Suggestions for improving OKBridge

First of all let me say how great I think OKBridge is.  It has (almost) everything.  So please accept these suggestions in the spirit of minor improvements rather than big gripes.

I've divided them into three categories: user interface (OKWin), finding a game, and ratings.

OKWin

The user interface (OKWin) has improved a lot over the last couple of years. There's still plenty room for improvement, though. I have heard that a Java version may be in the works. If so, some of the OKWin suggestions may be less important, although my experience with most Java-based software is that it's really slow. Let's hope this one isn't.

• One of the worst things is how, if you are trying to get the tables display or results or just anything which is taking a long time, you can't even work on anything else because OKWin keeps coming to the top again!!
• The ability to save strings for replay later is good, although it would be nice if it could be programmed to substitute player names etc. It would also be very helpful if some number of the recently sent messages were always kept available, not just those explicitly memorized.
• The results browser still leaves a lot to be desired. If it could be made more like the tournament results, it would be good. Currently, there's nothing in the history view to show which seat you yourself were in on a hand. Perhaps it would be best if the other players were designated LHO, PD, RHO instead of by compass direction. It would also be handy if the result in terms of tricks (made 4, down 1) was shown, instead of just the score [especially in the version I have where many of the scores show as 0]. As far as I can tell, it's impossible, without some fiddling with the operating system, to save (or email) the results directly from the browser. You can print but not save. There's also no way of filtering which results you want to see (other than the current session) . What about hands I've played this week with partner x? It's still impossible to see results from previous weeks. And (see ratings, below) it would be nice for those who care about such things to show how much a board is expected to affect next week's rating. And while I'm on the results browser, I think it would be better if it just downloaded the information you wanted to see. That's to say, when you are looking at history, it should only download enough information for the history summary. Then when you click to see play, you should get that downloaded too. Then when you click for scores you get that information. Currently, it can take a long time to see the history for 20 boards or more. And the "Play" tab would be more logically placed between "History" and "Scores".
• This isn't really a UI issue, but the ping mechanism is not as good as it could be. My understanding (or guess) is that it uses the standard ICMP ping mechanism. However, that doesn't quite measure the time to send and receive regular TCP packets. Further, especially for those unix users who are viewing the interface from another machine (via telnet, X, whatever) the ping doesn't indicate the total round-trip time to the user's machine. This is not something that I feel strongly about, but it ought to be possible to improve it a little.

Finding a game

In my opinion, this is the worst part of the system. When the net is slow it can take a very long time to get seated at a table (often just missing a table because someone else's connection was just slightly quicker).

• It would be really nice for those looking for a quick casual game (the equivalent of cutting for a rubber) if players could go to a playing room and just by joining that room, they would be eligible for being cut in. Of course, there would need to be options so that players could specify the desired skill level of their partner, bidding styles, etc. But in general, the system would take the first four compatible players and serve a table for them [perhaps it should choose one as the server, or keep the table on the GPS - that's a detail]. You could be playing in just a few minutes instead of waiting (as sometimes) for a very long time.  Of course, this would be in addition to the "traditional" way of forming tables.
• It would also be helpful for those wanting to improve their OK ladder rank to be able to see tables which have a consistent (i.e.. where the result will "count" towards the ladder rung) rank. However, most people don't care or understand about ladder ranks anyway (it reacts to slowly - i.e.. too unlikely to go up/down) to be of any interest to most people.
• Most of all, we need a method of telling at a glance the abilities of a player (again, see ratings, below). Perhaps the best way of doing it would be to divide the OKB population each week into ten (or a hundred, whatever) deciles (percentiles) (based on IMPs and/or MPs). The decile(s) for the server would show in the tables listing (or not show, if the server was hiding his stats).
• Even just being able to chat to players privately in the lobby (something long requested) would be helpful.

Ratings

See Lehman Ratings