How-to use BRidgeBRowser
DAY ONE
We thought we'd give you a start with some examples. Please try them out and let us know.

 
Question 1:

Should you be in 2NT or 3NT with 12 opposite 12?

This very common problem arises in all bidding systems. It's particularly relevant to those opening a dead minimum 12-14 weak NT, an event which is extremely common on frequency grounds.

OK, let's do it:

 
1. Fire up BRBR Online. The latest version is 2.3A-h-4
2. Select S(can R(eset All (only need to do this once, just make sure you havent restricted all your searches on some previous visit)
3. Click on the tab about halfway down, BELOW "BRidgeBRowser (tm)" which says "Brd Shape/HCP".
4. Press the button marked "clear terms" and, IN ORDER, click on the LEFT HAND GRID

Dealer - HCP
Dealer - Shape
Dealer -HCPTeam
3rd Pos - Shape

That display should now look as follows. If it doesnt, press "clear terms" and start this step over again.


 
5. Now look at the list of 4 terms you have generated in the RIGHT HAND GRID

Under HCP(1), right click on the word Any, and select "12"
Under HCP(1), right click on "39" and change it to "12"

You have now set the upper and lower limits for searching on the first term to 12 HCP

Repeat with Shape (1) to set Initial value to 4_3_3_3 and limit to 5_3_3_2. (This perforce includes 4441 but no matter, it's a small perturbation you can fix later).

HCPTeam - set upper and lower limits to 24

Set Shape(3) exactly the same as shape(1)

The lower half of your screen should now look like this:
 
6. Click on the tab to the right, labelled "Contract/Lead" (assumes the other fields in this tab all got reset in step 2),

a. Set minimum and maximum contract to 3NT (there is another way to specify more than one contract, press F1 for details)
b. Check the box to the right of the list of tabs, labelled "Enable as auxiliary term". The tab should now turn highlighted (blue). Don't specify anything else on this tab for the moment.

 
7. Go to the "Bid analysis" tab and enable it by checking the "Enable as auxiliary term" box.
8. Go to the "View" and select "Declarer" in the "View from" button. Check "Enable as auxiliary term".

 
OK, now we are ready to search. Click back to the "Brd Shape/HCP" tab. Press Search (bottom right).

NOTE: whichever tab you are on controls the PRIMARY search term. The HIGHLIGHTING controls the SECONDARY search term(s).

We should now get some hands coming out. You can see the terms in the right hand portion of the tab changing, if they have more than one value (eg 4333->4432->4441->5332). It is important not to interrupt the search at this point or your statistics will be biased.

You can double click on a hand in the top portion of the screen, just for fun, to verify that the hands being returned conform to your search parameters. (use the F1 key to see how the hand screen works if you didnt already). If something is wrong, press STOP and review steps 3 through 7.

Wait till it finishes, there should be a beep.
RESULTS

We're not done yet. We need to interpret the results. You can do this while the results accumulate, but be careful not to initiate anything until the search is finished.
 

 
1. Go to the "Bid analysis" tab. If your screen is big enough, stretch the window downwards by grabbing the bottom, thus:

I carefully moved the "slider" above the table to "CtrOS" (Contract Opener's Side) so now the statistics relating to contracts are displayed in the 4 columns at the right. 1505 boards played at imps for +0.72, 1162 boards played at matchpoints for 49.32%. You can see the Standard deviations over at the right.

Notice that only 30 of these actually OPENED 1NT (weak). So be careful about your conclusions, given the question we originally asked!
2. Now click on the Hand Stats tab, and check "Enable as auxiliary term". The hands already accumulated will now populate the statistics table. If you want to set different constraints, you can uncheck and recheck the enable box, and it will recalculate. For a large number of hands, online, this may take a while, so perhaps next time you could check this box at the start, and the hand stats calculation would be included in the original scan.
3. For some REAL fun, now check the box marked "full trick stats". Presto, the numbers of tricks and percentages of hands where exactly n tricks were made are now shown, as in the following example. Note that you can scroll the window to the right, or stretch it (as I did), in order to see the MP results (light blue column headings). You can generate a full report of these numbers if you find the button on this screen :)

 
CONCLUSION:

I hope this is useful. Please write to me and tell me what you didn't understand.

here's the email again

recsoftware@microtopia.net

Stephen Pickett

Click HERE for Day 2

 
NOTES:
1. If you didnt get enough data (not a chance on this query) you might choose another dataset under the F(ile menu. Another exercise is to try the same thing with 2nd and 4th seats, since we only covered Dealer and 3rd seat.
2. You should get the latest client. We found a nasty (silly, annoying) bug-let that causes the trick analysis screen to disappear each time you press "Clear results"

that address again:

http://www.microtopia.net/bridge/downloads/online.exe

but you will need a username and password (:
 
3. Now you can go back and ask the same question where the contract is 2NT.