Deal Generator User Guide

Tutorial: variations on a theme

This is one of several user guides on specific topics. The directory for all user guides is here.

Quite often in bridge, you would like to have variations on a single deal, or variations on a recipe. The deal generator gives you several ways to vary your deals.

First of all, consider that the act of generating a deal from a single recipe on your screen is a form of varying that recipe, because if you have not made the recipe overly specific, there is an element of randomness each time you generate a deal from it.

So, the placement of random cards resulting from a recipe is one element of variation.

You can cause further variation by your choice of settings on the left side of the web page. One common variation is to rotate the dealer and vulnerability as each deal in a set is generated. If you choose “Rotate” for both instead of a single dealer and vulnerability, and if you then specify more than one deal in the Number of Deals setting, then dealer and vulnerability will rotate according to the settings found on the standard duplicate bridge scoresheet.

Another common variation is having the key cards—that is, the cards of interest in a recipe constructed to illustrate a bridge concept—rotate from seat to seat. The obvious application for this kind of variation is when you have four students at each table, and you want to make sets of four deals from one recipe, with each student having the key cards in one of the deals.

You get key card rotation by using the settings in the Hands control on the left side of the web page.

Aside from serving the needs of a class with multiple students, you might also want to use all forms of variation to create deals for your own study.

So, with all of the above forms of variation, you first set the controls on the left side of the web page, then you generate deals from the recipe currently on the screen.

But what if you want variations on an existing deal, or what if you want to generate variations from multiple recipes contained in a file or in a recipe collection on your screen?

Varying an existing deal

To vary an existing deal, you must first save it to a PBN or LIN file.

Then, set the dealer and vulnerability to your liking, as well as the Number of Deals.

In case you are wondering why you would want to see seemingly simple variations of a single deal, consider: there are 16 combinations of dealer and vulnerability on a standard duplicate scoresheet. Therefore, if you change just dealer and vulnerability for the exact same cards, you can get 16 variations on the deal. The play of that deal could be totally different for each of the 16 variations, or it could get the same outcome each time—it all depends on the nature of the deal.

To get the 16 variations, just set dealer and vulnerability to Rotate, and Number of Deals to 16.

Then, click the “Vary File” button at the top of the deal display panel. When it then presents you with a file chooser, select the file with the deal or deals you want to vary.

After you select the file, the deal display panel will show you the first deal, and the numbers between the left/right scroll arrows will tell you how many deals you have.

Notice that I wrote “deal or deals” above. You can vary a deal file with any number of deals in it.

Varying recipes in a file

Earlier I wrote about how you get variations on a recipe in the recipe panel just by generating deals from it.

Now suppose you have saved one or more recipes to a file. When you do that, the file has an extension of .bcoasmorgasbord.

So, suppose you have four recipes in a .bcoasmorgasbord file, and you want to generate a set of 16 deals—four for each recipe in the file—for your students. You would like to rotate dealer and vulnerability, and you also want the key cards to rotate around the table.

First, on the left side of the web page, set dealer and vulnerability to Rotate.

In the Hands panel, set it so that it reads, “After 1 boards, rotate 90 degrees”.

Set Number of Deals to 4. We want 16 deals in total, but when varying a recipe this setting tells the generator how many deals to generate for each recipe, not the overall total number of deals. So, with four recipes in the input file, 4 times each, we will get 16 deals.

Now click the “Vary Smorgasbord” button at the top of the deal display panel.

When it presents you with a file chooser, select the .bcoasmorgasbord file that you want to vary.

You should now have 16 deals in your deal panel.

Varying recipes in a collection

Varying recipes in a collection is conceptually identical to varying recipes in a .bcoasmorgasbord file. The difference is that the recipes you vary are in the recipe collection on the right side of the web page, under the Cards panel, instead of in a file.

How did they get into the collection? You must have put them there by clicking the “Add Recipe” button with a recipe loaded into the Recipe panel. Or else you might have used the “Load Folder” or “Load Smorgasbord” buttons of the Recipe Collection panel to load one or more recipes into the collection.

To vary the recipes in the collection, set your dealer, vulnerability, Hands, and Number of Deals settings to your liking, then click the red “Vary” button at the top of the Recipe Collection panel.

Since you can’t see what recipes are in the Recipe Collection, the ability to Vary them is offered just in case you are ever working quickly to make a set of deals, and for whatever reason you don’t want to organize your recipes into .bcoarecipe or .bcoasmorgasbord files.

What about the yellow buttons?

The yellow “Negate Smorgasbord” button at the top of the Deal panel, and the “Negate” button atop the Recipe Collection panel, are the same as their red “Vary” counterparts, except that they look for deals that do not match the Shaper part of the recipe, instead of deals that do match the Shaper. This is just like the yellow buttons of the Recipe and Shaper panels, only applied to a whole file or collection of recipes.