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web version new bbo lesson

#1 User is offline   babalu1997 

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Posted 2011-January-28, 07:52

i watched the new web version lesson style

the material was excellent and written in the same format as granovetter`s switch in time, but with better visual display

it does not match the visual display i get from the bbo cd partnership defense by kit woolsey however.

it also does not offer inetractive actitivies like the kit woolsey cd.

the voice-over needs improvement, as there were variations in volume.

i would purchase the product, as i have purchased the bridge master deals from the web version, which are veyr veyr good but are not promoted(you would be at bbo for years and never heard of it). However the pricing should not be more expensive than let`s say purshasing a book which might come with 50 deals, ie the price perdeal should compare with the purchase of a new book.

i again renew my request that the bridgemaster deals be made available on the web for sale and for those who already purchased it.

ps. i have posted here because i could not reach the email adress on the bbo announcement, it required some mail server which i have not installed in my computer in years and i was confused, why not a link to the bbo forum?

View PostFree, on 2011-May-10, 03:57, said:

Babalu just wanted a shoulder to cry on, is that too much to ask for?
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#2 User is offline   inquiry 

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Posted 2011-January-28, 14:00

Fred's presentation is great, I for one really, really liked it. I especially liked the little background and anecdotes he added to the very interesting hand. It made it come alive. Everyone in the forum should go and listen to it... For those who missed the announcement in the BBO News, I have provided a handy dandy link (and a bit of the announcemnt) below to assist you in finding the lesson by Fred....

The BBO has announced... "As an introduction to the BridgeBase planned Educational Program, we will be testing a new facility where our players can learn from some of the highest ranked players on the planet. Read along as the current expert instructor, walks and talks you through the bidding and play (in his own voice) of an interesting hand. ...... During this testing process, the lessons will be free, starting with a free lesson from Fred</B>. To get started click
"A declarer play challenge from the 2010 World Championship

Over time the library of material should grow quickly if the early ones are well recieved. But I want to address the format: I really like the format, but I agree the volume control on voice over could be improved. Inside piece of info: the sound is recorded "over the internet" on a flash server somewhere, which is probably not ideal, and in my case (see below) from a laptop microphone. It turns out that the authors could load a wav file recorded using better equipment/microphones instead, and that is probably the way to go (I don't have better microphone, however). One can always turn the sound off and simplly read the text. The auto-advanced is both a blessing and a curse, feel free to use the pause button to study any segment you want before the advance happens, or you can use the go back button.

I had the great honor/pleasure to be a beta tester for the software and have actually prepared a number of "lessons" using the software Fred created and used for his lesson BBO posted the other day. Eventually some of the material I produced in testing the software might be made available (after a lot of ones from by world class players and the new format becomes popular, of course). For my lessons, I prepared them during testing the software and planned that if any of them were ever released, they would be "free" but I understand that they might be "minimal cost" if BBO requires money to host the content. But in response babalu1997 comment, if they do charge for mine, certainly it will not be anywhere nearly as much as the cost per book per hand (for mine, maybe 1/10th or less per hand what similar content in a book cost).

Clearly the software is great for producing "deal of the week" kind of hands. I can tell you that several (but not all) of the lessons that have been/are being prepared are similar in legnth to Freds with one hand or a hand with a few variations. The lessons I prepared -- other than a few "funny ones" that will probably never be posted -- are probably too long for this format, time will tell. I have completely finished one stand alone lesson on strip squeezes versus strip endplays. It contains some introductory material that those in this forum would know all too well, then 14 hands, one taken from the forum posted by one of our members (I provided a link to the forum and gave the hand submitter the credit. The use of this was intentional to provide people who have never visited the forum a reason to come). The others are from my own play record. In that document, I tried to give a range from easy to difficult problems. I would guess that only two hands would be a challenge to the advanced posters here, and two-or-three are very obvious to anyone, the remainder somewhere between these two extremes. Listening to my voice on this is painful, however, so turn your speakers off and just go with the written words. :) If they were to charge, say a dollar for my lesson on strip endplays, that would come out to be 7 cents per hand with considering any cost for the introductory material. I anticipate if the do post this, like Fred's it will be free. Since it sooooooo long, however, I hope they don't post it until people already decide they like the format (I would hate people to review mine and say, that is much too long, and never come back).

The others "lessons" I have either finished (two squeeze lessons -- except for voice) or have nearly finished are (five squeeze lesons -- some more work and voice) deal with my squeeze material originally discussed here in this forum and on my squeeze blog. The advantage of this format over the blog or forum presentaion is clear: ehe hands are interactive (!). The material seems to me to come alive with the ability to ask questions, move cards around, and play the hands out a card at a time as oppose to reading it on a static page. Time will tell if people like this format, but I have played with it as an author and as a reader/listener over the past few months (content prepared by others), and I for one really like it.

As for charging for "lessons", of course if you want lessons from players of Fred's caliber, assume you will have to pay for it. Think of these as one hand teaching tables with a specially selected hand you can go watch at anytime you want. Should that be more expensive than reading a book? I think it will be very cheap, but more expensive on a per hand calculation. Also consider this for longer content: the ability to charge for the content in segments could be a nice saving to the end user. Take my squeeze lessons, for example. I have a chapter on simple squeezes... and one on double squeezes. Let's say you are well versed in those and want only to study hedgehog squeezes, guard squeeze, backwash squeezes, and compound squeeze. If you bought a book that covered all squeezes, you would have to pay for those earlier chapters. If they BBO charges per lesson (think chapters), you could simply 'pay for" the lessons you wanted, skipping the lesson material you don't need to review. Thus paying only for the content you are interested in. Again, my all my lessons may well end up being free, or very low cost, but you get the point.

As noted above, in the squeeze lessons, a large amount of the content is already available in this forum and my blog. In addition, I added a couple of problems that were originally posted in these forums, like mike lucy's compound squeeze from half a dozen years ago, misplayed on BBO and he found that gib said it could make and wondered if anyone could find the winning line (which is to duck a trick to correct count at trick two). So the descriptive contents (from my own posting) and a limited number of "new" hands will be familiar to old time posters here, but it was fun to create and hopefully useful to those who choose to spend a few hours "reading it". More useful is the neat stuff that will be coming from world class players. I have already seen some of the material created by a variety of world class players, and like Fred's, it is all excellent! I can't wait for more.

Who knows, maybe someone will convert all the old "deal of the week hands" into this format. I could have just as easily (maybe more easily) done that as I was beta testing the software than futz around with my own pet ideas. It might have been more useful if I had. Never seen the deal of the week material? Look here....

Bridge Base's Deal of the week index
--Ben--

#3 User is offline   JLOGIC 

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Posted 2011-January-31, 12:35

Wow that was great, recommend Fred's video. The end was awesome :)
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#4 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2011-January-31, 18:21

Yeah, that was a heckuva'n ending to a very thorough discussion. I like this format. Obv. a lot of production work involved in doing this.
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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