[EzioBridge]

Hi,
This isn't a question about the BBO software specifically, but I wanted to ask whether anyone here knew of any software that was able to capture (by taking a photo) deals/hands printed on paper and - presumably using character-recognition technology - turn them into some sort of Bridge hand format file?

For example, I've access to a lot of old Bridge hand records (printed paper copies - not handwritten, but 'typed'), many of which provide good 'practice hands' for learners to play (either 'real', or against a robot). I'd love to be able to capture many of these hands into a standard file format that I could then use to either pass to a mechanical 'Bridge Dealing Machine' or possibly (if it were possible), upload to allow play against a robot.
The Bridge hand records are formatted in the standard North, East, South, West format, with each hand showing, obviously, Spades, Hearts,Diamonds, Clubs.


I've tried using quite a few standard image->text scanning apps, and none seem to recognise the suit symbols.
Thanks for any pointers or advice.
Ezio

[barmar]

You could try sending email to the editors of bridge magazines, like Bridge World or the ACBL Bulletin. It seems like they would be most in need of software like this.

[pescetom]

I've looked for such a solution without success, but good luck.

[hrothgar]

MATLAB + Image Processing Toolbox will do this, but the learning curve is going to be steep

[EzioBridge]

Thanks for the replies (even the 'negative' one, because it's good to know others too have searched thoroughly and been unsuccessful).
Thanks for the idea of MATLAB too. If/when I have time, I'd like to pursue that.

[hrothgar]

EzioBridge, on 2020-January-17, 11:41, said:

Thanks for the replies (even the 'negative' one, because it's good to know others too have searched thoroughly and been unsuccessful).
Thanks for the idea of MATLAB too. If/when I have time, I'd like to pursue that.

On the MATLAB front:

1. The MathWorks now sells home licenses for a fairly trivial amount

2. If you decide that you want to go down this route, I have a bunch of friends who work at The MathWorks (including the product manager for Image Processing Toolbox).

It SHOULD be easy enough to get symbols like ♠ and the like added to the Optical Character Recognition dictionary and have them map to some text string.
I can probably get someone to throw together some demo code if I call in a favor...

[Tommah]

I recently started writing software to do this. If you have deals that you want to convert, send me a message and we can discuss it.