can convince the "have to be conservative" clubs that the players actually like it in general.

(*) I am shocked that the second largest city in México, with 8 million registered people, can't support a bridge club, and if there are any bridge players who want to play, they have to spend the hour to come down to our tiny little Lakeshore. But that's how it is.

[pescetom]

Eight million without a club sounds near a record. Easier to understand your 5 hour drive predicament. On a much smaller scale, my home area is not as densely populated as much of Italy and the next nearest clubs are both 45 minutes drive away, one with an expensive road roll too: too much for many players and certainly an obstacle to fusion if it came to that.

Right now I'm in a sit out during a nine table tournament in small club of South Italy which struggles to make four tables in the winter: but in the summer people arrive from the many nearby towns and enjoy the venue, an outdoor terrace 500m above sea level with refreshingly cool temperatures. Here each town has a small club which would struggle to justify its existence but since covid they have effectively converged into a single diffuse club, with all the players friends and ready to play wherever the tournament is. It's an interesting model if geography allows it.

In another ironic forum short circuit, they now want my advice about a card of dummy that was dropped on floor

[blackshoe]

Pre-covid, we had four or five "clubs" here -- sole proprietorships with games on different days and the same roughly 200 players from the area. We now have two such "clubs", one of which meets on Tuesdays and Fridays, and one which pre-Covid met Mondays and Thursdays and now meets Saturdays and those Mondays where the owner knows in advance (we have to email him ahead of time) that he'll have enough tables to justify it. This week's (today's) game was cancelled, for example. Both owners also run online games that overlap some of the f2f games (which resulted in a complaint about a director call a couple of weeks ago to the effect that "I'm busy, I have an online game to run")

The pre-Covid Tuesday game ran to 25 to 40 tables. The others ran about 15 to 25 or so. Now tables hover around 10.

There were also games in two or three nearby towns pre-Covid. They're still around, though I don't know their table counts.

Our local 200 players seems to be down now to maybe 50 to 100.

[jillybean]

Clubs in the Greater Vancouver area seem to be rebounding post Covid slump with one new club successfully established and others still operating. Most have 10-12 table games. I am only aware of 1 club that has closed. With the cost and lack of real estate, finding suitable and affordable locations to run games is the biggest challenge.

As far as introducing technology to the non sanctioned game I am co-directing, that won;t happen any time soon but it doesn’t hurt to dream. The games run on a registration basis and in the first week of registration opening for the Sept - Dec season, 82 of the 100 spaces have been taken so we are a healthy group. We may be stuck with gross bidding boxes and cards but at least we have a Dealing Machine and can have some fun with Web Movements.

[sanst]

I'm living in Deventer, in the eastern part of the Netherlands, a city with just over 100.000 inhabitants. There are six clubs here that are affiliated to the Dutch bridge union with over 500 members, plus a couple of non-affiliated clubs. Within 25 km, 15 miles, there are another 18 affiliated clubs, one with over 250 members. The whole region, some 70 km NS and EW, of the union has 50 affiliated clubs with almost 4500 members. Plenty of choice, and I can imagine it's making you a bit jealous.
If we want, we can just cross the border to another region and play at 't Onstein, a few times winner of the European club competition and the home of some world class players. What more can we wish for?

[mycroft]

The nice part about Web movements (and multiple sections) is that more of the players play the same boards, and there are fewer situations where "I didn't play any of those, and you didn't play any I did".

There are multiple technical advantages for this - higher tops, better comparisons, less "luck of who got to bid board 6 with the skills to get there" - and for me, and for the players who can understand that, absolutely use it. And those who can't, at least get the benefits (and they'll sure notice when it doesn't happen somewhere else, at least in the drastic ways (36 boards on 18 tables instead of 26, for instance)).

But (to drag this back to the topic in question) all of that is meaningless drivel, or worse "why do we have to change?" (especially if the answer is something about "better competition", because that's why they left the other club; they just want to play) to many of the people in the clubs that value things other than "tight, ethical, strong competitive game".

So while you are happy about the 22 top instead of 12 (or 7!) and the "don't have to worry about which boards you played", you can tell the players that "when they go downstairs to the Legion/across the hall to the hotel bar" and talk about the hands, you will all have played the same ones, so you'll know what people were talking about. Assuming that social part of the game still exists, it's magically much better - in ways they care about.

And I realize that I am saying this as what one of the other directors in Chapala called "a movement perfectionist". There are absolutely reasons *I will run* webs or double Howells or premade boards in swisses or whatever. There are reasons I will inconvenience myself, and sometimes even inconvenience the players, to do so - provided the "why are we doing this?" questions mostly remain just that and not "why can't we just Play Bridge?" If it gets to that point, then it's best to dial back a bit. Sometimes, after they realize what they were missing (like playbacks against the best/most obnoxious pair in the room, or "oh, we didn't play those" for half the discussion) and how frustrating it really is, they are more receptive the next time :-). Because even I have learned that Bridge games that I direct are not for me - and that bridge players are frequently Not Me, and have different priorities, and those priorities are important, too. And it's part of the Most Important Job of a director - the Customer Service - to give answers that focus on their priorities as well as make decisions that focus on their priorities, rather than yours (unless they will appreciate yours! then go ahead!)

[pescetom]

sanst, on 2024-August-27, 09:52, said:

I'm living in Deventer, in the eastern part of the Netherlands, a city with just over 100.000 inhabitants. There are six clubs here that are affiliated to the Dutch bridge union with over 500 members, plus a couple of non-affiliated clubs. Within 25 km, 15 miles, there are another 18 affiliated clubs, one with over 250 members. The whole region, some 70 km NS and EW, of the union has 50 affiliated clubs with almost 4500 members. Plenty of choice, and I can imagine it's making you a bit jealous.
If we want, we can just cross the border to another region and play at 't Onstein, a few times winner of the European club competition and the home of some world class players. What more can we wish for?

The percentage of bridge players per population in the Netherlands is truly exceptional, about 10 times higher than Italy to give an example.
This should really have people thinking: either the Dutch are nuts, or they got some things right that we could all think about emulating.

[jillybean]

Did you know it was a Dutchman, Ron Bouwland, sponsored by the Dutch Bridge Federation, who developed the Bridgemate back in 2000 - 2005

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2024-August-27, 19:08, said:

Did you know it was a Dutchman, Ron Bouwland, sponsored by the Dutch Bridge Federation, who developed the Bridgemate back in 2000 - 2005

I didn't, thanks. Ranks with the Swedish inventions of Dealing Machine and Bidding Box and the WBF invention of screens.

Also the server is an excellent example of robust simple software, although I still hate the interface of the BM itself.

Ironically, BM is becoming an obstacle to progress over here, as the new tournament management program was heavily compromised in architecture by building upon an existing Windows + BM solution rather than starting again from scratch in cloud. There are also clubs/TDs who are heavily committed to BM and drag their feet about the app.

[jillybean]

Thanks for enlightening me, I will look into the Swedish contributions to the game.
I agree, the BM interface is a hindrance. We have to maintain an old PC for the BM and the dealing machine. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the game and Bridge Organizations to catch up.

Mycroft - when were BMs introduced to tournaments here?

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2024-August-28, 12:19, said:

I agree, the BM interface is a hindrance. We have to maintain an old PC for the BM and the dealing machine. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the game and Bridge Organizations to catch up.

I gather you inherited some RS232 stuff, ouch.
We never had BM and now never will (if you gave me it free, I wouldn't use it).
Our dealing machine still needs a PC but is at least on USB to Windoze 11 (although that is an issue of its own as we have a 6 port hub and I somehow still need to detach one cable to fit in my key with tonight's deal).

As for BM, the on-table user interface is excruciating but ultimately the need for a local PC is worse, making it difficult to implement the tournament management in cloud. And the whole concept is superfluous once players have an app on hand at the table. Of course many of the bigger clubs and senior TDs have invested a lot in BM hardware and skills and will try to retain BM a privileged status as a more proven/reliable/controlled input system, rather than simply recognise that it is one more victim of progress.

[blackshoe]

If the price of the Bridge+/"Spinner" device were to come down by a factor of 100 or so it would IMO be a good choice. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

[mycroft]

Bridgemates were coming in as replacements for pickup slips about 15ish years ago now? After 2007, because we were still at the Martinique for the new Laws, and I don't think that club ever used bridgemates over travellers, but the adoption was pretty quick after that.

IIRC at least here, the clubs were offered *deep* subsidies on the devices (not the server, though) on the condition that the unit could commandeer them for the 4 or 5 (if the regional was local) tournaments a year the unit ran. Easy way for the unit to get 50 'mates, while still getting the players used to them in the clubs, and getting them off travellers (and not waiting for traveller entry for results) was a great incentive for the clubs as well.

We picked VHS here, luckily - I know people that were on the BridgePads. There are advantages to them - but two huge disadvantages (one for the players and one for the directors), so they eventually were phased out.

I do wish we had teams integration with BridgeMates (without using random "last public release" of some other country's software to do it, and hand-copying in all the scores), even to this day.

And maybe it is time for yet another revolution (I do see the definite advantage of a smartphone app scorer both in "hardware cost" to the clubs and in other abilities the app could have (after game review, pianola-style statistics, what have you) for the players.

[jillybean]

blackshoe, on 2024-August-28, 19:01, said:

If the price of the Bridge+/"Spinner" device were to come down by a factor of 100 or so it would IMO be a good choice. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

We are all dreaming here.