This tutorial tells you how to use a card-counting tool that is built into the bridge deal generator. But first, some history:
Bridge Winners hosts a well-regarded counting game that was developed by Fred Gitelman. If you want a numbers-based counting game that keeps score and tells you how you are doing, start there! My own card-counting tool was inspired by that excellent game.
You should know, though, that I ditched the numbers, the score-keeping, and the automatic generation of problem sets. I kept everything else <chuckle>.
I like the numbers-based game. But at the bridge table, we see cards and then we must count them and turn them into numbers. I therefore made a counting tool that uses card images instead of numbers.
Everything in the deal generator either starts or ends with generated deals. Nothing magically springs into existence without the user requesting it. This means you must have some deals available before starting the card-counting game (note: unless you come in via a link that does make deals spring into existence—that’s covered later on in this guide).
My card-counting tool uses deals in the Deal panel of the bridge deal generator. No deal in the panel, no card-counting exercise for you! But don’t despair. You can get a plentiful supply of deals quite easily.
If you have a PBN (Portable Bridge Notation) or LIN (Like I kNow) deal file handy, you can load that into the Deal panel and use it for a counting exercise. But why limit yourself to a couple of dozen (meaning no disrespect to the million-deal data scientists out there)? You can set the deal generator to generate up to 2048 deals, and use those for your exercise.
Here we see a Deal panel with 2048 deals:
Note the cryptic button just above the deal:
In some cultures, “#” means “pound” so that could mean “pound of clubs?” Pound of clubs, Guv’nah? A little gifty for the wife and kiddies? But here in Alabama I take “#” to mean “number” so that button means “number of clubs?” Click it with at least one deal present and you will see this:
That counting tool takes over your browser window. That means you can’t do anything else with the generator until you close the counting thing. Do not lament this limitation. I have heard that some consider the deal generator a tad complex. That being the (alleged) case, no one should want to play the counting game whilst also designing recipes or doing various nefarious file input and output operations. That would lead inexorably to chaos, confusion, and, possibly, an acidic foreboding in your innards.
The second line at the top of this panel asks you how many clubs are needed to make the displayed cards into a 13-card hand. You answer by clicking one of the number buttons below the hand.
If you get it right, the missing club cards will spring into view, like this:
If you get it wrong, nothing happens.
Either way, nothing much else happens. No score-keeping. I like minimalist tools. I think the unseen but crucial feature is your own dedication to using the tool. Kind of like swimming laps in the pool is the point, not having the snazziest lap-counter. There’s no countdown clock to tell you how quickly you are getting to the right number or to scare you into clicking something before it hits zero. Just keep practicing, and you will find yourself getting faster.
See the arrow buttons below the number buttons? And see that between the left and right arrows you see which deal you are on? In this case you are on deal 1 out of 2048. You can use those arrow buttons to scroll forward and back through the deals. Scrolling here will also scroll the Deal display panel, and also the deal displayed in the Deal Report panel. That’s another good reason to not use the card-counter while also doing other important tasks. One task at a time, and reload your browser now and again in case stuff is hanging around from previous tasks.
Probably about 99.999% of the time, after getting your reward (seeing the clubs) or being defeated and unable to count to 13, you will want to go to the next deal. Clicking the innermost right arrow below the row of numbers will do that. But it would be annoying to have to move your mouse to that button every time. For that reason, if you click on any of the card images, the next deal in line will be loaded up for your club-counting pleasure. For any other navigation, use the arrows.
When you are done, click the “Close” button and it all goes away.
The magical link
In a perfect world, everyone would want to know how to generate sets of deals. Playing the card-counting game would then just be a bonus feature on top of the wondrous ability to generate your own deals.
But in this here world, some folks just want to play the game. But how to get to that # of Clubs? panel without going through the deal generation or loading process?
You can do that with this link, which has a “mode” parm:
https://bridgeoutahead.com/bridgedeal/?mode=countClubs
When you click that link, you get straight to the card-counting game with 100 randomly-generated deals preloaded.
Obviously, if you’re already on the deal generator website, you can probably manage getting some deals into the thing and clicking the # of Clubs? button. So that link that makes it easier is intended for other folks to embed in their websites or documents or emails to share with friends, or the world in general.
If you want to use or share that link, and you want something other than 100 random deals, you can specify your desired number of deals by adding a “numDeals” parm to the URL:
https://bridgeoutahead.com/bridgedeal/?mode=countClubs&numDeals=500