Bridge hand generator
Thomas Andrews
to user specifications. If anybody would like to see it, I can
email a shar file containing the source code.
There are a couple of reasons one might want to use a program like
this:
1) Bidding practice. If you are playing a big club system,
it is nice to have a single practice session with your partner
practicing just your 1C auctions.
2) "Solve" disputes. The other day I told my partner I
shouldn't have made an asking bid because I should have
known game was on. He said the asking bid was a good idea
because there was a rare case when game was not such a good
idea. I dealt a batch of hands which showed that in the
worst case, the opponents had to find a hard lead if I jumped,
but it would be much less difficult after making the asking bid...
3) Bridge problems. Like the Master Solvers' Club. (I still
think I found the best answer to problem (H) in the Feb'92 MSC.
I would never have found it at the table, but I'm convinced it
is right to lead a club. Maybe I'll post the hand at some later
date.)
The dealer uses TCL (Tool Command Language), an embedded language,
for the specification of hands. To build the application, you need
to get the TCL library and build it. It is available via anonymous
ftp from sprite.berkeley.edu in pub/tcl6.7.tar.Z.
Also, as of now, the formatting is done by seperate scripts written
in perl. If you don't have perl, the dealer won't be of much use...
I've only compiled this program on Unix workstations (Sun, HP, and a
few others.) I believe the code is as portable as TCL...
If your still interested, send me mail with:
Subject: Requesting Dealer
Some simple examples of the dealer:
% deal 25
Deals 25 hands, with no restrictions. (Normal dealing...)
% deal -S 'AK54 A542 98 T98' 25
Deals 25 hands where south hold the specified hand.
% deal -i dfile 25
Deals 25 hands which match the description in
"dfile". TCL is used in dfile...
Example dfile:
# This file accepts deals where south has a "Blue"
# 1C opening and North has 3+ controls.
main {
reject unless {[controls north]>=3}
set w [south]
reject unless {$w >=17}
if {[balanced south]} {
reject if {$w==17} {$w>=22 && $w<=24}
}
accept
}
--
Thomas Andrews
CenterLine Software