[hrothgar]

helene_t, on May 5 2010, 06:07 PM, said:

Are MAC addresses submitted via tcp/ip? I thought bbo could only see IP addresses.

Anyway, using ubuntu you can easily fake a MAC address. Not sure about other platforms.

Depends on whether you are using IPv4 or IPv6

Many IPv6 implementation use the MAC Address to generate part of the IPv6 address. its a dreadful layering violating, but there you have it.

For what its worth,

1. If you have an old NIC card, you can often manually configure the MAC address of the card. I'd be shocked if this was still available (It was always more of a bug than a feature and folks use to run into MAC address conflicts). I'd be shocked if this

2. It isn't that hard to find a driver that will let you software configure your MAC. Trivial under Linux. Supported under MAC. Doable under Windows.

3. I seem to recall that there are some registry options that let you configure your MAC address under Windows.

(Wow, this all takes me back)

[barmar]

hrothgar, on May 5 2010, 03:15 PM, said:

1. If you have an old NIC card, you can often manually configure the MAC address of the card. I'd be shocked if this was still available (It was always more of a bug than a feature and folks use to run into MAC address conflicts). I'd be shocked if this

I'm pretty sure it's a requirement. Remember, one of the companies that designed Ethernet was DEC, and DECnet required you to be able to set your MAC address based on your DECnet address.

[mycroft]

And almost all routers have MAC address masquerading, because so many people sign up for internet, get MAC-locked, then buy the router when computer #2 comes in (or they realize that the firewall on the router is much much better than the one on their Winbox).

That's why my house reports the MAC address of the computer that the current computer that is my Mythbox replaced 5 years ago, anyway...

[Kemistry]

I'm not sure why there can't be a club set up that requires some number of BBO master points to enter. Seems like this would be similar to a Life Master pairs event, where there's a minimum criteria to play.

This would not guarantee the club would be filled with friendly people, but at least it would filter out a lot of beginners. And if it's an opt in club, it could be a place for experienced players to go find a pickup game and hope for a higher level of play.

My experience in the Main Bridge Club is that the players with numbers by their names tend to know their systems and are more responsive. The people who don't know bridge very well, or are away from the game a lot, tend not to have these marks. It seems like it would be easy to sue this as a filter for a specific club.

"Find me a seat in the BBO 3+ Club" would probably be pretty popular. And if people don't have those master points, it might encourage them to run some tournaments to get the credentials needed to play there.

[jillybean]

MP clubs? phooey. I've played with enough 'life masters' to know MP's often have more to do with ego's than skill at the table.
The only answer as far as I can tell is to play with known players and friends.

[onoway]

The problem of trying to find a serious but friendly game was the basis for the forming of the private IAC club. Unfortunately it's seldom that anyone plays there. It takes some jumping through hoops to get to us (we consistently get plaintive messages in response to announcements "how do I get there? " or "how do I find you?" and it is understandably discouraging to get there and find no other players.

If someone had a group of friends to bring to the club to play with and they played fairly regularly, perhaps more people might start to play there as well and it would grow to be used as it was meant to be used. To be sure, not everyone is the level of advanced or expert, we have a lot of intermediates..most of our members are fairly honest as to their abilities. That said, most who do play there or join our tourneys/team matches are trying to play as well as they can, many are working to improve their game, and many of our members are good players, some even (dare I say it?) real experts.

Also, there is virtually NO problem with people disappearing in the middle of hands or other rude behaviour as we will not stand for it. We have a bit more freedom to act as a private club within BBO than perhaps BBO itself does in terms of sorting out how much latitude we allow. Membership is free (register at http://iac.pigpen.org.uk/ ) and we really would love to see people use the club, especially better players.

[gwnn]

Where does one go for SERIOUS bridge? Alpha Centauri.

[Trumpace]

gwnn, on Aug 2 2010, 09:42 AM, said:

Where does one go for SERIOUS bridge? Alpha Centauri.

Grr... You ought to be whipped with Orion's belt.

[Rain]

Try team games or arranged games.

[bluecalm]

We have this problem for a long time. I tried to find some at least decent partnerships to play against on bbo and I failed every time. When I posted here looking for partnerships for training matches nobody responded.
What is left is to play with people we already know live.

It would be really great if there was a place when you can go to play against pairs which have experience together and are decent+ by live tournament standards.
I don't know how to solve that. Maybe some kind of club when you verify your name/bridge experience first. Not sure if there is any interest though.

[zenko]

I am trying to get there by process of elimination, using "enemy" tag for players that I have no interest playing with or against.

For me it would be very useful to have two separate "avoid" tags, one for people with no manners and the other one for those who just can't play, but I guess that's too much to ask.

[gwnn]

You have about 100 characters in the 'player notes' section, even if you don't like capital letters or other symbols, that is still about 3.14E141, which is quite a bit more than you'd realistically need.

[helene_t]

zenko, on Aug 3 2010, 02:23 PM, said:

I am trying to get there by process of elimination, using "enemy" tag for players that I have no interest playing with or against.

For me it would be very useful to have two separate "avoid" tags, one for people with no manners and the other one for those who just can't play, but I guess that's too much to ask.

In the new version of the web client you can make your own player categories.

But the elimination process is too slow I am afraid, say there are 5000 players with whom you wouldn't want to play, and you need to reduce the odds of picking an unwanted p by 80%, then you would need to mark 4000 players as enemies.

I think getting some 50 friends is less laborious and also more fun than getting 4000 enemies.

[zenko]

helene_t, on Aug 3 2010, 08:55 AM, said:

zenko, on Aug 3 2010, 02:23 PM, said:

I am trying to get there by process of elimination, using "enemy" tag for players that I have no interest playing with or against.

For me it would be very useful to have two separate "avoid" tags, one for people with no manners and the other one for those who just can't play, but I guess that's too much to ask.

In the new version of the web client you can make your own player categories.

But the elimination process is too slow I am afraid, say there are 5000 players with whom you wouldn't want to play, and you need to reduce the odds of picking an unwanted p by 80%, then you would need to mark 4000 players as enemies.

I think getting some 50 friends is less laborious and also more fun than getting 4000 enemies.

It is a slow method, no question about that, but I like to give them benefit of doubt, probably unwisely I start with assumption that they know what are they doing, until they prove me wrong. Luckily, usually it takes no more than few hands (or few comments) to asses that.