(sorry for the long post!)
Being a poor student club we can't afford a duplimate machine but is nice
to
have some of the benefits, like handouts and double dummy analysis etc. It
can
also be nice to generate specific hands for certain events.
To solve this, I invented a scheme for producing duplicated boards without
a
duplimate machine. It also doesn't allow the people involved in the
process
to know what the hands are so it can be done by the players themselves.
A more complete description was presented at the 2008 International
Workshop on
Security Protocols and the paper is available for download[0]. The
software
used to run it is also available[1] along with a how-to document for
people
doing the duplication[2].
I'm posting to rec.games.bridge to see what the wider bridge community
thinks
about the system and what types of game it might be suitable for use in.
A quick description of the system is as follows. The computer generates
random
hands, or loads them from sims files, or whatever, and does DD analysis.
There
are many programs which will do this some of which are free. It's
obviously
easy to then print hand records. The duplicating program then generates
two
pseudo-random permutations which individually reveal nothing about the
desired
hand, but when applied in order, starting from a sorted deck of cards, but
when
applied in order produce the desired hand.
These permutations are given to two separate players (possibly on
different
teams) who each do half of the process. The first player stacks up the
piles
after their deal and pass them to the other player. The second player puts
the
resulting hands in the boards.
Permutations look like:
3121 2131 4431 4431 4242 ...
and give the order to deal the cards into four piles.
We've used it so far for our club nights, pretty successfully. It doesn't
take
much longer than dealing the boards by hand (particularly if you shuffle
properly, which many people don't) and most of the time gives the correct
result, although occasionally people screw up, usually resulting in a
single
card transposed between hands. It also takes a similar length of time to
running a set of boards through a duplimate machine.
Given that the alternative is to have no computer-dealt hands or analysis,
having all but a few correct is still a big win for us. It's particularly
nice
to be able to have some more interesting hands generated for our Christmas
and
Easter parties.
We have wondered about suggesting this for league matches and such, where
hand
records would be nice, but have been unsure of what oppo would think. Our
players are happy to accept the security analysis we've done, but it might
look
a bit suspect when suddenly presented with this to opponents. In reality
it
should be treated the same as duplicated boards produced by a duplimate
machine.
So, does this sound interesting to anyone? Would you complain if your
opponents
tried to use it for a match? The software is free to download (it's open
source) and written in Java, so it should work on any system (although
I've
only really used and designed it for Linux).
Matt
0. http://www.matthew.ath.cx/publications/2008-JohnsonOwen-duplimate.pdf
1. http://www.matthew.ath.cx/projects/pescetti/
2. http://www.matthew.ath.cx/projects/pescetti/dealing-howto.pdf
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