BBO Discussion Forums: Double Dummy Solver - BBO Discussion Forums

Many of you will be aware of the Windows-based software Double Dummy Solver by Bob Richardson et al at Bridge Captain; a utility that enormously enhances my BBO experience.

Unless you have been checking back to the download page regularly you may not be aware that over the last few months it has been going through a flurry of upgrades. The one feature lacking in the software is an auto-check for upgrades when loading the program so unless you remember to check manually you may be unaware. I must remember to suggest that to Bob. I am not a programmer but it strikes me as not too hard to do and is pretty standard.

Anyway, the current version at the time of writing this is 11.28a.

I will not go into all the features and bug fixes over the last few months. Clearly they had to react to the requirement to enter a password to get to the MyHands download site, and that bit remains a bit cumbersome, but it works.

It now saves files in .sql format instead of .pbn (for speed reasons when working with large data files). But it will read .pbn files so no downside really.

What prompted me to give the heads up here is the changes made to the "diagram mode" of hand presentation on the screen; one of the more recent enhancements.

When actually playing on BBO I find the diagram mode vastly superior. It reduces the exposure to mis-clicks and it reduces the complexity of decoding the hand in the brain. Personal choice. There are those who disagree. I can't understand their logic but it is a free world.

Anyhoo, like BBO, DDS provides an alternative display mode, either "pictures mode" or "diagram mode". Much as I normally prefer the diagram mode on BBO, on DDS I have until now stuck with "pictures" mode, somewhat under duress, because (until now) the functionality in that mode was sufficiently greater than that provided in diagram mode as to overcome any benefits of the latter.

Now, however, many of the functionality shortcomings formerly in the diagram mode have disappeared, to the point where (for me) it tips the balance in favour of that display mode.

You may or may not agree with me, but it is also possible that if like me you previously preferred the pictures mode, then unless you periodically experiment with switching there is a risk of missing out on the recent enhancements to the diagram mode. So I am just letting you know.

1eyedjack, on 2015-December-24, 17:34, said:

I still remember when I was struggling to get you to try it. Yes, DDS.EXE is a wonderful tool, toy, training, database manager, etc.

I also tried Lead Captain, and recommend that also (same link gets you there).

DDS is funded entirely by voluntary contributions (do give!)

Lead Captain does come with a price tag. Not a prince's ransom. Just wanted to plug my endorsement of it.

I have no connection with the supplier.

inquiry, on 2015-December-24, 21:49, said:

Heh, you also tried to get me into BRidgeBRowser. You failed on that front. Not that I would turn anyone else away from it if they had a brain larger than mine. Not sure if that one is still available. The web site is still there but it has not been updated for a decade and the available hands seem to stop at 2004. And it comes with a prince's ransom of a price tag.

I hear an updated bridgebrowser with only world class play from championships might be released soon. This is using the data massaged to get players name right in the crowd sourcing in the cheating investigations that have been going on. Will be interesting if the rumor is true. 29,000 pantone hands for example

I enjoyed DDS, but it DDS stopped working for me quite a while ago when BBO made some sort of change.

I tried again. After installing the latest version today, I get "No deals found" when trying to download BBO results.

I could not find any kind of support forum.

OldPlayr, on 2015-December-27, 09:20, said:

Log on to bbo's myhand site using your bbo password, then fire up DDS... you will get the hands... Alternatively, download the hands from bbo's website and then open that file. If you want to know how to download the hands in a format useful for DDS, email me at inquiry at bridgebase dot com, or text me here with your email address.

OldPlayr, on 2015-December-27, 09:20, said:

Yes I know exactly what you mean. It stopped working for you the day that they forced you to log in to myhands. It took a week or two for DDS to produce a fix, which they did, but it has been a bit kludgy.
When you log into MyHands using your default browser, it should now save a cookie on your disk (assuming that you have enabled cookies to be saved) which I think time expires after 30 days (requiring that you re login).
But once that cookie is saved, DDS should run.

I use Internet Explorer by default under Windows 8.1 (yes I know, ugh).

When I try to download from MyHands within DDS it prompts me that it has downloaded BBO.HTML and asks me what to do with it. I click on Save, then switch the focus back to DDS and the SQL file is ready for saving.

I suppose it may behave slightly differently if your system and browser are different. Also if you leave it a long time before clicking on Save then DDS gives up and assumes no data found.

1eyedjack, on 2015-December-27, 10:24, said:

Just to clarify, the expiration happens 30 days since the last time you used myhands (or DDS, which uses it on your behalf), not 30 days since you logged in. So as long as you use myhands at least once a month, it should never expire.

inquiry, on 2015-December-27, 10:03, said:

DDS takes me to BBO, where I log in. After a bit, I get the message "Error in download file - No deals found". An HTML file (BBO.html) does show up in my Chrome downloads folder, which I can view. DDS seems to not be able to use it. I cannot find a way to tell DDS to open that file.

I think that problems like this sometimes boil down to DDS trying to find it in a different place from its actual saved location. I will check with Bob.

It might be worthwhile to check that your cookie is successfully saved. You can check this by going to Myhands site in Chrome (nb NOT via DDS). Does it require you to log in with a password every time that you visit the site (cookie not saved)? Or alternatively does it prompt you with your user ID and take you straight to the hands when you click on Get hands (cookie saved)?

You say that there is a BBO.html file in your Chrome default download folder. Does that file contain any hands when you open it in Chrome (not in DDS)?

1eyedjack, on 2015-December-28, 01:48, said:

Cookie gets saved - no login on re-visit. BBO.html does have the hands in it when viewed in Chrome. I suspect that DDS is not finding the download location. I'm running DDS, BBO, and Chrome in Linux (Ubuntu-Wine). Any way to tell DDS where to find the downloaded file?

OldPlayr, on 2015-December-28, 06:33, said:

I will get back to you on that (unless someone else chips in first).

I will PM you and take this off-grid

1eyedjack, on 2015-December-28, 12:09, said:

I am having similar problems. Reading what all has been said, I am now leaning towards thinking that I may be confusing DDS by having multiple browser windows open with multiple tabs in each. Typically, I will have two firefox windows and one chrome window going and 2 or more tabs in each (don't ask and I won't lie ). DDS opens a dialog that logs me in to MyHands via Firefox in a new tab and then complains about no data (the browser showing a list of hands - and that list is saved as BBOn.html where n is a number that increments with each try).

So what happens if you close all browser windows before launching DDS?

1eyedjack, on 2015-December-28, 16:09, said:

After gritting my teeth (since I choose how I use my computer, not some program), DDS announced "Error in file download. No deals found!" then "Nodeals can be retrieved from this period." and then opened Firefox and gave me a blank page on the first tab and a list of hands (which was saved in BBO-1.html) in the second. Curious that it announced failure before Firefox even launched.

Well, gritting of teeth would only be required had the exercise supported your hypothesis, raising the ugly prospect of having to do it every time.

But the purpose was only to test your hypothesis that multiple open windows was the cause of your problem. As it happens the exercise demonstrates that it is not the cause, so neither would we expect closure of surplus windows, and associated teeth gritting, to form part of your long term solution.

On my system the file BBO.html gets overwritten each time I download it, rather than creating renamed copies. That may be the more likely cause of the problem. But I confess that I don't really know.

The problem that I was experiencing ("Error in download file - No deals found") was caused by DDS not finding the folder containing the BBS.html file that was downloaded by the browser. The file was in the browser download folder, but as I'm running Linux, DDS could not find the folder. Thanks to help from "1eyedjack" the developer was able to quickly do a new release today(V11.31) which has a box at the bottom of the download window where one can specify the path to the correct browser download folder. Solved my problem. Quickest software product support that I've ever encountered

OldPlayr, on 2015-December-29, 18:51, said:

Even though Linux was not involved in my problem, the fix still worked. I had to change the folder location to C:/Users/Bill/AppData/Local/Temp/ but then it worked.