[McBruce]

On Saturday, 17 August, we had our quarterly Mentor-Mentee game at the local club, a 22-board 30-table game where the area's newer players are paired up with the area's more experienced players, who play for free. I get to play the hands in advance and create a web page with my occasionally-intelligent comments, then act as Vice-Director In Charge Of How The Hell Do We Ensure 120 People All Play Exactly The Same 22 Boards Without Accidentally Repeating Any? (Answer: 4 preduplicated sets and a Web Movement.)

Today's new feature was that we were going to use a projector to let people watch four of the Mentees replay some of the hands at a teaching table on BBO. With evil grins on our faces, Jillybean and I planned that the four people who were playing the hands would be seated with their backs to the wall where the projection was being beamed, so that every bid or play the poor saps played, seeing only one or two hands, would be instantly recognizable for its weaknesses by everyone else, who were seeing all four hands! It was a fun time for all, and we'll do it again in three months...but it very nearly did not come off.

Once the game got started smoothly, I decided now would be a good time to log into BBO and figure out how to set everything up for the post-game fun. Yes, (P) these ® games (O) are © quarterly, ® which (A) means (S) I (T) had (I) about (N) 92 (A) other (T) days (I) to (O) learn (N) this, but how hard could it be? My BBO chops aren't what they used to be, but I have run tournaments in the past. Anyhow, the first step was converting to LIN from the PBN file I had. Actually, this was the only step that caused problems, partly because of my equipment. I used the Pavlicek command line program to do it, but Windows 7 coughed up a complaint, saying that this 32-bit DOS junk was over years ago and refused even to look at it from a 64-bit pedestal. I switched to Linux and used DOSemu to get the job done, but apparently this wasn't quite right either: no hands imported, check file source. Jillybean decided to search available yellows for help.

We were in Round 4 of 11 at the time, and Georgi asked us to send the offending file. We did, and we were in Round 7 when I discovered a response. (Actually, gmail evidence clocks Georgi's response time at all of TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES!) Not only did Georgi send a corrected file that worked like a charm, but also sent enough detail to correct future such problems. I think a thank you and a mention here is the least I can do. Bravissimo!

[jillybean]

Yes, thanks again Diana & Georgi ♥

McBruce FYP , it was four Mentors who replayed the hands, no Mentees.