Matchpointer Online
(Serving Tournament Bridge players in A.C.B.L. Unit 430:
Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Sunshine Coast)

Recent Matchpointer Articles

Below are links to some articles which have either been printed in the Matchpointer print version, or appeared in the online version, or both.

New articles intended to appear first in the next edition of the print version should be sent to Ben Takemori here.  Articles intended for a more immediate publication in the online version should be sent to Bruce McIntyre here.  Anything printed in the print version may appear later in the online version, and vice versa, unless the author requests otherwise.  If you would like your article to appear online only after it appears in the print version, send it to both of us and I will arrange for this to happen.

As most are aware by now, the Unit Board, District 19, and the Vancouver Bridge Centre have shared the fairly substantial cost of a duplicating machine.  The machine serves a vital purpose to all three owners:

• District 19 owns one-quarter of the machine.  The District bought a similar machine in late 2009 but discovered that it cannot easily be taken across the border to Canadian tournaments.  Owning a portion of the local machine allows boards to be preduplicated for Regionals in B.C.
• Unit 430 owns one-quarter of the machine.  This ownership means that boards can be preduplicated for Unit sectionals and Unit Games.  The Board also wants to make the machine available where feasible to other clubs, which is the main reason for this article.
• The Vancouver Bridge Centre owns one-half of the machine.  This major step by the VBC means that boards can be preduplicated for its games.  The machine is stored at the VBC, leaving the club only for local tournaments and B.C. Regionals.

The duplicating machine itself requires no special cards.  Cards of any type can be read.  Unlike other duplicating machines that require the cards to have a barcode on them, the machine looks at the corner of the card and uses image-recognition software to work out the suit symbol and the number or letter.  Once the card is recognized, it is placed in the appropriate slot in the machine.  The entire process usually takes only 6-9 seconds for 52 cards!  Because the process involves taking the cards for each board out and reinserting them, a full set of 36 deals takes from 20-35 minutes, depending on the state of the cards themselves.

The difficulties the machine encounters are usually with older, faded cards.  Sometimes a card will be a mystery to the machine simply because a small nick in a diamond symbol makes the machine wonder if it is actually a heart.  Often simply flipping the card to the other side solves the problem.  Another difficulty often faced by the machine is that damaged cards have been replaced by cards with similar backs but quite different fronts: decks with 51 finely-printed indices (the corner of the card) may have a 52nd card printed in bold type.  However, a majority of decks go through without problems.  One or two problem cards can fairly quickly be added at the end.

With the learning phase of the duplicating machine now behind us, the Unit Board approached the Bridge Centre with the hope of making the machine available to other local clubs that may wish to use it for their games for a reasonable cost.  Here is what we came up with:

• Cost: $12.00 per set of 36 boards.  Half of this fee goes to the operator who does the duplicating, and the other half will be kept by the VBC in a fund for the maintenance of the machine.  For this you get a set of boards duplicated and a copy of the hand records with double-dummy analyses, which you will be able to make extra copies of for your players.  The actual set of boards can be randomly generated at the VBC or supplied by the club.
• Available operators: To begin with, I (Bruce McIntyre) will be a contact person for clubs that wish to have boards duplicated on Wednesday evening or Sunday afternoon.  Other VBC game Directors may also be approached but may not be available.  The normal scheme will be for the club representative to bring the set of boards in, and usually the board set will be duplicated as the game is being played.  Occasionally, if the game Director has to fill in a half-table, or the game attendance is quite large, there will not be time during the game to complete the set and the work will need to be done after the game, but both Wednesday evening (which ends usually at 9:30pm) and Sunday afternoon (which ends usually at about 4:30pm) is suitable for this.  Because of the time necessary to duplicate the boards, it will not be feasible to do more than one set in a session, so I ask that you set a time up several days in advance, and let me confirm it with you.
• Cards: The quality of the cards may affect the results.  If the cards are sticky or warped, it may take some extra time; if the faces are old or faded, the decks may not be able to be easily read.  I'll try to get as many decks done with the machine as I can and let you know which decks are problem decks.  In most cases this will be okay for 28-33 boards and you may have some extras at the end which were unable to go through the machine.  A good idea might be to bring, along with the board set, a few extra decks of cards to be used if problem decks are encountered.

Tournament and club players seem to enjoy not having to shuffle or preduplicate boards, and especially to get hand records at the end for study and discussion.  One complaint we are receiving is the usual one about the hands generated by the computer program.  The program used at the VBC was developed for the World Bridge Federation and is described here.  The program requests that the operator type random characters, and times these keystrokes to the millionth of a second!  If a key is hit 0.249832 seconds after the previous key, the final three digits of that number are essentially random.  A sequence of random numbers obtained in this way is almost certain never to be duplicated again.  The deals that are produced conform to the expected figures for suit-breaks and distributions.

Some players have a hard time believing this, especially after a session where the computer deals a lot of wild hands, or a session where either N-S or E-W appear to have the majority of the high cards.  The fact is that when players deal, they tend to produce hands that are flatter than mathematically expected.  Over time (and not necessarily over a single session), the computer hands conform far better than player-dealt hands do, to what is mathmatically expected.  It does help to announce that the deals are generated by a computer, but not selected in any way.  It has been reported on the Internet that some club directors actually do look at the generated deals and choose a set without any likely passouts or wildly distributed hands.  This may get you fewer complaints, but it is not legal, and certainly not random.  But if you wish, you may bring in a set of deals from another source and those will be the deals duplicated.  The format will have to be one of the common bridge-deal formats, like PBN or DUP.

Questions?  Contact me by e-mail.

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