bridgemate11 or Tablets
We use BMpro and are about to update. BM11 is down in price but tablets are cheaper! Anyone recently changed? Is it BridgeTabs,
Arc scorer or Brian.
If so how do you keep the tablets charged up.They will only do 2 sessions. Someone has to take them home?
be good to hear some findings..
Comments
I am willing to comment as a user of tablets - but too much detail for this forum - suggest you send a contact to Northampton Bridge Club contact page and I will answer any queries.
We have been using BriAn on very cheap Kindle Fire tablets for over a year. Very happy.
Yes they do need to be charged (we do this after every session), but we are lucky with a lockable cabinet with a power supply in it.
One plus of Brian is that players can use their own phones/tablets.
We use BridgeTabs, using a variety of tablets, but the best we have found in the £30-50 range have been the Kindle Fires. We are fortunate to have our own building and so they are all plugged in to charge at the end of each session - with digital timers so that they only charge for 3 hours before sessions are scheduled to start.
For the most part I have found the system to be quite good, though their support is terrible, so I would only look at doing this if you have 1 or 2 IT gurus in the club. Once it is working, non-experts can easily use it, but it is good to have an expert in case issues arise.
This we have feeding into ScoreBridge automatically and I have never seen any problems with that side of things.
The app for the tablets is fine for people to use and their is an admin tab for replacing tablets (should a battery die, or software issue happen). If there are no problems, then it is great, however, there is no option for entering an average (only not played) and no way to ender adjusted scores etc - for that you need to manually adjust in ScoreBridge.
Is Brian user friendly?
If you are not careful there is a big problem with this set up. The 'Not Played' button is (or at least can be) available to the players without any TD authorisation therefore the TD will not know this has been done. So there is no chance for the TD to decide if Average minus is appropriate for repeat (or even first) offenders.
This is compounded by Scorebridge which in this case deletes the line from the scoresheet for the board so it is not immediately obviously to the scorer that this has happened and less straightforward than one would like for the TD now to insert the Average minus. If you take the Scorebridge default of 'Simple Matchpointing' as opposed to Neuberg then the distortion to the final results is compounded further.
EBUScore will show the problem of the missing scores (and default to Neuberg) but it will probably be too late for the TD to determine who is a fault for the board not being played.
I played at a club with this set up and on the fourth round we found we were the first table to play a board. It had been on the sit out table once and 'Not Played' twice with the TD completely oblivious to what had happened.
Another thread has dealt with the question of 'Not Played' against 'Averages' in general but with this set up it is really easy for people to play slowly against the better players so that they play fewer boards against them.
I would not recommend any system where 'Not Played' can be entered without any TD authorisation and which does not allow the TD to enter artificial adjusted scores. i.e. a system which does not ensure that a score is entered for every board scheduled to be played.
Not being able to enter adjusted scores via the tablets is a problem, but not a big one as it is easy enough to complete in Scorebridge at the end.
I am interested in your thought that 'Not Played' has a big impact on the scores when compared with 50-50 / 60-40 etc. as from my maths, this was limited.
Example, in a 25 board movement, max is 200 (edit: was assuming 5 tables, 5 board rounds). So if there is a board missed and someone had 115 points so far, if the board is not played then the max for them becomes 192. 115/192 = 59.9%
If 50-50 is given, then 119/200 = 59.5%
So the difference is 0.4% overcall.
Should someone be on 96 points so far, then 96/192 = 50% if the board is 'not played'
or 100/200 = 50% if the board is averaged at 50-50
Or the difference is zero
Should a player be on 60 points so far, then 60/192 = 31.25% if the board is 'not played'
or 64/200 = 32% if an average 50-50 is given
In this instance, altering from 50-50 to 60-40 would change the scores by 0.4% overall in either direction depending on who gets the penalty.
Your assumption, Paul, was that the worse players would play slowly against the better players? If so, then 'not played' against a pair that is running at 115 in the first 24 boards would have this result:
115/192 = 59.9%
Whereas awarding 60-40 in favour of the better (and presumably faster) players would have this result:
119.8/200 = 59.9%
So, no difference.
Whenever I look at the maths between 'not played' and 'average', the differences are minimal. I am unsure of the differences between simple matchpoint and neuberg, so I am not sure what effect that would have?
At least at my club, I have never known anyone to have entered 'not played' off their own back.
Your response has been great! especially Ross. Thanks. Looking at Bridgetabs they are clear but too much information could slow things down! With the new prices for Bridgemates and the tech known to members the decision is harder. The old BMpro's still work. I hesitate to do anything that may slow down play. I wish we could go faster. Anyone keep to 7 mins. a board?
When comparing Bridgetabs and Bridgemates you need to remember the technology has moved on and I suggest that the tablet (or phone) inputting system is a move forward in technology.
Slow play is always a problem - we have used Michael Rothwell's timer (see EBU mag Feb 2018 p 36) for the past 12 months or so. It is simple to use, almost automatic and versatile. In my view the big advantage is that slow players now understand why the director calls the move when he does and they start to speed up. You need a second display screen for the timer e.g. an old laptop. or simply run it on your existing screen and forgo rolling results for some of the session.
We have also put do's and don't on our web site giving tips on how to speed up. The visual timer seems to work well. The only downside is it is more work for the scorers, allowance has to be made for extra time on the first round, so we only start the timer when the room is settled (it automatically adjusts to the pre-set finish time, and it needs adjusting when things go wrong e.g. movement reset or scoring problems . Overall it changes behaviour without imposing fines /words etc.
When a pair is on 65% on 23 boards in a 24 board game, having missed one board through slow play, if they are incorrectly given a "Not Played" they will score 65% overall. If they are correctly given 40% for the unplayed board, their overall score will be 63.96%. That's not a minimal difference - it could easily be the difference between winning and not.