New Youtube EBUScore demo videos
I’ve recently uploaded a couple of new demos to Youtube, continuing my series in which I demonstrate EBUScore for pairs events. These films cover situations that have previously caused difficulties for scorers at our club. I hope you find these useful. Any feedback is welcome.
Revising the movement during play
Cancelling the event and restarting, including how tio reset the bridgemates
On my YouTube channel you will also find my first demos where I cover using EBUScore for Pairs events
Here's the document I reference in both videos - you may also find this useful.
Mark Humphris
Comments
Hi Mark,
Nice but there are some caveats on Arrowsitching. This is to do with renumbering the pairs from standard to switched Mitchell.
If a round is switched, it becomes a one winner movement, so each pair needs a unique number. The program always 'internally' keeps a unique number for any pair (NS 1 to 9, EW 10 to 18) so that isnt a problem and the previous scores will be retained. The problem is with BCS recognising the new pairings. If you had previously numbered without a EW Addon of number of tables, then when Pair 1NS plays Pair1 EW, it must be renumbered to 1 v 10 since each number must be unique in a switched mitchell.
Otherwise, some names (renumbered from 1 to 10, 2 to 11 etc) are lost on BMs, ‘Read all Results’, will throw errors from nrfor the Update Movement Round, because it reports say a result from 1 v 1 but the program is expecting 1 v 10 after the switch change. And if you do an Update for Round 9, when Round 8 is in prgoress, then you will get errors when the remaining Round 8 results are reported again because of the mismatched pairs.
So the best time to do this is when all the results from an earlier round are in, and noone has started the next round. There is a little known trick to obviate this (which I see is set in the video)....if you always add number of tables to the EW pair in your initial setup, then you wont hit any problem with Update Movement for switching a round!
As a general guide, BCS Update Movement in pairs can be most safely used for:
-- Removing round(s)
Thanks Jeff, well spotted, I guess what you are saying is that if the scorer hasn't set the movement up as a single winner mitchell, or you haven't ticked “E/W add No. of Tables” then this fix won't work?
My target audience is scorers at my club where we always play single winner mitchell movements, but sometimes, using previous versions of EBU Score the scorer forgot to specify which rounds to switch. Ironically, since upgrading to 1.2. EBUScore, this error is less likely as the movement selection in the later versions is much clearer and the user is prompted by a drop down window to specify the arrow switch. An excellent enhancement.
But your comment highlights a much wider point. These intricacies of EBUScore are known to very few people other than perhaps yourself and a select band of others. Bungling amateurs, like me, do our best to help increase wider awareness of how to use this excellent scoring program. But what is needed is a professionally produced, comprehensive and rigorous set of user documentation that explains all the many features of the program. This would include for example how to cope when things go wrong, how to specify your own club preferred movements, and what all of the various buttons actually do. I scoured the internet for such when our club first made the switch, and there is a lot of stuff available, including your original manual. But there is nothing that fully covers what I list above. I’ve muddled through as best I can, and I’ve tried to spread the word to potentially benefit others. But I feel many prospective users of EBUScore might be put off by the absence of comprehensive and rigorous user guides.
I believe there is an opportunity for the EBU to devote some proper resource to address this need, and produce the documentation that will really help all users master this excellent product.
Mark Humphris
here, here !!!
You are right! There are a few clubs who have done manuals and one of the most useful is Tony Howarth's for the WBU:
http://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwom/bw.cgi?club=westwales&pid=docs_TD Guide Pairsscorer.pdf
He also has published a comprehensive suite of documents on what to do if things go wrong.
The usage by a club will be somewhat simpler to the needs of County or NBO and maybe warrants a simplified manual. I suspect County or NBOs have more IT literate Users.
The program supports a huge amount of functionality some of which is rarely used and is also always expanding to cover new requirements. I think Robin Barkers training manual is well presented....and there is the BMTest program to help train a user in live operation albeit it can never entirely replicate the real BCS.
We did plan to do a reduced functionality Club Pairs/Team EBUScore a6t some stage with the minimum functions...Would that be something you think clubs would prefer?
Thanks Jeff - I don't quite follow you're last point, I have no problem with the program itself so don't really see a need for a reduced functionality version. It's just the lack of comprehensive user documentation that causes bungling amateurs like me to create our own that is the problem.
I was aware of some of Tony's previous work, his latest update is excellent. This is another really good example of just what is missing from the EBU. For instance, without reference to Tony's guide, or one that I have written, nobody would have a clue what the "Restart" button is for.
In what other field would the distributors of a software package leave it up to the users to develop their own manuals?
Perhaps Jonathan or Gordon at the EBU would like to comment on this issue? If not I'll raise a separate thread. There really is a need for a comprehensive guide that covers the entire functionality of the program, how to respond to unexpected events and jsut what all the buttons do. Robin's guide is great at getting users started but it is a long way from what is really needed. Why not get some professionals in to produce a comprehensive set of user docuemenation?
Mark Humphris
HI Mark. I have the impression that you are not a typical club user of EBUScore. EBUScore has been developed in response to our needs as a national organisation, but it's clear that most clubs don't need the majority of the features. I think they would welcome a simplified version of the program much more than they would like to have extensive documentation to explain every detail of the programs as they are. That's why Robin's guide is aimed as it is, because that seems to be the greatest need among clubs, to get started with the frequently-used features.
I'm happy for us to consider expanding the documentation, but I don't think there would be sufficient interest to justify the cost of a professionally-produced comprehensive set of user documents.
I'd be happy to hear from other clubs and scorers what they would like:
What we have in mind for a simplified version is something designed to score single-session Pairs or Teams games, with a fairly limited range of options. This would cover the vast majority of club games and help the less-experienced TDs and scorers with running them. The full suite of EBUScore programs, as used by us for national events, would still be available to clubs for when they run their less-frequent more-complex events, which are likely to have their more experienced scorers running them.
Gordon, I totally agree with Mark about documentation. Having had a career in IT, in my experience, good documentation is essential to systems development. It is not just as a user guide but also critical in the development stages to get user requirements correct and to be the basis of good unit and systems testing. I would advise against having two versions of any software as this is notoriously difficult to manage and is likely to lead to complications and errors. Again good documentation should be the answer to different levels of use and users.
And yet clubs tell us they want to keep their current (paid for) scoring program because it's all-in-one and doesn't give lots of options they will never need.
I might also say the same thing to you Mick that I said to Mark, which is that you are clearly not a typical club user. Although I'm taking note of your points, it's really their views I'm looking for.
Rather than having two programs, one with simpler features it might be, perhaps, possible to have a simpler version which is the same in programming terms but offers the option to run off some features so that less experienced scorers see only a limited menu range. The database software I used some years ago in a school had that feature and it helped those who weren't very confident or experienced.