Musings on Bridge: April 2016

Tuesday 5 April 2016

Play an existing deal in aaBridge

This post is available with more detail and with larger images as a pdf file.

http://rogerpf.com/Play_an_existing_deal_in_aaBridge_-_a_How_to.pdf

As described in an earlier post you have been working through a tutorial or a lin file with a few hands in it.

To make sure some of the other seat settings are not set from a previous use. Look in the Right hand setting column "Seat Choice".

Click the Apply Defaults button (the pink dot IS visible in aaBridge)!

Select the Hide setting (the green dots are NOT visible in aaBridge)

Or if the Show (show Opps hands) is more to your needs choose that.

Enter the Deal

You have pressed Enter the Deal and have gone down "the rabbit hole" and into in that particular deal.

Now you can see the Edit Play and Review buttons. You always start in Review mode. That is why the Review button looks different.

Click Edit

Click Play

and you are done. Click the cards to play them

Why this works (in case you are interested) is because when you pressed Apply Defaults earlier, aaBridge was set to start the Review with the lead already played and showing.

When you click Edit aaBridge discards any play already recorded from after the position being shown. When you click Play the aaBridge bots will do their best.

You can always just stay in Edit mode and play the cards for all hands.

You can also control visibility (Show / Hide button in green baize area) and or rotate the seat positions "< > " buttons in the upper left.

Hint - If the bots defend badly, you can fix it by ...

Click Edit, Click Undo, Play the correct card, Click Play, and continue.

Cont & 1st

Two shortcuts have been added as a convenience.

Cont does an Enter the Deal and then jumps to the end of any play and goes into Play mode. You are then left to continue the play against the aaBridge bots.

1st does an Enter the Deal and then discards all play except for the 1st lead. You are then left to play the whole hand yourself against the aaBridge bots.

You need to make these two buttons visible before you can use them. On the menubar click
Options > Show and now, in the far right hand column and check the 'Cont' and '1st' checkboxes.

More information is in the document, see start of post.

Monday 4 April 2016

Seat Choice and that Pink Dot

The aaBridge Seat Choice settings (on the right.)

The Seat Choice options control the visibility and position of the displayed hands as you Flow through a hand.

In particular they are most powerful when you are inside a deal having pressed the Enter the Deal button.

Most of the settings only apply in when you are inside a deal. An exception is the settings at then end, all shown as red.

These let you change the visibility and rotation even when you are playing a tutorial.

This way you can choose see more, or less, than that the author of the tutorial intended.

What is the Pink Dot all about ?

The pink dot is there to remind you that the Apply Defaults button will put everything, all the seat rotations and seat visibility "back to normal".

If you hover the cursor over it (the real pink dot) more information will be shown to you.

You cannot click the Apply Defaults button too much.

Sunday 3 April 2016

Memorize Suit Distributions - a How to

This post is a teaser for the short pdf file below.

http://rogerpf.com/Memorize_Suit_Distributions_-_a_How_to.pdf

PLEASE read the full document.

The core of the method is to learn tables like you learnt your multiplication tables as a child.

The structuring is important and is explained in the pdf.

Using aaBridge to test your knowledge is also covered in both Training and Exam mode.

Or see the YouTube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xWEyuyViF8