[mrdct]

mike777, on 2012-July-06, 01:43, said:

Question one.....If I invest a lot of money what is my return?

You are making an assumption that the OP's bridge club has a profit motive.

[Vampyr]

Siegmund, on 2012-July-06, 01:08, said:

dealing machine is real handy if you have your own building. But if you have to store equipment in a closet it is much more trouble than it is worth to drag it out and put it away

Another solution, which we do at our once-a-week club, is to have someone responsible for dealing several sets at a time, at home. This task can be rotated among club members (preferably those, if any, who go to the club by car).

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(and it needs to be onsite - 51-and-53 type problems happen as much as once a session in our club and the usual fix is running the board through the machine again to redeal it.)

At our club we don't have this problem and anyway the board is on the computer/hand records so it can easily be fixed.

Re the portability: a dealing machine and one set of boards is approximately as portable as a sufficient number of electronic scorers to serve a club.

Siegmund, on 2012-July-06, 11:16, said:

@barmar: yes, I did assume that -- since at any club I've ever played at, the extra 10 minutes at the start to make predealt hands would cause a mutiny

I think that this would never, ever happen in England at a club game or tournament (I mean the players consenting to duplicate the boards, not the mutiny). Anyway, at tournaments it is usual that everyone plays all the same boards; at larger clubs too. Our once-a-week club does not find it practical to have more than one set of boards available, but with hesitation movements we can often all play the same 24 boards. Unfortunately with 12 tables we play a revenge round instead of a double-weave Mitchell.

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(or, more likely, cause half the players to habitually show up 10 minutes late). I wouldn't dream of inflicting hand-preduplication on my players, even if I did reliably have Mitchell movements. (If I had two sections, I would do it the oldfashioned way -- give all the odd boards to one section and all the evens to the other, "shuffle deal and play a hand, make a copy of it, and pass it to the other section.")

And the hand records are created how?

Mbodell, on 2012-July-06, 13:31, said:

You are missing the third option, which as I said was extremely common around me before the machines were purchased, which is the directors hand duplicate the hands before the session.

Not such a great option if using volunteer playing directors, or even paid directors who might end up playing if there is an odd person and no host (or if there are both and a half table).

[Siegmund]

Two things.

Is my club the only one that uses the electronic scorers to record the opening lead? To me, this was a huge benefit to understanding why a seemingly routine result at my table turned out not to be an average, as well as a great way to harvest lesson hands. The players can see right away whether the active or the passive lead, or the high or the low card from JTxx, led to an extra trick. For me personally, gaining a record of the opening lead at other tables was a bigger gain for me than having hand records was - I had for some years been in the habit of marking interesting boards on my scoresheet, and retrieving a couple boards after every session if I wanted to right them down to study them, while I waited for the results to come out. I wasn't suffering from the lack of a hand record all that much.

If your electronic scorers don't have that capability or you haven't bothered to turn it on, then yeah, there is not much reason to spring for them over a dealing machine.


I agree that to many serious pairs and to the mentor-mentee pairs, gaining hand records is a big plus. But I played in clubs games for many years without predealt hands (its a very new thing for ANY clubs in this area to have dealing machines, and most of them still don't) and even a number of small sectionals I've played at have not used hand records.
On the flip side, there have been quite a few times when I have hated the fact we were using hand records (in tournaments where the players preduplicated before the first round): when the sections had 9 or 13 tables in them, we got to play only 24 boards instead of the normal 27/26, both shortening the session (and robbing me of a dollar's worth of fun) and hurting the quality of the comparison by making it not be an everybody-plays-everybody-in-the-other-line game.
I'm just saying that switching to predealt hands is not purely upside, there are occasional minuses.

(Vampyr: almost every session at a US sectional or regional begins with 10 to 15 minutes of players suiting and duplicating cards, the director collecting all the hand records, and then starting the game. It is a real nuisance, and without machines, accepted as a necessary evil to get hand records. The alternative method I described -- odds to one section and evens to another -- was the standard way of running 18- to 30-table sectionals up until the mid 90s here. There were of course no hand records, as there weren't in any other hand-dealt game, but it was a way to allow two sections to play the same cards.)

[Siegmund]

Also, @mbodell:

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The directors can ask players to suit and sort the hands at the end of the night (while they are waiting for the slow table to finish and the results to be posted)

Are you serious? It's vital the old boards not be destroyed until after the scores are finalized. That's how you check to see if a board got fouled (or, in a multi-site game where it matters, initially misduplicated.) I would be slapping the hands of the directors who asked for that. Hard.

Actually had this happen to me a few years back... a club game the week before a STaC was starting, and the person in charge of next Tuesday's game stand up during the last round and ask people to sort the cards to save her duplicating time - WHILE I was staring at some impossible results on a traveler I had just typed into the computer and getting ready to start asking questions and inspecting the board as soon as it was out of play. I think it is the second-loudest I have ever roared, "NO, don't do that!!!!" in a bridge club. (The loudest was when I heard a table shuffling four boards at the start of round six in a four-table Howell, because someone - not me - had 'helpfully' flipped a card face up after the cards were played for the third time after round four. It was too late to save three of the boards.)

[Mbodell]

Siegmund, on 2012-July-07, 02:04, said:

Also, @mbodell:

Are you serious? It's vital the old boards not be destroyed until after the scores are finalized. That's how you check to see if a board got fouled (or, in a multi-site game where it matters, initially misduplicated.) I would be slapping the hands of the directors who asked for that. Hard.

One of our local club's dealing machine is on the fritz, and I was asked to suit and sort during the last round tonight at the club. The wireless scoring machines also went out midround and missed a round (but I think that might be partly director user error). We also nearly never capture the opening lead in teh club games, even with scoring machines. There was one club that tried to capture the opening lead on travelers without scoring machines, but it was hit and miss.

[blackshoe]

We manage to get the opening lead on our bridgepads, usually, although I wonder how often somebody puts in say ♠2 because all anyone can remember is "it was a small spade" and the opening leader doesn't bother to look at his hand after he's put it away.

[Siegmund]

Ours don't let you click past the opening-lead page even if you want to

Yes, people do sometimes put in the 2 when they dont know which small spot they mean (it doesnt check to see whether you really have the card you type in of course.)

Given a few months of regularly playing, many though not most of the members here have developed a habit of typing in the score and the opening lead at the start of the play rather than after the fact.

[pigpenz]

I know where I live in northern California we have gone to wireless scorers and dealing machines

its pretty nice hand records with all the results online

http://www.bridgewebs.com/redding/

this is an example of what can be done with them
its pretty nice especially when they get the hand records correct...LOL

[wank]

call me paranoid but in proper events i'm sure some people are 'at it' when they're filling in the scores on the bridgemates.

fortunately in england we tend to be quite anal and east-west tend to check closely that everything was inputted correctly, but when i've played abroad it all tends to be rather more haphazard.

i finished 2nd by 5MPs out of 5000 to a pair recently in a decent sized event with several k of loot on offer. during our 2 board round against them they 'accidentally' entered -200 as +200 which fortunately we spotted. then at the prize giving ceremony one of the dutch bermuda bowl winners came and told us we had been robbed as the winning pair had found 2 unbelievably good leads against him on their 2 board round, including K from KJ doubleton of clubs round to a strong 2♣ opener when leader's partner had had an opportunity to double 3♣ stayman (it's matchpoints, remember). it makes you wonder how many other bridgemate accidents occurred.

[pigpenz]

wank, on 2012-July-21, 12:36, said:

call me paranoid but in proper events i'm sure some people are 'at it' when they're filling in the scores on the bridgemates.

fortunately in england we tend to be quite anal and east-west tend to check closely that everything was inputted correctly, but when i've played abroad it all tends to be rather more haphazard.

i finished 2nd by 5MPs out of 5000 to a pair recently in a decent sized event with several k of loot on offer. during our 2 board round against them they 'accidentally' entered -200 as +200 which fortunately we spotted. then at the prize giving ceremony one of the dutch bermuda bowl winners came and told us we had been robbed as the winning pair had found 2 unbelievably good leads against him on their 2 board round, including K from KJ doubleton of clubs round to a strong 2♣ opener when leader's partner had had an opportunity to double 3♣ stayman (it's matchpoints, remember). it makes you wonder how many other bridgemate accidents occurred.

even at our club there is almost always one board scored incorrectly per game.
EW have to OK but don't always look, and problems arise if North starts to enter in wrong scored and has to change.
not counting the cost, its really nice but I am guessing everything must run about 3-5K$ USA? dealing machine plus wireless scoring.

[SteveMoe]

Our unit invested in the auto dealer well before we chose to use auto scoring.
The auto dealer enables hand records for every game - something that has become an expectation of the novice and the grandmaster alike.
We began posting the press reports and hand records to the club's website so everyone could see their hand-by-hand results and their awards.
When we did switch to auto scoring, we found he director's work load reduced somewhat, but the plus for the players was the additional hand information and presentation of results pair by pair enabled by the application - making the press report even more useful.

Dealer first. Scoring when size beckons help.

[pigpenz]

is there much difference between the autodealers price wise for the ones that read special cards vs the one that can read any type of card

[Quantumcat]

Dealing machines are vital - any club without one is totally backwards. I think I heard something about grants available to help clubs buy them? I'll look it up.

[pigpenz]

Quantumcat, on 2012-July-23, 01:37, said:

Dealing machines are vital - any club without one is totally backwards. I think I heard something about grants available to help clubs buy them? I'll look it up.

it would seem it would come down to the cost
if too expensive then only large scale clubs could afford them, hmmm
maybe the acbl could use some of their non profit dollars for this purpose

[Vampyr]

pigpenz, on 2012-July-23, 17:31, said:

if too expensive then only large scale clubs could afford them, hmmm

Not necessarily. A club that does not have a large enough surplus to save up could, for instance, charge $1 or £1 or one whatever more for a year to build up the funds.

[pigpenz]

Vampyr, on 2012-July-24, 05:53, said:

Not necessarily. A club that does not have a large enough surplus to save up could, for instance, charge $1 or £1 or one whatever more for a year to build up the funds.

we have 6 games a week here where I live in Northern California, they wont even share the duplicating machines and wireless terminals with each other let alone the unit game which is held 10 months of the year...all the members of each club are members of the other clubs....don't understand their politics here but its a shame they do things this way.

so the only way a club that only meets once a week could afford something like this is sharing with another club or costs have to come down.

[Vampyr]

pigpenz, on 2012-July-24, 09:56, said:

so the only way a club that only meets once a week could afford something like this is sharing with another club or costs have to come down.

Our local once-a-week club bought a Duplimate machine several years ago and Bridgemates the year after that. We did it by taking out loans from the members, although that was just in place of buying them 9 or 12 months later, since the loans were paid off early.

[Quantumcat]

I should have added, wireless scoring is really only useful if you have lots and lots of tables, and players usually have to wait twenty minutes or longer to get a result after the game.

If your players just go home and wait till next week to see the result, wireless scorers would be a waste of money.

They can also be used by players who want to improve - for instance after a pairs game I usually check on one of the machines my matchpoints on each board, then write that down next to the hands on the hand record, so then I can figure out why I did badly on some boards. But if you don;t have hand records it's unlikely any of your club members would be interested in that, even if it was available, since they just aren't used to it.

If you end up getting them, I like Bridgepads over Bridgemates. Bridgepads use more of their surface area on their buttons, old people have an easier time using them. And you can scale the text up or down, so if you have mostly old people in an event you can scale it up, otherwise scale it down and have more info fit on the screen. Bridgemates (the new ones) use the screen as a touch screen but I don;t klike the software and don't think it's as user friendly as it could be.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2012-July-24, 11:10, said:

Our local once-a-week club bought a Duplimate machine several years ago and Bridgemates the year after that. We did it by taking out loans from the members, although that was just in place of buying them 9 or 12 months later, since the loans were paid off early.

Our once-a-week, 8-10 table club did it by the club manager/director voluntarily buying the Duplimate himself, and the club is paying him back over several years.

[shevek]

Quantumcat, on 2012-July-24, 16:33, said:

I should have added, wireless scoring is really only useful if you have lots and lots of tables, and players usually have to wait twenty minutes or longer to get a result after the game.

If your players just go home and wait till next week to see the result, wireless scorers would be a waste of money.

They can also be used by players who want to improve - for instance after a pairs game I usually check on one of the machines my matchpoints on each board, then write that down next to the hands on the hand record, so then I can figure out why I did badly on some boards. But if you don;t have hand records it's unlikely any of your club members would be interested in that, even if it was available, since they just aren't used to it.

If you end up getting them, I like Bridgepads over Bridgemates. Bridgepads use more of their surface area on their buttons, old people have an easier time using them. And you can scale the text up or down, so if you have mostly old people in an event you can scale it up, otherwise scale it down and have more info fit on the screen. Bridgemates (the new ones) use the screen as a touch screen but I don;t klike the software and don't think it's as user friendly as it could be.

Are you sure about this? This is my understanding:

The orginal Dutch Bridgemate Pros with 2 lines of text & a black key for the director were a bit clunky.
Then came American bridgepads with a bigger screen to enter all data at once & display more results.
Then Brdigemate 2s, which are a bit better again, though expensive.
Finally Swedish bridgescorers are the ones with touch screens. I like these & they give the best feedback, including leads at other tables, percentages for all scores on a board, not just yours. Can even display hand records & deep finesse analysis.