[fred]

Hi Meister,

Thanks for your suggestions. Here are some comments...

- The tables and chairs on the Zone were cute, but they were not very efficient when it came to looking through a large number of tables. BBO tends to have a LOT more tables in play at any given time than the Zone did even when it was at its peak.

- We do have a "relaxed bridge club" that is intended for less serious players. At one point we tried to introduce a "masters' bridge club" intended for more serious players, but nobody seemed interested. There are also dozens of other "public clubs" on BBO, but most of these are not used.

- It is possible to chat->club in any of the public clubs in BBO other than the main bridge club and the relaxed bridge club. The reason we don't allow chat->club in these clubs is because we think it would be distracting to the large numbers of people who play in these clubs.

- The subject of "ranking systems" comes up frequently and is very contentious. It is definitely the case that many BBO members would like to see some kind of ranking system and that many would prefer that we never implement such a scheme. I suggest you do a search on BBO Forums if you want to know more what various people (including me) think about this issue.

- The next version of our software (hopefully coming soon) will include some new features for tracking your own stats.

- We are trying to address the dead host issue. Boot by consensus is probably not going to happen. I don't really have an opinion about whether or not this would be a good idea, but it would open a can of worms to try to implement it (sorry).

- Click the pile of played tricks to the right of your hand to see the last trick.

- You can review the hands that were played at your table by clicking the yellow "my results" tab at the very right of the screen.

I think you will find that the BBO software contains a lot of other features that you are not aware of. In my (biased) opinion, it is very much superior to the old Zone software. I suspect it is only a matter of time until you become convinced

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[G_R__E_G]

Fred's opinion might be biased but I can guarantee that Bill Gates would agree with him. Bill might be biased too but he's biased on both sides so they cancel out.

[uday]

About dead hosts: we currently kick dead hosts every 10 mins, but while we do catch many, i think we miss some, particularly at slower times. It is a known issue, and we'll think of something else.

[fred]

MeisterE, on Feb 3 2010, 05:25 PM, said:

Thnx for all the info Fred, there are a lot of features that I'm not aware of, mainly because I prefer to use the HTML version & not the dowloaded exe software. For some reason I don't like it, and the thing is I don't know why. It might just be that it is overwhelming and I don't want to take the time to adjust to all the features.

Again, thnx
Shawn

Thanks Shawn, but you should know that everything I wrote pertains to the web-version

The web-version is still very much a work in progress - we are actively working on improving it. There will be a new version coming out soon that contains some good stuff. The download version has not changed for a couple years and we have no plans to further improve it.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[jdonn]

Tracking your own stats is a really good feature. I still haven't been able to get used to the web version at all but keep coming out with good things and I will have to make the switch eventually.

[TylerE]

Honestly for me if you could just make the cards the same design as windows client (although higher res), that would really help for me. The suit symbols and rank symbols on the web version just seem to soft and non-standard.