[dustinst22]

I wasn't sure where to post this since the "support for bridgebase products" thread has been disabled for some reason.

Are there any plans to expand Bridge Master to a mobile version?

Quite a few people I'm teaching Bridge to that are coming from the game of Spades have asked me this, as they enjoy the declarer problems but prefer using on a mobile device.

I've found Bridge Master to be a great tool to introduce spades players (who are already very experienced with card play) to the game without having to burden them too much with learning bidding (which tends to turn Spades players away from the game). I think this program is one of the best ways to get people unfamiliar with the game to see why they should learn it -- the kinds of problems you have to solve, etc without having to burden them with bidding. Once a person sees how great the game and card play is, then they are willing to go through the process of learning bidding. Thus, Bridgemaster is a great tool to accomplish this.


Having this program in a mobile format I think would benefit Bridge greatly for getting younger players into the game. The ability to purchase new sets of hands and immediately download them to your mobile device would be fantastic and I think would have a significant following.

[barmar]

Bridge Master is a Windows application. Creating a web or mobile version would entail a rewrite from scratch (although maybe some of the code in Bridge Movies could be adapted). There are no current plans to do either of these.

[dustinst22]

barmar, on 2013-February-06, 12:17, said:

Bridge Master is a Windows application. Creating a web or mobile version would entail a rewrite from scratch (although maybe some of the code in Bridge Movies could be adapted). There are no current plans to do either of these.

Thanks. A big mistake, in my humble opinion.

[fred]

dustinst22, on 2013-February-06, 12:58, said:

Thanks. A big mistake, in my humble opinion.

I agree this would be a good thing to do, but unfortunately there are only so many hours is each day. Probably it will happen eventually though Barmar is right that we have no current plans in this area.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Scarabin]

Hey, let's keep our priorities right! What Beidgemaster needs is more deals, please.

On the other hand it would be nice to have more flexibility in loading refill deals: perhaps to be able to load all A to D instead of just A plus 1 other, or to load all deals at a level, or all deals of a type.

Otherwise Bridgemaster is perfect as it is

[dustinst22]

Another cool idea along these lines --

BBO could provide a mobile app (similar to bridgemaster) which any author could then write declarer (or defensive) problems through. Would be a good rev share opportunity and the amount of content would exponentially increase since one person wouldn't be burdened with coming up with new problems.

User could get say 5 free samples of one author, then judge whether the author's problems are worth buying, then purchase sets.

Here I am giving more ideas for how BBO can make more $. Guess I can't help myself, as I work in the space.

[barmar]

If we were to do something like this, I expect it would be done as an enhancement to the Bridge Movie software, and we would probably make the authoring software available similarly.

I have no idea how Bridge Master works, so I don't know how much work it would take to add those features to bridge movies. And this would only get us to a web application. Bridge Movies use Flash, so they won't run on many mobile platforms. We'd have to do another rewrite, like the BBO mobile app, to get it on mobile.

[fred]

Bridge Master isn't nearly as smart as it seems to be.

Much of what it does is directed by the author. The process of teaching Bridge Master to defend "perfectly" can, depending the deal in question, be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Serious skills in terms of bridge analysis are required, including some types of analysis that are not part of the normal bridge thinking process.

Given that we have very high standards for the quality of the defense, I don't think I would be comfortable about letting random people get involved in creating deals for Bridge Master. There are also some intellectual property issues that might get in the way (more from of a personal or a business point of view than from anything legal).

I do have some ideas about how to make Bridge Master sufficiently smart so that the burden on the author is much smaller, but it is far from clear if/when I will get a chance to do any new work on Bridge Master. If/when I get some time for Bridge Master, I expect I will focus on rewriting its card play engine in Flash thereby making it easy for us to produce both web-based and mobile app versions of the program.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com