Displaying commentary on the traveller

This guide is for those who have already seen Running an event. After you have looked here, at this chapter, we recommend that you look at these chapters:

• Running an event:
• Advice
• Scoring & movements
• Score adjustments, corrections & penalties
• Show scores by category
• Board Reports and Time Usage Reports
• Broadcasts
• Watching at the table
• Imposed actions
• Deal commentary
• Table Announcements & Information Panels
• Multi-Session Pairs
• Multi-Session Teams
• RealBridge Config Files

This feature can be used for:

• Teaching
• Special events (like simultaneous pairs) where commentary has been prepared in advance
• Replaying deals from famous matches where commentary has been provided

Importing commentary

Before the session starts, the Director or Teacher loads a PBN file containing the deals and commentary. This can be done either in Session settings or in Advanced.

The system displays information about what has been loaded.

Two examples: The first one has commentary. The second has results, imposed actions and PBN commentary.

Below are examples that show this funcationality via Session settings.

How to display commentary to the players

Advanced button, General tab, under Options,  tick Show deal commentary

Only when a PBN file with deal commentary is loaded will you be able to see the checkbox for showing deal commentary.

This can be switched on or off again at any time during the session. For example, it could be on all the time, so that the players see the commentary at the end of each hand. Alternatively, you might start with it switched off, then switch it on during a break or at the end of the session.

How the player sees commentary

Button to display/hide commentary: clicking this will display the commentary.
   

The results will still appear below the commentary.

Clicking the button again will hide the commentary.

If there is no commentary, no button is displayed on the traveller.

How to create PBN files with commentary

There are 2 approaches:

• Use a PBN editor tool, such as BridgeComposer (there are a few available). The commentary that you enter in your PBN editor will be displayed in RealBridge, with the formatting that you used.
• Edit the PBN using a text editor. This is not recommended for most people, as it is difficult to adhere to the PBN rules/syntax. (For more information, see section 3.8 of the PBN spec. RealBridge ingests and displays all full-line style commentary, that is text that is enclosed in { } characters. End-of-line style commentary is ignored.)

If the deal appears more than once in the file, RealBridge only looks for commentary in the first instance of the deal. So, for example, if the PBN file has 3 results for Board 1, and the teacher wants to add commentary for a lesson, they should add the commentary to the first instance of the board.