Comments

• Terrence

  August 2014 edited 10:14PM

  Here is a way to get hand records with a cost not in money but in a small amount of time and 1 sheet of paper per board. Buy the EXCELLENT program "DEALMASTER PRO" which will produce all those hand records. Then print the hand record, each hand on one sheet of paper, and have the players prepare the boards, just as it used to be at tournaments before dealing machines. Those hand records are very nice indeed. And, charge an extra 50 cents per game till you get enough to buy a machine
• phaff

  August 2014 edited 10:14PM

  I find the free web based Shufflix site: http://www.alesia.dk/shf/ very useful for
  producing random deals.
  
  
• phaff

  August 2014 edited August 2014

  Page 40 of Bridge 140 has two letters from readers about card dealing that you may find interesting.
  
  
• Rockbourne

  August 2014 edited 10:14PM

  Terence -  thanks but at the risk of exposing my ignorance, if the players prepare the boards surely each and all will see the hands before playing them.
• Rockbourne

  August 2014 edited 10:14PM

  phaff - what is Bridge 140
• phaff

  August 2014 edited 10:14PM

  Mr Bridge publishes a bi-monthly magazine called "Bridge". Online copies can be found in the "Library" section of
  this web site. Each edition is numbered, the latest is numbered 141.
  
• ned_paul

  August 2014 edited 10:14PM

  Scoring ptrogrammes (this is certainly true of Scorebridge with which I am most familiar) provide for a Round Zero in normal movements (Mitchell, etc).  This is the round at the beginning when the players make up the boards from curtain cards/DMPro print outs etc.  The TD then calls a move and the players and boards move for Round 1 and play starts  The movement obviously has to be long enough to ensure the players don't meet the boards they have made up, i.e if you have nine tables you will actually play only 8 rounds. 
  
  The primary alternative is to create the hands in a dealing programme and then pre-deal the boards by hand before the event.  This has to be done by a non-player of course. I run  quite a few duplicates each week and before I had a dealing machine, my house-elf for this particular task was the non-bridge playing Mrs P who did it very well but needed frequent infusions of coffee and cash and went on strike beyond two sets of boards a week.
  
• Terrence

  August 2014 edited 10:14PM

  Over here, at tournaments, if dealing machines are not used, then hands are duplicated by the players, and for round 1, some instruction like: "move the boards down 2 tables." Those boards are never played by the people who prepare the hands. How did you duplicate the hands across the field in tournaments before modern electronics?
• Rockbourne

  December 2014 edited 10:14PM

  Just to update my original post here.  Of course it wasn't that so much that we needed help in dealing, what we wanted was a means of displaying the hands played so that we could review our individual performance.  The hand dealing machined produce a .dup or .pbn file which can be picked up by Bridgewebs.   I found a programme (see below link) which cost about £13 and does the job.  We create curtain cards and volunteers enter the hands into the programme and it creates the .pbn file.  Yes it's a little arduous and time consuming (it takes about 90 minutes to do it) but it can be done in stages. 

  http://www.bridgecomposer.com/

  
  
• Daisy

  December 2014 edited December 2014

  90 minutes to deal a set of boards by hand? Seems excessive.
  
  Asking your players to sort the cards after playing the last round will save time. Sorting is time-consuming, but dealing takes hardly any time at all.
• Rockbourne

  December 2014 edited 10:14PM

  The 90 minutes is the time taken to enter the hands (previously dealt and played) into the software that creates the .pbn file that is picked up and displayed on the web site
• Daisy

  December 2014 edited 10:14PM

  So you play the hands and THEN enter them into the computer?
• Rockbourne

  December 2014 edited 10:14PM

  So you play the hands and THEN enter them into the computer?

  CORRECT :-)