[blackshoe]

jillybean, on 2024-September-15, 09:28, said:

It makes sense to me
Last time I received a fouled board, the previous table was told to be more careful and our result was adjusted to A=.

I would have asked the director to explain exactly how both pairs at my table were partly at fault for the fouled board.

[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2024-September-16, 13:31, said:

Maybe your scoring device is better than bridgemates. I believe you. All I am giving is my experience.

I would love it if I didn't have to trust people's scorecards to know what happened on board 15, because the score entered makes no sense. Because there are many who "don't keep score, and we shouldn't have to", or whose scorecards are written in some odd code that only they understand, or have worse handwriting than mine, or who missed the board this time.

But that ain't currently the case, with the tools I have available.

With our current tools, the score (contract, declarer, lead, number of tricks) almost always makes sense, and if it doesn't it is usually because they agreed (or at least confirmed) a wrong number of tricks. Happens about once a tournament, easy to resolve.

As for the better scoring device (which it clearly is, despite all the other obvious potential problems of a more or less uncontrolled internet device) I was heartened by the experience of a tournament held in a winery below the Alps on a gourgeous late summer afternoon on Sunday. Sitting in the shadow of an oak tree miles from nowhere and with no wifi and a modest 4G signal, we cheerfully played a 20 table appendix movement without the slightest technical problem, everyone using their phone and the classification and full analysis of every hand for everyone available immediately after the last result was entered. Even a year ago the organizing club would probably have given into the blackmail of hiring the top regional TD and his bridgemates, now this event was more economically sustainable and of higher quality too. I was particularly heartened than only two of my opponents were completing the paper score chart they were provided with.

[barmar]

mycroft, on 2024-September-16, 13:31, said:

Maybe your scoring device is better than bridgemates. I believe you. All I am giving is my experience.

We use BridgeTab, an Android app that runs on tablets, rather than BridgeMate. Theoretically, it should be much harder to get the declarer wrong, as you're tapping on a seat in a table diagram. Yet hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't enter the direction wrong. When the opponent verifies, they often just look at the contract and result, they don't always check the direction, so this gets by.

This happens most often when we use robots to fill in a half table in the movement. The robots get the stationary north-south position in the movement, and the humans sitting east-west have to enter the result in the tablet. Since we're so used to only entering scores when we're sitting North, it's easy to get the relative direction wrong. Last week there were 3 scores entered wrong at the robot table.

Face it, we're all human and we make mistakes. Verification can reduce them, but it won't get rid of them entirely.

[pescetom]

 barmar, on 2024-September-18, 15:23, said:

We use BridgeTab, an Android app that runs on tablets, rather than BridgeMate. Theoretically, it should be much harder to get the declarer wrong, as you're tapping on a seat in a table diagram. Yet hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't enter the direction wrong. When the opponent verifies, they often just look at the contract and result, they don't always check the direction, so this gets by.

This happens most often when we use robots to fill in a half table in the movement. The robots get the stationary north-south position in the movement, and the humans sitting east-west have to enter the result in the tablet. Since we're so used to only entering scores when we're sitting North, it's easy to get the relative direction wrong. Last week there were 3 scores entered wrong at the robot table.

Face it, we're all human and we make mistakes. Verification can reduce them, but it won't get rid of them entirely.

I'm a bit confused about why you need manual entry of the score if there are robots playing, surely the system knows everything already or at least could trust the robots to get things right?

When the opponents are humans, it's unlikely that the direction is wrong, maybe once a month in my experience. It's good practice for whichever of NS enters the score to announce the contract, declarer and lead that he is entering, so someone will call any error. If not, the system will pick up wrong direction from the lead 75%, if not the opponent who confirms.

[barmar]

pescetom, on 2024-September-21, 14:54, said:

I'm a bit confused about why you need manual entry of the score if there are robots playing, surely the system knows everything already or at least could trust the robots to get things right?

There's no connection between BBO, where the robots are playing, and the scoring software that BridgeTab communicates with.