This is one of several user guides on specific topics. The directory for all user guides is here.
The Deal Shaper is used to specify the shape and HCP range for each hand in a generated deal.
Before configuring the shaper, choose the dealer and vulnerability from the options on the left side of the page. Set Number of Deals to however many deals you want.
In the shaper, choose the shape for each hand. “Any” shape means balanced or unbalanced. Balanced means 5332, 4432, or 4333 shape. Semi-Balanced means 5422 or 6322 shape. Unbalanced means any shape other than the three balanced shapes, and includes semi-balanced shapes.
Choose the HCP point range for each hand. The low end of the range specifies the minimum HCP for that hand; the high end of the range specifies the maximum. “Allocated HCP” shows the total of all hands’ low ranges (Minimum) and of all hands’ high ranges (Maximum). The program will only generate a deal if Minimum is 40 or less and Maximum is 40 or more. You don’t need to think too hard about the Minimum and Maximum since the program will keep track and will warn you if you allocate points incorrectly.
The shaper panel only calculates HCP. For setups where you want total points, whether consisting of distribution points, dummy points, etc., you will have to work those up in the Deal Recipe Maker.
After you have configured your shaper, click the “Generate Deal” button at the top of the Deal Shaper panel to get a deal or multiple deals that conform to the shapes and HCP ranges you have specified.
You can save your shaper configurations to a file for later reuse by clicking the “Save Shaper” button at the bottom of the page.
If you generate more than one deal at a time, you will only see the last deal generated in the Generated Deal panel. However, all of your just-generated deals are in your browser’s memory and if you use the “Save PBN” or “Save LIN” button at the bottom of the page, all of your deals will be saved to a file.
You can also view each of the multiple deals by first saving the latest batch of deals to a Navigator.
Each time you click “Generate Deal” the program will discard previously-generated deals from memory, so be sure to save your deals to a file if you intend to do something with them outside of this program.
The buttons with letters and arrows are for rapidly changing shaper configurations. The “N-S” button swaps the North and South settings; “W-E” swaps the West and East settings; the swurvy-curvy arrow button moves each seat’s setting one place clockwise (North to East, East to South, etc.). This is handy for creating sets of shapers with similar conditions but with different starting points, as you might do if you are creating deals that you or your students would play from different seats.
For example, you may set up this shaper to create a 1NT opener in North, with South having invitational HCP:
After generating a deal and/or saving the shaper to a file, or whatever you intend to do with this shaper, you may then decide you want the same setup, but with South having the 1NT opener and North having the invitational HCP. Click the N-S button to get this:
Now you can generate deals and/or save this version of the shaper just as you did with the original.
You can of course do all such configuration changes by hand, one seat at a time. The swap/rotate buttons are there just to make those three common changes quick and easy.