[Phil]

I'd like to create some problems like Ben has made for BI and AE.

Within a bridge diagram how do you make the opening lead and show just a few cards played?

Thanks

[BunnyGo]

Phil, on 2011-September-20, 09:41, said:

I'd like to create some problems like Ben has made for BI and AE.

Within a bridge diagram how do you make the opening lead and show just a few cards played?

Thanks

The way I've been doing it is as follows:

1) make the bridge diagram (the whole hand) and do the play up to the point you want.
2) Click on "preview post"
3) Remove the cards from the hands that you don't want to be shown
4) Profit

Round-about? A little, but unlike Ben, I cannot write lin files by hand quickly.

[inquiry]

Is the purpose to post them in the forum, or to have them as electronic files you provide to someone (student, the like). The process is similar for both, but there are some small changes.

To make one for posting, I advise you use the standard hv format. I use Excel to do the hard work for me if I have a lin file

CONCATENATE("[hv=lin=",C2,"]400|300|",B3,"[/hv]")

Where C2 in this equation refers to the excel cell containing the entire lin file of a bridge hand, and B3 refers to whatever comment you want to write about the hand being displayed. Then cut and paste that the result in the forum. NOTE: I actually cut and paste it into notepad and cut and paste that into the forum, because it comes in as a "cell" otherwise. Doubt that hurts, but I do it.

Now if you don't have a regular lin file, but rather have a handviewer file, I use excel to fix that problem as well, using the following general equation

RIGHT(B2,LEN(B2)-52)

For this equation, paste the entire handviewer link into cell B2, the cell with this equation will then strip off the first 52 characters

 ([url="http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin="]http://www.bridgebas...iewer.html?lin=[/url])

leaving you with the normal stuff found in any lin flie (I add back the lin= for posting in forum, I remove it in case I want to use the hand somewhere other than the forum.

If you are going to do a lot of these, it is useful to strip out the names of the players. Again, you can let excel do this for you. There is probably a better way to do it, but I use this equation to remove players names from any "lin" file formatted cell.

=CONCATENATE(LEFT(G2,SEARCH("|pn|",G2)),RIGHT(G2,LEN(G2)-SEARCH("|mb|",G2)))

Where G2 contains any lin file converted from handviewer link you want to remove the player names from. What this does is find the command for player names, and grabs everything in front of it, and adds it to everything after the last players name. This strips the players name out of the lin file for posting.

You can even rotate the hands so that declarer is always south, but that takes more time to describe than it is worth here. If anyone is interested, maybe I can post a file that does all this automatically for you like I did with the simple excel file for grabbing a hand and posting it in the forum.

Next comes "fixing it" for posting. The hands look something like this (as you know)....
md|2SJ3HKT943DT43CA85,SA7HQJ72D986CQT42,SKQ98542HADAQ7CJ7,ST6H865DKJ52CK963|

The are ordered South first, then West then North, finally EAST. Here all 13 cards from each player will be displayed. If can "edit" this to remove from the display any cards you like. for instance.. this would show only the dummy (north) and West's cards
md|2,SA7HQJ72D986CQT42,SKQ98542HADAQ7CJ7,|

Or we can add a few cards, this would show two cards each in south and East along with all of West's and north's (south;s club ACE and Heart King, East Club King and heart 5)
md|2HKCA,SA7HQJ72D986CQT42,SKQ98542HADAQ7CJ7,H5CK|

You would show play in the normal way as far as you wanted it to go, then manually remove the remaining play.

To do this in an electronic file it would look pretty much the same (no need to delete cards from the hands, just set kibitz mode appropriately).

If this doesn't make sense, or if you have any additional questions, we can always communicate by normal email or private message here in the forum. I am certainly willing to help with getting stuff in a nice format to post here. I particularly prefer if declarer is always south... So I like showing all four hands, even if only two hands are displayed to the "reader".

[fractalus]

Very interesting post. where can I find the excel file ? It is free ?
Thanks !

[barmar]

I don't think there's a file, you just do what he said by hand.

[inquiry]

fractalus, on 2012-March-06, 12:08, said:

Very interesting post. where can I find the excel file ? It is free ?
Thanks !

There is a file, and it is free... I have posted it in google document (but not sure if it works from there), but if you send me your email, I will be happy to email it to you. I will find the google document link so you can try that too and add it to this message.