[mrdct]

I've notice a couple of this with the Cavendish coverage:

1. In movie, imps seem to be scored up against some sort of datum on the fly. Is that using Deep Finesse or some other technique?

2. At the change of round the new players and boards load without having to close the vugraph presentation.

I've never actually run vugraph og pairs events, but I'm interested to kinow how it works for pairs events.

[uday]

The imp scores are meaningless, i think. I believe the software has always had the ability to reload.

Pairs have some issues in terms of logging.

[nikos59]

The automatic logging is definitely not working
for the Cavendish. I was able to record semi-manually
all the 1st session but I missed the first three
rounds of the 2nd session (humans have to sleep sometimes).

All the results so far are at:

http://sarantakos.co...5/2005-cav.html

and the page will be updated (hopefully) with the rest of the 2nd
session and the 3rd session, but I cannot guarantee
anything for the 4th session.

What I am doing is: while watching
the Vugraph, I exit after each round is over, and then I
store the lin file somewhere. I also write down the players'
names and then I open the lin file with notepad and
add them in the pn line. Then I upload it. If you want to
help, you can send me files from the 4th session along
with names. But please no "Hamman-Zia v Bocchi-Duboin"
because we want to know who was S, N etc.
Better to start from South and proceed klockwise,
e.g: Hamman, Duboin, Zia, Bocchi.

After all, I guess the auto-logging would work if the operator
had one single (big) file for each session, with board nos 1 to 27
(then someone would have to add players' names and possibly
to split the file into nine smaller files),
OR,
if the operator would close the table after each round was over.

I am not sure about the above, some advance experimentation is
in order.

Nikos

[DenisO]

The Cavendish is a great event to watch live at your PC but there are two big problems when trying to record the matches.

(i) The BBO software doesn't record any player names in the lin files - this is a known problem and is somewhere on Fred's "To Do" list. This can be overcome if someone like Nikos or myself (trying to log the broadcast) is actually at their PC - by writing down the player names and later editing the lin file. Even better is for the operator or a Yellow to give the player names (exact locations needed) at the start of each 3-bd round - this allows for sleep

(ii) Automatic logging is not working properly - all that is being saved to the BBO archive is the last round of each session. I suspect that this is because the operator (who is very experienced) is renaming the file for each round. This is great if you are actually watching a session because at the end of each round you just have to leave the Vugraph room momentarily and you have a nice file for each round of the session. But the downside appears to be that the operator would have to close the room momentarily to get the same effect, ie a log of each round, in the BBO archive. At the moment the session broadcast is left open for all 8/9 rounds and it would appear that each round is overwritten by the succeeding round. I don't know if this is a problem with the software or if it's an effect that the operator is unaware of but it's a pity that so little is being saved to the archive.

Hopefully these problems can be resolved before next year's event.

Denis

[sdoty]

Hello,

While I hate reviving dead threads, I thought I'd respond to a few of the comments/issues raised earlier this month (I was the operator at both the 2004 and 2005 Cavendish tournaments).

For the pairs event, at the start of each round I receive a disk with the three boards to be played that round. At no point do I have access to all 27 boards; given the prize money at stake, this is an understandable security precaution and I can't imagine the tournament organizers changing this.

Every time I get a new disk I have to 'reset' the table, specifying the board numbers that are going to be played that round so that the correct (new) hand files are loaded.

I can accomplish this by closing down and opening a new table, but it can also be done without closing the table. (Uday was correct: this functionality was available last year.) When I reset the table information via the F2 function (in order to have the system pull in the new hands), it resets the movie and, evidently, the log file. This is why the movie only ever shows a set of 3 hands, and why the results from previous rounds aren't available at the table.

If I -did- have all 27 hands at once (and could therefore specify boards 1-27 in the initial table startup, rather than '1-3', then '4-6', etc) all 27 hands would automatically log just fine.

I suspect that for the majority of pairs events the operator will receive all of the hands for the session at once... so this entire discussion is really only relevant to a -very- few number of events.

A record *is* generated correctly for each round if I close the table after each round and then open a new one. This is how we did things at the start of the 2004 Cavendish. However we decided that it was better to keep the table open continuously -- even though it meant that the deals were not logged -- because the constant closing/reopening of the table was very disruptive to the audience and commentators. In essense we opted to cater to the majority of the audience members who were simply interested in watching the event, rather than the relatively small number of us who are interested in viewing the log files afterwards.

So, to address part of Denis' post: yes, I was absolutely aware that that log files weren't being generated correctly. It was regretable, but it couldn't be avoided without constant table hopping which wasn't an acceptable option.

I can also say that the log files wouldn't have been generated correctly even if I had left the event title identical throughout the entire session. I began changing the title each round in an effort to be helpful, so that the files created upon leaving the vugraph theater didn't overwrite themselves (I believe it was Nikos who messaged me about that during the broadcast, and I did my best to accomodate).

In retrospect, it wouldn't have been too irksome to manually save each round myself had I known in advance that it was needed, and that will be my solution for this problem at next year's Cavendish. I'm not sure that all operators would be able to employ this solution reliably (there's a lot to keep tabs on during a broadcast that has changing players) but I don't think that this problem even exists for any other tournament.

Susan

[DenisO]

sdoty, on Jun 1 2005, 03:38 AM, said:

In retrospect, it wouldn't have been too irksome to manually save each round myself had I known in advance that it was needed, and that will be my solution for this problem at next year's Cavendish.   
Susan

Thank you Susan for very helpful reply giving this insight into broadcasting a difficult event. In particular your offer to help in logging next year's event is much appreciated. Hopefully by then Fred will have enabled player name logging for Pairs events so it will be easier to obtain the complete record. Nikos and I (and I think one other European nightowl) did manage to get nearly all of this year's event - even some of the extra table with Hamman/Zia

For anyone interested it is all available at Nikos' site :
http://www.sarantako...5/2005-cav.html

Lots of info on past Cavendishes on the site as well.

Denis