[JustTosh]

Hi.

In a couple of weeks I'll travel by air with a few friends. Four of us are bridgeplayers. There's no internet connection on the flight we'll be on. Playing with real cards is close to impossible, we might not even be seated next to eachother.

Is there a way to play bridge with our tablets or phones, as we would on BBO, but using some other connection, i.e. bluetooth?

It would certainly shorten the the flight time.

Any suggestions?

Ta,
Tom

[nige1]

JustTosh, on 2016-January-06, 09:30, said:

Hi. In a couple of weeks I'll travel by air with a few friends. Four of us are bridgeplayers. There's no internet connection on the flight we'll be on. Playing with real cards is close to impossible, we might not even be seated next to eachother.
Is there a way to play bridge with our tablets or phones, as we would on BBO, but using some other connection, i.e. bluetooth?
It would certainly shorten the the flight time.
Any suggestions?

Intriguing problem, Tom Here is a first attempt, At the risk of irritating/amusing other passengers you could try this clumsy protocol

• Use 4 copies of pre-dealt hands A separate page for each hand and compass-position. Bound into A7 booklets or displayed on a laptop/tablet (without internet connection).
• You look at your hand during the auction, also dummy during the play.
• Make a bid by waving a bidding card from your bidding box above your head. Write down the auction as it proceeds and if necessary pass the completed auction round.
• Play a card by waving a bidding box card above your head, using improvised cards, where necessary. Write down/cross-off played cards.
• If you don't like the bidding box idea, you could talk loudly or adopt annoying coughs, instead.
• Be generous about claims.

.
Surely somebody can improve on this horrible kludge

[Vampyr]

Your in-flight games might have the option to play bridge; if not, there will probably be other multi-player games like backgammon or trivia quizzes.

You could bring some bid-em-ups. These you could pass to your partner from time to time.

Or you could just watch a movie and then get a few hours' sleep.

[helene_t]

With Jack you can do this (designating one of your laptops as the server) but I suppose that requires seperate Jack licenses for each of your laptops. That will be an expensive flight, then. But maybe there is a cheaper (or free) product that has similar functionality?

[gnasher]

helene_t, on 2016-January-07, 05:53, said:

With Jack you can do this (designating one of your laptops as the server) but I suppose that requires seperate Jack licenses for each of your laptops. That will be an expensive flight, then. But maybe there is a cheaper (or free) product that has similar functionality?

What would you use to connect them together?

[helene_t]

wifi?

[gnasher]

helene_t, on 2016-January-07, 17:16, said:

wifi?

I thought the original poster had ruled that out, but perhaps not.

[Vampyr]

gnasher, on 2016-January-07, 17:57, said:

I thought the original poster had ruled that out, but perhaps not.

There are some planes with WIFI, but I think that it is still very expensive. On the great majority of airplanes, devices must be put on airplane mode, and there is no network available.

[helene_t]

gnasher, on 2016-January-07, 17:57, said:

I thought the original poster had ruled that out, but perhaps not.

There is no internet but if bluetooth is allowed I don't see why you can't use wifi as well.

Btw wbridge5 can do it also. You have to install "bridge moniteur" instead of the normal wbridge5.exe which has the advantage that it runs on non-microsoft platforms as well but the possible disadvantage that all doc is in French.

Wbridge5 is free.

[gnasher]

helene_t, on 2016-January-08, 01:20, said:

There is no internet but if bluetooth is allowed I don't see why you can't use wifi as well.

Btw wbridge5 can do it also. You have to install "bridge moniteur" instead of the normal wbridge5.exe which has the advantage that it runs on non-microsoft platforms as well but the possible disadvantage that all doc is in French.

Wbridge5 is free.

Don't you also need to turn one of your devices into a router? Or are you going to use some peer-to-peer method?

[helene_t]

I don't know the technicalities. On Ubuntu I just select "create wireless network" in the network menu and that's it. It might be more complicated on other platforms.

There is a similar function "create private hotspot" on Android but I have no idea if the wbridge5 server would run on android. Haven't tried it on any other platforms either, lol.

[helene_t]

Vampyr, on 2016-January-07, 19:40, said:

There are some planes with WIFI, but I think that it is still very expensive. On the great majority of airplanes, devices must be put on airplane mode, and there is no network available.

But we are not talking about a wifi that is connected to the internet. The four players would make their own intranet without any outwards connections.

[barmar]

gnasher, on 2016-January-08, 06:39, said:

Don't you also need to turn one of your devices into a router? Or are you going to use some peer-to-peer method?

It could use ad hoc peer-to-perr networking, similar to the way AirPlay works on iOS devices.

[gnasher]

Perhaps just take a good book?