Hosting Virtual Bridge Club on BBO (or similar)
I have been asked by a few club members if it is possible to run a virtual club session like the EBU ones now hosted on BBO. I am a novice on BBO but quick to learn. Grateful if anyone with more experience, could advise:
1. Is this possible?
2. Link to advice on how to set it up?
3. Any particular issues?
Comments
I ran a free 6-table event for Broadstairs Bridge Club last night. The people who played were in general those who would never have ventured into the EBU events.
The first step is that you have to email support@bridgebase.com for them to authorise you to be a director. I did this about 3 weeks ago. Since then BBO have had capacity problems and last weekend had to cancel all free tournaments. They have now added capacity but I am not sure if that has affected their willingness to authorise new directors.
Assuming you get through that stage you then need to get your members to register with BBO and get a username. You then need to collect these user names. I used a form on the Broadstairs Bridgewebs site to do this. It is still there so you can take a look at it. The reason for this is that you presumably want to restrict your event to club members and not allow anybody in the world to join.
When BBO authorise you as a director they should point you in the direction of their general instructions for running events. So I will just mention the particular issues relating to running an event for your club. This mainly what you do to restrict the event club members. There are two ways to do this. The first and what should be the best is by using an 'Include List'. You enter the list of club member usernames on to this list and you set the event up so that only people on that list can play. I did not get this to work because of 3 issues. I got errors when I tried to save the list. I think this may have been due to capacity problems at the time. There appears to be no check to ensure that the username entered is valid. More than one member missed out spaces when registering their username with the club. Finally if you add someone to the list after the event is created this is not automatically picked up. BBO do suggest a work around but I could not get this to work but that may have been related to the other issues.
So what I got to work was adding all the club members as my 'Friends' (fantastic for a billy-no-mates like me) then you can limit the tournament to those whom you are following. This did work even for people I added on the night. However I think the 'Include List' is the proper solution and I will probably have another go at making it work.
That brings me to the next point. I ran what I told members were test events for just 3 tables and 6 boards. I had 4 attempts before I got one of these to work, although the first two aborted attempts were caused by the capacity problems. So I would recommend not raising peoples expectations by running a full event for everybody as your first effort.
The feedback that I have had has been positive and I expect we will hold several events a week.
Let me know if you have any other questions and it will be worth reporting back here what BBO say when you ask to be a director.
There's a useful thread on BBF, especially the bit from Diana_eva, at https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/81841-running-a-pairs-tournament/page__pid__991790#entry991790
Thanks Gordon and Paul. From barmar's post at 0713 today in the thread mentioned by Gordon https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/81841-running-a-pairs-tournament/page__pid__991790#entry991790 it appears BBO won't be allowing any similar tournaments for a while. I see the EBU now have four tournaments a day on BBO and will point those who want to play with a partner online to these sessions.
Any reason clubs aren’t pushing Bridge Club Live? I’m going through the process now. Only disadvantage is you play against strangers unless you play in Social or Teams rooms.
It may be that it seems to demand more commitment since it works on monthly subscriptions, although they do have a free guest membership. Do let us know how you get on and how it compares with the alternatives.
BCL membership is soaring. Yes, we do ask for subscriptions (unless you play in the free Guest Room which has limited services), but we currently have a £1 for a month offer, and we don't charge extra for Tournaments.
71 F2F clubs have registered so far with BCL to enjoy new features aimed at facilitating their own club members easier contact with each other and to know who is about and where in the club. We can also filter results within the main rooms to show just those of our F2F club.
What there are not plans to do is to create 71 new rooms for each of these clubs, many of which would struggle to get critical mass. As Triffid says, he can arrange for 4 from his club to have a private table in a main room or for 8 to have a Teams of Four friendly. But one thing that players do seem to like is having many comparisons of scores that large fields generate.
BCL and BBO and Funbridge are all very different to each other. Like Gordon, I am also interested in comments from online players.
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
As requested, a bit of feedback.
A friend and long term on-line player highly recommended BCL.
So we (Petersfield Bridge Club) tried to set something up.
I am afraid it has not been a happy experience.
It has taken over a week for BCL to acknowledge the Club application.
The site has had serious issues over recent days.
And now new registrations are on hold and the Guest Room closed!
BBO is frustrating in that we can't run mp sessions (because we don't have a TD, see above)
But we are running casual tables and Teams Matches.
Some of us have played at the EBU, but it would be nice to have a more 'local' tournament.
Agree with Barrie that a Club might be too small, but maybe a County level event would work?
(However, I see Wimbledon and Richmond are both getting big fields for their events.)
Also I tried to set up something for our Improvers Group.
Not many takers so far, they all seem to be playing on Trickster.
What does anyone know about Trickster?
We are now in a position to run a number of private games on BBO for clubs providing they can pay the TD who does it and submit the results for UMS in the usual way. Email me if you want more information about this.
For smaller clubs they might think about combining with another one that runs at the same time.
Gordon, as this topic of online bridge is likely to grow rapidly, maybe you should think about setting up a separate forum "Online Bridge". Just a thought.
For the moment, we don't seem to be getting many posts of any sort here, but if that changes I'll keep that in mind.
Virtual Online Clubs are now possible on BBO and we will be sending out a letter today to all clubs and counties explaining how it works. In particular it will allow you to run any size game whenever you want and charge for them.
Thanks Gordon, I am sure that will be of great interest to several of my local clubs.