[axman]

pran, on 2018-January-11, 11:15, said:

He should indeed be worried.
But I do not really understand that this situation can occur at all, it appears to me as evidence of an unforgivable incompetent system designer?

I have had and used the Bridgemate scoring system since 1991, our routine is that North manages the terminal and enter:
1: The board number (before cards are removed from the board) - possible message: "This board is not scheduled at this table for this round"
2: The contract (immediately following the closing pass) - no message is ever given
3: The opening lead (immediately as faced) - no message is ever given
4: The number of tricks won - The terminal displays the calculated score and a request for confirmation by East/West.

If the opening lead is incorrectly entered (yes, that happens) nobody really worries - it has no legal effect.

But if a player approaches me and claims that the incorrect declarer has been registered and his claim is not corroborated by the registered opening lead then he will have to provide more evidence of such an error than when the opening lead is correctly registered.

Most players are aware of this and tend to be careful with their registrations, also of opening leads.

WHat has occurred to me is that an OLOOT (for instance, accepted) w©ould be 'misconstrued' by the computer to be from the 'wrong hand'.

[pran]

gordontd, on 2018-January-11, 11:21, said:

Really? My first encounter with it was much more recent than that. Do you perhaps mean 2001?

Sorry, you are right.
I mixed up my acquisition of computerized card dealing systems and Bridgemate. The latter took place in 2006.

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2018-January-11, 09:57, said:

If he's worried about this, the TD can turn off the requirement to enter the opening lead. The problem with delaying the warning until accepting the score is that players are likely to forget what the opening lead was.

So turn over any card in the opening leader's hand and enter it.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2018-January-11, 19:27, said:

So turn over any card in the opening leader's hand and enter it.

Yeah, or just ignore the error.

I guess the potential for abuse didn't occur to the designer. As a computer programmer for many decades, I know that it's common to make decisions that improve ease of use, and not realize the unintended consequences.

In general, BridgeTab is really nice, much easier to use than BridgeMate or BridgePad. Nothing's perfect. It would be really impractical to use this particular flaw to find out about more than 1 card in opener's hand. About the best I can think of is that if they lead a King, you could find out if it's from AK or KQ by misentering A. Or if they lead a suit where you have a finesse situation in dummy, and North is declarer, they could check for the card in the slot.

[BudH]

axman, on 2018-January-09, 11:16, said:

I have seen bridgemate discussions where posting an incorrect OL can be used to find out if leader has, or has not, a particular card.

You are correct. We had a player at my local club mention this to me and how you could do it when opening leads are recorded and hand records are uploaded to the Bridgemates. You can do it only if (1) your opponents are not paying attention to the number of extra keystrokes and (2) the Bridgemates are set to allow players to self correct a result without Director input/presence.

Example: It is the first board of the round and I am North in a 7S contract and dummy comes down with the trump queen the only possible loser. I enter into the Bridgemate 7SN, opening lead SQ, making 7 and confirm as if I was East. If no error message occurs, then I know East has the spade queen. I then correct this board, deleting that result, and proceed to play 7S finessing East for the SQ for 13 tricks.

[barmar]

BudH, on 2018-January-13, 10:34, said:

(2) the Bridgemates are set to allow players to self correct a result without Director input/presence.

I don't think I've ever seen a bridgemate set that way, I didn't even realize it was an option.

[pran]

BudH, on 2018-January-13, 10:34, said:

You are correct. We had a player at my local club mention this to me and how you could do it when opening leads are recorded and hand records are uploaded to the Bridgemates. You can do it only if (1) your opponents are not paying attention to the number of extra keystrokes and (2) the Bridgemates are set to allow players to self correct a result without Director input/presence.

Example: It is the first board of the round and I am North in a 7S contract and dummy comes down with the trump queen the only possible loser. I enter into the Bridgemate 7SN, opening lead SQ, making 7 and confirm as if I was East. If no error message occurs, then I know East has the spade queen. I then correct this board, deleting that result, and proceed to play 7S finessing East for the SQ for 13 tricks.

I am shocked. There is indeed such an option in Bridgemate but the default (fortunately) seems to be "no verification" (and "no upload of boards"). I cannot remember ever seeing this option activated.

Still, I think there should be a strong warning against activating this option.

[gordontd]

barmar, on 2018-January-13, 10:50, said:

I don't think I've ever seen a bridgemate set that way, I didn't even realize it was an option.

I’m told some clubs with playing directors use it.

[BudH]

pran, on 2018-January-13, 11:03, said:

I am shocked. There is indeed such an option in Bridgemate but the default (fortunately) seems to be "no verification" (and "no upload of boards"). I cannot remember ever seeing this option activated.

Still, I think there should be a strong warning against activating this option.

I don't think it is that strange to enable this option. The only scores that can be changed by the players is for the boards they are playing that round. Once the last board result is entered and verified, if you click "OK" to get to the "next round screen", then the Director has to make the change.

We upload the hand records with the opening lead entry enabled because it has caused a significant drop in the number of score corrections after sessions. Often the wrong suit or declarer is entered and E/W don't check it carefully enough before hitting "Accept". Now there is a 75% chance an error message will appear saying the opening lead and declarer are inconsistent.

Add the suspicious contracts feature and the number of score corrections after the game has become almost nil.

If we ever thought any player was taking advantage as I described earlier, we would immediately remove the player correction in the current round feature.

[BudH]

One other comment about having the hand records uploaded so that the opening lead entry will be checked against it to look for wrong declarer entry.

If you think someone is guilty of "funny business", go check the Bridgemate log. It will be the "smoking gun" proving the player is cheating using the method I described earlier to find the location of a missing queen.

[Vampyr]

BudH, on 2018-January-13, 22:04, said:

One other comment about having the hand records uploaded so that the opening lead entry will be checked against it to look for wrong declarer entry.

If you think someone is guilty of "funny business", go check the Bridgemate log. It will be the "smoking gun" proving the player is cheating using the method I described earlier to find the location of a missing queen.

Obviously something needs to be disabled; either the entering of the opening lead or the ability for the players to change the result. Similar for the Bridgepad.

I have sympathy for volunteer directors, especially in these clubs that seem to have frequent scoring errors and other irregularities. But I'm afraid there is no excuse for unsecure procedures.

[blackshoe]

BudH, on 2018-January-13, 22:00, said:

Often the wrong suit or declarer is entered and E/W don't check it carefully enough…

Or at all.

[pran]

I think that incorrect entries are a real problem with Howell and Mitchell movements.

We (in Scandinavia) generally use barometer movements and immediately after each round has completed provide each individual pair with a report on that pair's results in the round.

Scoring errors are then discovered right away (while the plays are fresh in memories) and rectified within the following round.

[weejonnie]

blackshoe, on 2018-January-14, 04:54, said:

Or at all.

Yep - there are a few At this event including hand 4 where one of the players was yours truly

[BudH]

Vampyr, on 2018-January-14, 03:50, said:

Obviously something needs to be disabled; either the entering of the opening lead or the ability for the players to change the result. Similar for the Bridgepad.

I have sympathy for volunteer directors, especially in these clubs that seem to have frequent scoring errors and other irregularities. But I'm afraid there is no excuse for unsecure procedures.

I would never have the player score correction enabled in a tournament setting.

But in a one or two section club setting, it is fine to use this feature.

[WellSpyder]

BudH, on 2018-January-13, 22:00, said:

Often the wrong suit or declarer is entered and E/W don't check it carefully enough before hitting "Accept".

A classic example of not checking carefully enough came up yesterday. Board 1 NS 4H+1 score -450.

That looks OK at first glance. But actually it should of course be +450. Was the wrong declarer entered? Not at all. But the Bridgemates had been set up only to accept the actual number of tricks made, not the number relative to the contract. This became apparent on a subsequent board when the machine refused to accept "=" as the result. But on this first hand it simply ignored the "+" and accepted the number of tricks made as 1, ie 9 less than contracted for!

[sfi]

The other one that can catch you is 3NT vulnerable making 3, for 600. Hopefully the directors' scoring program can check for anomalies, such as -600 when everyone else is +600 in the same contract.

[StevenG]

I know a lot of good players hate having the percentages shown, but if you beat everyone else and get 0%, there's a fair chance the problem will be spotted.

[VixTD]

I now use the opening lead checking facility wherever possible, although that's not standard practice at the clubs I play at.

At the county league evening last week there were six head-to-head matches, scored by hand but also by computer as a backup and to display the results. Someone complained the next day that the two scores didn't match, and I eventually tracked it down to a board scored on the wrong side. I suspect that they had entered a lead card, found it wasn't accepted and just tried other similar spot cards until it was. I expect a lot of players do this.

Also last week I ran the last session of an eight-table "continuous pairs" tournament. Each session consists of three rounds of a full Howell, nine-board rounds, scored by cross-IMPs converted to VPs. We play the same hands in each round, so we use two sets of boards. On this occasion we arrived at the club to find the boards hadn't been prepared. The club captain found an old set that had been dealt for another event, but not used, and suggested I make up another copy. I did this, and checked boards 32 (not scheduled for play) against each other and against the hand records, to ensure they were the same set, and got play started.

Early on the first round I got several calls from one side of the room complaining that the lead would not be accepted. I quickly ascertained that the board sets were not identical (how that happened I don't know, perhaps someone had redealt boards 1-28 of the set and not documented it), so I quickly redealt one set and saved the day, with the help of the lead checker.

Sometimes this feature is really useful.

[barmar]

VixTD, on 2018-January-17, 11:40, said:

Sometimes this feature is really useful.

The question isn't whether the lead checker is a good feature, but whether it's OK for it to report the error before the end of the hand, when you're entering the result and the opponent is confirming it.