How to obtain hand record files for sectional/regional/NABC
Bud H
are available, is there any way I can obtain the file (pbn format, for
example) containing the hand records for that session?
(This would make it much easier than manually entering in the hands
into Deep Finesse and/or Dealmaster Pro or Double Dummy Solver.)
Alan Malloy
This isn't possible at any of the tournaments I've been to, except the
NABCs of course. I agree it would be nice, but I think you'd need to
convince the tournament organizers to start making those available in
your area.
--
Cheers,
Alan (San Jose, California, USA)
Bud H
It should not be difficult for the ACBL, when they post tournament
results for sectionals, regionals, and national tournaments a few days
after the tournament ends, to also be able to include a link to (1) a
pdf copy of the hand record for each session and (2) the hand record
file in PBN (portable bridge notation), LIN (BBO), BRI (Dealer4), or
DUP (Duplimate) format.
(I'm sure the ACBL provides to organizations the files in one of these
formats for producing the boards - I just am not certain what file
format the ACBL typically uses.)
Bud H
Tim DeLaney
I think the ACBL is already moving
in that direction. Since I am making
the boards for Wednesday Night's ACBL
wide Charity Pairs, I have received
via email not only hand records in
PDF format, but also in hnd, dup, and
even txt formats. After the game I'll
forward these to you.
Tim
KWSchneider
This brings up an unfortunate thought...
How many folks like yourself have these records beforehand? Since they
are now available in electronic formats, easily copied and
transmitted, it provides the "opportunity" for someone outside of
those authorized, to access the hands before the Charity event. All it
takes is one unscrupulous individual to initiate a chain of copies.
And then, how can we feel comfortable about the validity of the
winners?
How has this potentiality been addressed?
Kurt
Tim DeLaney
>
> - Show quoted text -
Beats me. In the past, I received
hard copies via snail mail, and I
suppose the same concerns could be
raised about that system.
Tim
Derek Broughton
>> Bud H wrote:
>> > When I play in an ACBL sectional, regional, or NABC where hand records
>> > are available, is there any way I can obtain the file (pbn format, for
>> > example) containing the hand records for that session?
>>
>> > (This would make it much easier than manually entering in the hands
>> > into Deep Finesse and/or Dealmaster Pro or Double Dummy Solver.)
>
> It should not be difficult for the ACBL, when they post tournament
> results for sectionals, regionals, and national tournaments a few days
> after the tournament ends, to also be able to include a link to (1) a
> pdf copy of the hand record for each session and (2) the hand record
> file in PBN (portable bridge notation), LIN (BBO), BRI (Dealer4), or
> DUP (Duplimate) format.
>
> (I'm sure the ACBL provides to organizations the files in one of these
> formats for producing the boards - I just am not certain what file
> format the ACBL typically uses.)
The ACBL probably _can_ provide the hands that way, but I believe they
usually send pre-printed sealed envelopes.
--
derek
thg
able to find hand records for the Platinum Pairs held at the Reno NABC
over the weekend. I know there are plenty of clubs that publish hand
records after a game, I'm sure it would be a trivial matter to post
hands records for NABC+ events.
Security is an obvious concern. It's easy to imagine a set of hand
records being publish before an event is played if the procedures are
not well defined and responsibilities clearly outlined.
For tournaments where dealing machines are in use, the ACBL does not
send hand records in hard copy only, does it? There must be some
electronic transmission of the deals that the dealing machines can
read rather than having a person hand input the deals into the dealing
machine for duplication of boards. ACBL ought to have a utility for
converting these deal files to web pages and/or downloadable files in
a recognized format such as .lin. Even when a tournament does not
involve the use of dealing machines, these files ought to be available
for web publishing of the hand records.
The ACBL does not run regionals and sectionals so they don't
technically have control of what organizers do as far as providing
hand records. But, all regional and sectional results are published
(and archived) at the ACBL website. If the transmission of hand
records were integrated into the electronic transmission of results,
there would be little or no extra effort on the part of organizers and
ACBL could publish the hand records along with results.
Tim
Lone Locust of the Apocalypse
>It should not be difficult for the ACBL, when they post tournament
>results for sectionals, regionals, and national tournaments a few days
>after the tournament ends, to also be able to include a link to (1) a
>pdf copy of the hand record for each session and (2) the hand record
>file in PBN (portable bridge notation), LIN (BBO), BRI (Dealer4), or
>DUP (Duplimate) format.
Recent NABC hand records are available in PDF format:
http://www.acbl.org/play/recent-results.php
However I realize that only covers a small fraction of what you asked for.
Lone Locust of the Apocalypse
>Recent NABC hand records are available in PDF format:
>
>http://www.acbl.org/play/recent-results.php
>
>However I realize that only covers a small fraction of what you asked for.
To clarify, on the "preceding" page that got me there, it states that
only the hand records for regionally-rated and NABC+ events are available
on the NABC page.
I do know that e.g. MABC puts the hand records for its regionals on
its results pages:
Click on a regional, then on an individual daily report for links to
that day's hand records.
Wandering slightly afield of the scope of the original post:
It would be nice if all of this were standardized. By way of
analogy, in the earlier days of the web and up until I think several
years ago, different NHL teams all had their own web pages, layouts,
etc. However the NHL forced them all under its own umbrella, and
now when you go to www.sjsharks.com you get redirected to sharks.nhl.com,
and so on. All the sites are pretty consistent from team to team,
though customized with each team's colors, etc. Occasionally there
are still also custom landing pages touting upcoming games, playoff
achievements, etc.
I was skeptical of the one-size-fits-all approach at first, thinking it
would make things look *too* uniform and sterile, but I have changed my
mind on it, and think the consistency is actually a good thing. I believe
MLB and NFL do similar things.
So perhaps the time has come to unify all the various district web sites.
And as part of that, setting up the infrastructure to make all hand records
available on the web.
Travis Crump
How quaint. As all the tournaments around here use duplimates, I'm sure
the ACBL sends the hand records in some computer readable format.
Sid
<question...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>How many folks like yourself have these records beforehand? Since they
>are now available in electronic formats, easily copied and
>transmitted, it provides the "opportunity" for someone outside of
>those authorized, to access the hands before the Charity event. All it
>takes is one unscrupulous individual to initiate a chain of copies.
Change your thinking. Please do not even entertain those kind of
thoughts.
Sid
Alan Malloy
Wow. Yours is the kind of thinking I would discourage, not Kurt's. Sure,
we like to think bridge players are ethical, and in general we are. But
there are unquestionably some unscrupulous people out there, and
pretending they don't exist is hiding your head in the sand. Personally
I don't care about the ACBL-wide results and don't plan to do anything
about the hand records, but if Kurt were inspired to find a way to run
these events while preventing anyone from having hand records in
advance, surely this would be a good thing?
Derek Broughton
> Sid wrote:
>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:44:39 -0700 (PDT), KWSchneider
>> <question...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> How many folks like yourself have these records beforehand? Since they
>>> are now available in electronic formats, easily copied and
>>> transmitted, it provides the "opportunity" for someone outside of
>>> those authorized, to access the hands before the Charity event. All it
>>> takes is one unscrupulous individual to initiate a chain of copies.
>>
>>
>> Change your thinking. Please do not even entertain those kind of
>> thoughts.
>
> Wow. Yours is the kind of thinking I would discourage, not Kurt's. Sure,
> we like to think bridge players are ethical, and in general we are. But
> there are unquestionably some unscrupulous people out there, and
> pretending they don't exist is hiding your head in the sand. Personally
> I don't care about the ACBL-wide results and don't plan to do anything
> about the hand records, but if Kurt were inspired to find a way to run
> these events while preventing anyone from having hand records in
> advance, surely this would be a good thing?
I agree. Top-ranked players all over the world have been found to cheat, so
it's insane to suggest it doesn't happen - or worse that only by talking
about it will people think of _doing_ it.
I'm not sure there's any way at all to prevent people distributing the hand
records. Even when they send out printed records in sealed envelopes, it's
pretty low-tech to open, read, reseal. You can make somebody ultimately
responsible for a particular set of hand-records, but even if they're
scrupulous about security _before_ the boards are made, once they're made -
especially if made at the table - it becomes harder and harder to oversee
everything.
--
derek
Lone Locust of the Apocalypse
I find Sid's attitude extremely puzzling.
I think people should spend a lot of time thinking about these sorts
of things, not because they themselves intend to cheat, but so that
they can develop effective safeguards and procedures to protect
against *other* people cheating.
Michael Angelo Ravera
We do make these available for the Santa Clara Valley Sectional in San
Jose:
April 9-11, San Jose Masonic Temple.
Sid
<alan.N...@malloys.org> wrote:
>But
>there are unquestionably some unscrupulous people out there, and
>pretending they don't exist is hiding your head in the sand.
Sure there are, in every walk of life.
But to even suggest that controlling authorities of bridge events let
hand records slip out is not on. When you have proof of this, report
the person.
If you find one.
Sid
Lone Locust of the Apocalypse
He didn't suggest that they DO, he suggested that it would be POSSIBLE.
It's worth devoting a bit of time thinking about this issue for that
reason.
Who do you think is easier to steal from, someone who has given a bit
of thought to defending against it, or someone who believes it just
isn't possible?
Carl
One answer would be for the deals to be transmitted in a password-
protected and encrypted format that only the Duplimate machines can
read. And for the password to be transmitted separately. Now the bad
person needs to intercept two transmissions and have access to a
Duplimate machine.
Nothing will be concrete and foolproof, of course.
Alan Malloy
You don't want only the Duplimates to be able to decipher it, for lots
of reasons. For one thing, it'll be hard to make hand records then; for
another, anyone could reverse-engineer what the Duplimate does and
implement it for a PC - to pretend that only Duplimates can apply the
decryption process is relying on security through obscurity. Better to
just use the password as the private-key part of a public-key encryption
method: anyone can decrypt that, but only if they have the password.
Bud H
"Lone Locust of the Apocalypse" <zo...@ninthbit.com> wrote in message
news:hnol87$5qn$1...@news.albasani.net...
This is a good start.
All that is required now is to add an ADDITIONAL link next to the link that
provides the hand record in pdf format, to also provide that same hand
record in PBN, DUP, BRI, LIN, or other common file format used in hand
analyzing software like Deep Finesse or Double Dummy Solver.
And even better if all sectionals and regionals provided the same thing.
Bud H
Bud H
"thg" <thg...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:8f89056b-a03b-4c36...@a18g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
That is exactly what I would like to see.
With the event and session results accessible from the ACBL website, we
should be able to also download
(1) hand records in pdf format; and
(2) hand records in PBN, LIN, BRI, DUP, or other common file format used my
dealing machines or hand analyzing software.
Ultimately, it would be great if these were posted within 24 hours of the
actual event. I would be happy for starters if they all were accessible a
few days after the tournament when the event results were posted.
Bud H
KWSchneider
>
> - Show quoted text -
The reason I bring this up is that, unlike a game show set of
questions for example, where prior knowledge would compromise the
result [remember $64,000 Question], ALL of ther bridge community is in
the game show, not just one or two limited participants who could be
vetted afterwards if "fraud" became a potentiality. This makes it
exceedingly difficult to ensure security. I never realized [just
didn't think it through] that there have to be a number of folks with
prior knowledge of the deals. ANY leak would be virtually undetectable
and securing all of the prior information almost impossible.
I'm not sure that I have an answer for this but it certainly has
raised my sensitviity to the issue - and made me realize that any
tournament where deals are computer generated [the majority I would
assume], there exists a number of individuals that have access to the
deals beforehand. I'm not aware of any "bonding" checks or security
clearance or any vetting of these individuals before they are given
the right to receive these deals - they are all directors I presume.
I guess what I am saying is that I hope that there is some sort of
"oath of office" that these folks take with an appropriately
documented punishment that can automatically be meted out, similar to
disbarment, in the case of misuse of this power.
Kurt
Alan Malloy
I've never run an ACBL-wide or world-wide event, but I ran a STAC once
during my brief stint as a club director. Aside from passing the
director's test, there is no "oath of office" or similar. Anyone who can
direct club games can sign up to get these files.
Tom Ciacio
Since the middle of last year, the club manager downloads these
directly from ACBL. Only the club manager has access to the
registration and download pages. Of course once the manager has the
material, they can delegate to whom they please.
For sectionals and regionals around here, access to the dealing files
and hand records is at the discretion of the director-in-charge for
the tournament.
Bud H
> "thg" <thg0...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> - Show quoted text -
The files for the ACBL Charity Pairs played this past Wednesday, March
17 were emailed to our local club director running the game on March
3, two weeks before the game. Seven files were attached to the email
all of which included the hand record information in the following
formats:
BER, BRE, BRI, DLM, DUP, HND, and TXT
Frances
wrote:
Is all of this thought really addressing the right problem?
Charity games are frequently played country-wide, or in multiple
countries. Even within one time zone, games don't all start at the
same time. I don't need access to the hand records in advance if my
friend somewhere to the East plays in the event a couple of hours
before me.
thg
There is a bit of difference between someone stealing the hand records
(or stealing a look at the hand records) and someone in authority
knowingly giving someone access to the hand records.
The case of a friend sharing the hands she played earlier involves
collusion rather than just an individual improperly obtaining access.
Both situations are obviously to be avoided, but it seems that the
steps taken to avoid someone stealing the files (or hacking the files)
are different from the steps that would be taken to prevent collusion.
Tim