Hello, bridge pals!
The nightmare, in case you were wondering, is my bridge deal generator’s lack of any kind of credible deal analysis. As a user you might think that’s not too bad, as nightmares go. For me as the developer, the nightmare was the implied promise of the “Analysis” button that I unwisely put on my web page, and behind which lurked not credible, but incredible, analysis. How I tossed and turned each night as I imagined disappointed users looking at that unformatted and also unintelligible mess and thinking, “When is this guy going to get serious about analysis? What’s the actual auction I can expect here? Doesn’t he care about our well-being?”
I have done away with that button, and with it all high-falutin’ promises and/or expectations, real or imagined. My program still does its broken little bit of analysis, but that work product shall remain forever hidden from users. Though I suppose if there is a spontaneous groundswell of demand (hint hint) I could add it back in as a premium feature for my Platinum Level subscribers who might enjoy a good laugh.
On to serious matters.
This post is to announce a new feature: my bridge deal generator now lets you see your generated deal on the Bridge Solver website. There, you can see some valuable analysis of the kind that is often provided on your club’s or tournament’s deal record printouts.
If you don’t know what I’m referring to, look at this deal from a recent club game:
See the “Double Dummy Makes” section? Now where the heck does that come from? I can’t speak for these specific results, but many clubs, tournaments, and bridge deal programs get double dummy analysis from a program called Double Dummy Solver.
The kind developers of Double Dummy Solver allow people to use their program for free.
Another kind developer has built a nice user interface for interacting with Double Dummy Solver. That interface is called Bridge Solver Online, or BSOL.
With my program you already have the ability to save one or more deals off to a file and to import that file into programs that use the PBN and LIN formats.
Starting today, you can also easily see a double dummy analysis, of just one deal at a time, via BSOL at the click of a button on my site.
Here’s how it works.
Look about halfway down the web page shown above. There is now a line that says “See this deal in BridgeSolver” followed by a button. When you click the BridgeSolver button, my web page should stay as it is, but you should see a new tab open up with your bridge deal displayed in the Bridge Solver Online page, like this:
Hey, look! It’s the exact same deal you just generated on my site! Phew! It had better be, or else this thing is trash.
Notice that not only the cards, but our dealer and vulnerability all came over to BSOL correctly. In BSOL, the white dot in the graphic in the center of the “table” identifies the dealer. The red lines denote vulnerability.
In the upper left part of the page, BSOL shows you the best-scoring contract, according to Double Dummy Solver. It’s a lot of fun to first study the deal over in my program and imagine the auction and the best possible contract, then come on over to BSOL and find out just how wrong you can be. Or right. Your mileage may vary.
The matrix in the lower right part of the page shows you noteworthy makeable contracts. A very nice feature is that you can click on any of these contracts, and then you can play the hand based on that contract. Of course, you will be playing it double dummy style with all cards visible to you, and there are no robots or built-in card play. But hey, this is an analysis tool with which you can noodle out some things about the deal. If you want full-fledged card play, then take this deal into BBO or some other worthy program.
When you have finished studying the deal in BSOL, just close that tab. The Bridge, Out Ahead page will still be there, unchanged.
You can also use BSOL with PBN and LIN files saved off from my program (you save them in my program by pressing the PBN or LIN buttons—see the user guide) or files from any other deal generator. This is quite useful if you have saved off one or more deals and you want to see what Double Dummy Solver makes of each of them in turn. I don’t provide a link for you to do that from my deal generator. However, I am happy to give you the link to the BSOL page that lets you import files right here.
If you follow that link, you will immediately notice that there is no deal preloaded into BSOL. That’s because it expects you to supply a file with deals in it. Click on the “Choose File” button on that page and start choosin’.
The BridgeSolver button is the first feature I have added that takes you to another website that actually does something. Please notify me through this blog if you encounter any problems using this feature.