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HRSBC — A Handrecord Generator SBC
Welcome to Bridge for Diehards software at
Ted's World! This program enables the user either
to generate a series of 24 or 36 random deals, or to import hands from a PBN file.
Included are facilities for rapid duplication by the director and printing of
handrecords for at-the-table duplication by the players.
Printouts include analyses of every possible contract by Bo Haglund's
ultra-fast Double Dummy Solver.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM FILES
HRSBCxx.EXE
The executable file — the brains of the outfit.
BRIDGE.TTF
A proprietary TrueType font generates card symbols and
other custom characters.
DDS.DLL
Bo Haglund's Double Dummy Solver engine.
(MAKEHANDSxx.EXE)
This companion program produces or replicates hands.
These files are created as needed at runtime:
CLUBNAME.HR
Stores the last-used club name to save the user some
future typing.
\GAMEFILE.HR
A sub-folder stores game data.
USING THE INTERFACE
HRsbc's menus should be self-explanatory. This file is the only documentation.
Entries for Club Name and Event Name are limited to
40 characters each.
The Escape key is your friend. Should you find yourself in
an undesired place, pressing <Esc> will return you to the
last-accessed or other appropriate menu.
HRsbc runs in a window as a text-based console. If you are using Windows XP, you may toggle Full-Screen mode by pressing <Alt-Enter> after launching the program.
THE PRINTOUTS
All printing is sent to the currently selected Default Printer.
If for some reason you wish to use a different unit with this program, you must
temporarily install it as the Windows Default, via
Start/Settings/Printers and Faxes
<right-click an icon>
Set as Default Printer.
DIRECTOR'S DUPING SHEET
The time required to hand-duplicate a set of boards can be
significantly reduced. Instead of allocating cards by first locating them
on a picture of a hand, they are dealt according to a series of numbers on the
sheet; no time-consuming "hunting" is necessary.
Try it; you should like it. Instructions are on the sheet.
POST-GAME HANDOUTS
The analysis box shows the maximum contract that can be made in
every denomination by every player, assuming best possible play by both sides.
Unlike certain other commercial offerings, no makable contracts are suppressed by
HRsbc. If, for example, a player can make Four
Spades on a 3-1 fit against best defense, then so be it;
that result will appear in the box.
Also featured is Absolute Par on the deal —
that is, the result of best bidding and play by both sides. Par can be thought
of as the smallest possible loss by the weaker side. All failing contracts are,
of course, doubled.
Example: On Board #2 (N-S vulnerable), North-South can make
Four Hearts, for +620. East-West have a profitable save in Five Clubs,
for -300. That would be Par, except that North-South
also can make Five Diamonds, for +600. East-West,
however, still can gain by going to Six Clubs; so [E-W -500]
becomes Par on the deal. The same cards on Board #3,
with E-W vulnerable, would result in a Par of
[N-S +420] in hearts, because that outscores the
Five-Diamond contract.
An East-West sacrifice in Five Clubs would lose 500 points,
making that bid a losing option.
Note: The various printer types have differing built-in margin settings, but those I have tested leave nearly 10½ inches for printed output. HRsbc's printouts are designed to use not more than 10¼ vertical inches, so there should be no problem in accommodating full pages.
HANDRECORDS FOR DUPLICATION
Since the handrecords are printed 2-up, the pages will need to
be cut if playing other than two boards to a round. Two hash-marks
on the page provide a cutting guide. The marks may or may not be exactly at
the vertical center of the page, depending upon the printer's default top margin.
RECALLING A GAME
GAME CONTROL: #12345 67890
A 10-digit control number is printed at the bottom of each Post-game Handout, as well as on the director's Dupe Sheet. It contains all the information necessary to reproduce a specific set of hands, and using it is the only way to recall or restore a game unless a PBN output file had previously been created.
This feature can be helpful in several ways:
Example: A paper jam causes the program to crash in the middle of a print job. You fix the hardware problem, recall the game, and continue printing.
Example: You create a game at home, print a dupe-sheet or a single handrecord, and duplicate the boards. Then you go to the bridge club, restore the game, and print the handouts on company paper.
Example: An unexpectedly large crowd shows up for your game, and there are not enough handrecords for all. After recalling the game, additional sheets are printed during the session.
To utilize this facility, select (2) Recall a game from
the initial menu. Enter the control number, and follow the directions.
Note: The last character of the control number might be an 'x'; it must be entered as such.
Note: The control string stores the critical
numbers that it needs, but no other data. If a game is transferred to a new
site, no game file would be present; in this case, the user is prompted to
re-enter the club and event names. Hand analysis is redone in real
time regardless.
PREPARING A MULTI-SITE EVENT
GAME CONTROL: #13579 2468X
Your organization might like to conduct some sort of multi-venue event, such as
a Unit-Wide Game played concurrently at several local clubs.
HRsbc enables the duplication of hands across the field
without any physical transfer of materials. This is how it works:
One of the non-playing directors creates a set of hands for the appropriate
date and time, to use at his own game. Then he conveys the 10-digit
control number from a printout to the other directors, via email or telephone.
Those directors then print handrecords at their convenience. (Alternatively,
one could email a PBN file.)
To utilize this facility, select
(3) Set up a Multi-Site event from the initial menu.
Enter the control number. You will be asked to verify the game date and
time. If that information is somehow incorrect, then the original director
must be contacted to straighten out the matter.
You also will input a choice of Club and Event Names.
PBN FILES
Portable Bridge Notation format is the de facto standard for bridge-hand
data exchange. It is becoming increasingly popular with such facilities as
card-dealing machines and online sites for displaying game results.
HRsbc optionally creates a PBN file for each original
set of handrecords, including complete double-dummy analyses and
absolute-par (optimum) results.
Of necessity, the PBN specification is quite a bit more complicated than the Chess equivalent after which it was designed. Of its many features, HRsbc is interested only in those pertaining to the production of handrecords. In deference to certain other programs such as Bridge Composer, however, it does output data for Dealer and Vulnerability, which aren't needed by such engines as Dealer4 and Bridgewebs.
HRsbc also can import a PBN file. This enables the user to generate hands using another application, then print them in HRsbc's more attractive and informative format. Note: Any import must conform to standard PBN filename protocol: YYMMDDS.PBN (letter case is immaterial); the user will be asked to identify the file based upon the date and session time.
At SBC, the folder for PBN files is:If the first [Event], [Site], or [Date] tag in a PBN file is blank, that field
will be displayed on the screen as "-----"; then the user can change
it to something meaningful. No change ever is made to the original file.
PBN files from some vendors do not export all the necessary data, unfortunately.
For example, Dealer4 outputs trick totals only for successful
contracts, which is insufficient information for calculating Par results. Another
example is unacceptably vague Par designations. If East can make two
spades, but west can make three spades, then HRsbc
displays the output more accurately as [W 140], not [EW 140].
Due to this lack of standardization of critical output, Trick and Par data from
outsiders' PBN files are ignored; hand analyses and par calculations are automatically
redone after the import. If the file was created by
HRsbc itself, then that procedure is unneeded and is
bypassed.
DATA RECORDS
090324.HRA (YYMMDD.hrS = March 24, 2009, Afternoon session)
For each game, two files store the club and event names, session
date and time, and the number of boards. This feature merely saves the user
the necessity of re-entering that information. Double-dummy
results are not stored in these files. When a game is recalled, analyses
are recalculated at that time.
121025E.PBN (YYMMDDS.pbn = October 25, 2012, Evening session)
These files do retain all data pertaining to the hands;
that is their prescribed function. If for security reasons you do not
want such information to reside on your computer, then you can disable the
PBN-output option in Setup on the
Main Menu. Having done that, no PBN file will be generated by
HRsbc (although it still will be able to read one
created by another program). Another, more drastic option would be to cut
and paste (not copy and delete) PBN files to a thumb drive, and take them
off-site.
As all game files are quite small, disk space usage is insignificant; however, feel free to reduce the clutter of old games from the \GAMEFILE.HR folder at any time. No files ever are deleted by HRsbc.
Thanks for your interest in HRsbc. Feedback is appreciated.
