Release notes

We’ve just completed a minor release with the following changes:

1. fixed a bug that prevented private chat and friends windows from opening just after the first registration in HoB (browser refresh – F5 – was a workaround)
2. [user feedback] added subtle sound effect when an arriving private chat message

See you on HoB!

In November we released a couple of bug fixes and cosmetic changes. In particular:

1. fixed a bug that under rare conditions was causing the wrong list of boards with results to be displayed (at the table, at the beginning of the round)
2. fixed a bug in a tournament lobby, that would cause a written but not yet sent chat to disappear when a pair would join a tournament
3. fixed a bug that would cause cards to be displayed in a reversed order during the hand analysis
4. changed a default setting from “private” to a “public” tournament during the tournament creation by a TD
5. activated the link “Friends List” on the home page

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB is finally there to deliver you the friends funcionality! This concludes a couple of months of development during which we gave you: the possibility to open a profile page anywhere in HoB by clicking on someone’s nick, private chats and now friends. In the new release you can enjoy the following:

1. from the profile page of any player (which can be opened by clicking on their nick) you can now add them as a friend
2. all your friends are listed alphabetically when you open the “chats” window from the top right hand corner of the screen
3. for each of your friends you can see whether their are online/offline. In fact we will first display those of your friends that are online (green dot) and only below the group which is offline (no dot).
4. starting a chat with any one of your friends is now very easy. You just click on their nick in the “chats” window (again: top right hand corner of the screen) and a separate conversation will be opened.
5. the same way the you befriended someone you can also take it back. Just open their profile and click the “Remove friend” button.

We really hope you enjoy the completed social functionalities and see you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the long awaited private chat with offline messaging! The following is now possible:

1. you can start a private chat with any player that you know the nickname of
2. you will see if a player is offline but if they are, you can still chat and they will see your message after logging in
3. you will see if a player is playing a tournament (no chat possible) but if they are, you can still chat and they will see your message after the tournament has finished

On top of that we reviewed and improved the ways we show that players are online/offline. Each player that is online has a bright green dot next to their photo. No green dot = offline.

We hope you enjoy the new functionalities and see you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. added player’s profile page/bio in every place where nick is shown. Clicking on the nick displays a small window with name, ID, notes, etc. Also some contextual actions can be executed from there (e.g. inviting someone to a tournament).
2. when you are invited to a tournament, basic tournament info is now displayed in the invitation window to help you decide whether to accept or reject the invitation.
3. tournament chat is now displayed also after the tournament has ended. This will allow players to say good bye or plan the next game.

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. [user feedback] when at the tournament table, players will now see their opponents’ result as well
2. [user feedback] when at the tournament table, players will see their and their opponents’ current position in a tournament
3. pausing pair is now able to call a TD
4. [user feedback] pair’s result is now visible in the tournament history
5. link to tournament results is now visible in the tournaments history
6. fixed a bug causing results to be shown for both NS and WE at the same time

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. support for matchpoints tournaments
2. TD is now able, during a tournament, to replace a missing player with a substitute
3. TD will now hear a sound signal when a new director call arrives or during the start of a new round
4. TD is now able to edit the tournament (e.g. to amend the number of rounds & boards) at the last minute without the need to change the tournament starting time. Previously the system did not allow to save a tournament with a starting time in the past.
5. the list of tournaments now refreshes automatically when the user enters the page or switches between “Upcoming”, “In progress” and “Finished” tabs
6. changing the number of boards per round by a TD, automatically adjusts the time allocated per round

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. [user feedback] possibility to run a public tournament based on a closed list of potential (eligibile) participants. This allows a Tournament Host to e.g. restrict entry to club members or people who paid for the tournament.
2. [user feedback] TD, when at a table, is now able to see that there is an ongoing claim
3. added the functionality for TDs to paste links in messages sent to players. Non-TDs are not allowed to do that for security reasons.
4. added the functionality to use bridge suit characters in player’s additional info
5. fixed a bug that, in the player’s profile (when seen by another player), caused “undefined” to show in case of the empty name
6. fixed a bug that prevented TD at a table to see alerts made by player N

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. [user feedback] Possibility to manually choose a language version. This approach is replacing the automated mechanism which depended on user’s browser settings and was not reliable at times.
2. [user feedback] Corrected the order in which cards are displayed in the Dummy when Dummy is a LHO or we play as Dummy. Trumps are now correctly placed on the right side looking from the Dummy perspective.
3. Fixed a bug that in rare cases was preventing the player to answer the TD privately (TD was shown as not present despite being at the table).

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. [user feedback] Pre-tournament chat is now available. It will allow TDs to announce important tournament messages, help single players find a partner, and make it possible for everyone to say hello to each other.
2. [user feedback] Casual game lobby chat is now available.
3. [user feedback] Players and TDs may now use !s, !h, !d, !c in chat to get ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣.
4. [user feedback] Bridge Teachers & TDs may now run a tournament using predefined deals loaded from PBN.
5. TDs may now close the registration prior to starting a tournament. This may help TDs achieve expected number of pairs (e.g. to have even number of pairs or to stay below a certain limit of pairs).
6. Fixed a bug causing the card of the first lead to be forgotten in a board that was automatically adjusted (e.g. as a result of the rounds end).
7. Fixed a bug that made it hard to differentiate between chat messages sent by a TD to everyone and sent by a playing-TD locally to the table.

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes further fixes and improvements to the Tournaments functionality:

1. [user feedback] Round Timers are now available for players and TDs
2. TDs have the possibility to add/subtract 30 sec. from the round timer
3. TDs have a new option available to automatically end the round when the time runs out
4. TDs & players will hear a sound informing them that the round’s time has run out
5. [user feedback] Chat – when the same person posts multiple times in a row, their nickname is not repeated to save space.
6. Increased transparency of the chat messages sent from TDs to tournament participants. They are now properly formatted (with spaces & new lines).
7. [user feedback] We moved the table number in the a browser tab name to the left, so that it’s easier for a TD to tell their browser tabs apart when multiple tabs/tables are open.
8. We fixed a minor bug preventing a player from seeing their partner’s cards during a declarer’s declaration

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. [user feedback] New bidding box. Players reported a number of issues related to the old concept: bid confirmation, counterintuitive alerting and on some resolutions issues with full cards visiblity. All these problems are gone now with our new beautiful bidding box 🙂
2. [user feedback] Bidding history was also moved to the centre of the table to avoid mistakes and unnecessary switching between the centre of the table and sidebar on the right.
3. [user feedback] Players will now hear a sound when they are on the first lead.
4. TDs may now edit tournament properties before the tournaments starts (e.g. number of boards, name, etc.)

See you on HoB!

New version of HoB includes the following:

1. [user feedback] New component for the “tricks taken”. It is now much more obvious who took how many tricks.
2. [user feedback] “Last trick” component has been combined with “Tricks taken” component.
3. Possibility for the TD to chat privately with any of the players after joining the table.
4. [user feedback] TD may now switch on the setting to start the next round automatically when all tables are finished.
5. [user feedback] “Call TD” is now available on the table instead of in the menu.
6. [TD view only] Fixed a bug causing synch issues between the list of pairs on the right and the left (summary) panel.

See you on HoB!

Our first release in 2022 included the following:

1. [user feedback] Added a screen to fill additional info about ourselves (name, bridge federation, additional info, etc.)
2. [user feedback] Added the possiblity to see information about a given player at the table
3. [TD] Added the possibility to export tournament results to USEBIO format
4. For all players waiting for the tournament start, any changes to the list of pairs are now reflected automatically (“Refresh” button – now obsolete – has been removed).
5. [user feedback] Fixed synchronisation between the list of pairs (table) and the figure displaying the number of pairs (left panel) when waiting for a tournament to start
6. [user feedback] Fixed a bug which on rare occasions prevented a player from being taken to a table during the tournament start
7. Fixed a bug which in rare cases caused the tournament results to be calculated in a wrong way

See you on HoB!

In mid-December we released a couple of improvements to the Tournament functionality. It’s worth to mention that 4 out of 10 points have been requested by Players! As you see, writing to feedback@houseofbridge.com pays off 🙂

1. [user feedback] Fixed a bug which caused Bidding (in Games History & Analysis) to be always shown in W/N/E/S order without taking into consideration the table rotation. Such bidding was very difficult to understand.
2. [user feedback] Removed “Next board” button from a Tournament screen. Next board now starts automatically after a couple of seconds.
3. [user feedback] Added Date & Time to the table with tournaments.
4. [user feedback] Fixed a bug causing “Board was adjusted by the Tournament Director” tooltip to be displayed for each and every board.
5. When next round starts, all unplayed boards are now averaged and can be adjusted by a TD (Tournament Director). Previously they were cancelled.
6. All players at the table are now informed when their table is visited by the TD.
7. Added the possibility to cancel tournament registration
8. Improved the usability of the Tournaments page by introducing tabs/pages showing “Open”, “In progress” and “Finished” tournaments separately.
9. Graphical improvements to invitation windows/dialogs
10. Minor fixes & usability improvements

See you on HoB!

Santa came a bit earlier this year! We hope that all Polish players will appreciate that HoB is now available in Polish. In this release of HoB we also give you the following:

TOURNAMENT IMPROVEMENTS

1. TD (Tournament Director) can now send a message (e.g. welcome) to all tournament players
2. Players can now call a TD to their table
3. TDs have been given a brand new screen called “Director Calls” for managing the calls
4. TDs can now adjust the board: either by setting a new contract & result or by manually entering a number of IMPs for each pair (split score)
5. Tournament invitation flow has been improved – players can now reject or cancel tournament invitations 

OTHERS

1. Fixed a rare bug which prevented a board from finishing if Dummy was not online during the claim
2. For the time being (until the kibitzing is available) we removed the possibility to join a playing table in a Casual Lobby. We received signals that joining the table and NOT seeing  the game play creates confusion.
3. Minor fixes & usability improvements

See you on HoB!

This intermediate version contains Tournament improvements but also some fixes after the first round of feedback we got from Players.

After the feedback from you, Players, we changed the following things:

1. Fixed a bug which was causing switching off the “real-time analysis” when moving to “other results”
2. Added the possibility for the claiming player to cancel the claim if they realize they were wrong
3. Changed “sign-in” to “log-in” to avoid confusion for non-native speakers

Other features & improvements include:

1. TD (Tournament Director) can now create a private tournament which will not be visible for non-invited players
2. Casual Game Lobby now includes information that a given player is offline (previously you had to join the table to learn that)
3. TD can see that some players are offline – information is available both before and during the tournament
4.  TD can bulk register players using a prepared list of nicknames
5. TD can add or remove an existing pair before the tournament starts
6. TD can now finish the round even is some tables are still playing. The board is not counted but this solves the problem of players who dropped out for some reason.
7. Fixes and improvements to the tournament boards visibility (for players, kibitzers and TDs).

With this version HoB became publicly available (previous versions have been invitation only)!

Features & improvements include:

1. Support for creating an account on HoB as well as signing up with your social account (either Facebook or Google)
2. Support for basic host options in the Casual Game Lobby (kicking-out offline players)
3. Support for changing a table host (if a player goes offline, someone else becomes a host immediatelly)
4. Tables without any active players will now disappear from the Casual Game Lobby after 15 min.
5. Various visual improvements
6. You can now click on your own bid to provide or modify the description
7. As a Tournament Director you can now finish the tournament after any round

Improvements after the feedback from a trial tournament in May 2021

1. added the possibility to see all other results and plays for a given board (now we know why we lost 12 IMPs in board #5…)
2. added a new contrast colour (orange) to improve user experience and emphasise certain actions
3. changed the way we show whose turn it is to bid
4. added a sound to tell player that it’s their turn to bid (played when a browser tab is not active)
5. added a basic screen with user preferences
   1. option to see declarer’s cards as dummy (turned on by default)
   2. option to mute all application sounds (turned off by default)
   3. option to double click the card to play it (turned on by default)
6. added tooltips to buttons and icons
7. improved the real-time analysis presentation (“Games History and Analysis” screen)
   1. we emphasise the card which is going to be played next
   2. number of tricks no longer disappears when a card is played and moved to the middle of the table
8. we emphasised that “Description” is required for an alerted bid

Bug fixes

1. fixed a bug causing real-time analysis to show a wrong number of tricks
2. fixed a bug which blocked the screen if two players simultaneously tried to “Claim”
3. fixed a bug causing a claim window to disappear if someone played a card

Others

1. did a User Experience review for the application and introduced a number of suggested improvements (menu, dialog windows, fonts, table view, etc.)
2. changed tables/grids in the whole application to improve UX and allow to select a single row
3. number of unread chat messages is now visible also when the chat panel is collapsed
4. implemented a very first version of the IMPs Tournament

In May 2021 the very first version of HoB was presented to the wider audience. Functionality included the possibility to play in the “Casual Game Lobby”. Same boards have been played on all tables which, with some effort, allowed us to play a small tournament and compare results!

Summary: 18 players, 15 boards and lots of feedback which we promised to address in the next version after vacation.