[donsp]

Can anyone tell me, when a speedball tournament says it starts at noon, what time zone is that?

[barmar]

The names of the ACBL tournaments hosted by BBO are in US Eastern Time. Other tournament hosts can do whatever they like when they name their tourneys; I don't know how common it is for them to include the time in the name.

But the tournament list also tells you how many minutes until the tourney starts. That doesn't depend on the time zone.

[donsp]

barmar, on 2017-February-15, 11:01, said:

The names of the ACBL tournaments hosted by BBO are in US Eastern Time. Other tournament hosts can do whatever they like when they name their tourneys; I don't know how common it is for them to include the time in the name.

But the tournament list also tells you how many minutes until the tourney starts. That doesn't depend on the time zone.

Thank you. I watched the listings for a while and finally figured out what the cryptically labeled "Start" column referred to. Is there help for this kind of stuff (i.e., the meanings of the fields in lists like that)?

[Vampyr]

I think that it would be better if times were stated in terms of GMT. Many players do not know very much about time zones in foreign countries, but everyone know their own time zone's relation to GMT.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2017-February-16, 08:07, said:

I think that it would be better if times were stated in terms of GMT. Many players do not know very much about time zones in foreign countries, but everyone know their own time zone's relation to GMT.

Maybe in Europe you do, but I'll bet less than 1 in 10 Americans do. Mainly just people whose work involves dealing with overseas customers or colleagues on a regular basis.

[barmar]

donsp, on 2017-February-16, 08:03, said:

Thank you. I watched the listings for a while and finally figured out what the cryptically labeled "Start" column referred to. Is there help for this kind of stuff (i.e., the meanings of the fields in lists like that)?

We have a help system at

http://www.bridgebase.com/help/v2help/

which you can get to from the "Help" button at the top of the application. It doesn't explain the meanings of all the columns, I guess we assumed it was obvious.

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2017-February-16, 09:12, said:

Maybe in Europe you do, but I'll bet less than 1 in 10 Americans do. Mainly just people whose work involves dealing with overseas customers or colleagues on a regular basis.

Well, I knew this when I lived in America too. The information will show up,when you set the time on your computer or phone on any case.

Anyway it would be easy enough to find out, and then people wouldn't have to try to work out random time zones.

Don't most internet sites use GMT?

[mycroft]

Most sites do like BBF and the vugraph schedule page and try to convert displayed time to local.

Frequently drives me nuts, when the happy and clearly English site talks about things starting at 1400, and I have to guess whether they mean 0500 my time or 1400 my time. I'd assume the former, England being England and all, but sometimes the site is "helpful" in the background...

And yeah, given population densities (and East Coast Egotism) things aimed at a North American Audience are almost always set Eastern Time (", N:30 in Newfoundland", if you're in Canada). Sometimes they'll be nice to the other major population density and make it "8pm Eastern, 5 Pacific" (yeah, thanks).

What, bitter, me?

Oh, and GMT is dangerous (excellent, but dangerous). When am I GMT-6 (well, UTC-6, anyway) and when GMT-7? Should I know? Should you know? (Residents of Saskatchewan and Arizona can stop laughing now, TYVM)

[Vampyr]

mycroft, on 2017-February-16, 14:37, said:

Most sites do like BBF and the vugraph schedule page and try to convert displayed time to local.

Frequently drives me nuts, when the happy and clearly English site talks about things starting at 1400, and I have to guess whether they mean 0500 my time or 1400 my time. I'd assume the former, England being England and all, but sometimes the site is "helpful" in the background...

And yeah, given population densities (and East Coast Egotism) things aimed at a North American Audience are almost always set Eastern Time (", N:30 in Newfoundland", if you're in Canada). Sometimes they'll be nice to the other major population density and make it "8pm Eastern, 5 Pacific" (yeah, thanks).

What, bitter, me?

Oh, and GMT is dangerous (excellent, but dangerous). When am I GMT-6 (well, UTC-6, anyway) and when GMT-7? Should I know? Should you know? (Residents of Saskatchewan and Arizona can stop laughing now, TYVM)

Well, if you have daylight savings time (I may be wrong but I think that Arizona residents are also laughing) then you adjust accordingly. You will probably notice whether you turn all your clocks forward.

[mycroft]

I know when I go to DST. I *don't* remember, at least off the fly, whether I'm -7 or -6 today (I actually have to work it out from first principles every time). Also, the English (British, maybe? Haven't seen it outside of England, but what percentage of things being presented are neither given in nor presented from England these days?) tend to assume they're on GST. Which means that they *write* 1400GMT when they *mean* 1400BST, and that also causes a problem (doubly so when we're in BushII Savings Time and England is still on standard time).

I'm currently working against India Standard Time. Because it's a 12.5 hour difference, remembering whether they're half an hour ahead of wallclock or half an hour behind (12 hour wallclock, obviously) is difficult at the best of times; the fact that they don't do DST makes it even better.

[Vampyr]

I do not think that people who are usually on GMT think they still are when they are in daylight savings time. Well, maybe stupid people.

[barmar]

Most Americans don't even know whether they're in Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time at any particular time. I know when I used to work in large companies, and would receive emails saying when something would happen, they would always say EST regardless of whether the actual time is EST or EDT (I would always suggest that they just say ET). The way I remember it is that the mnemonic is backwards from countries that refer to Winter Time and Summer Time, so we're in EST in the winter, not in the summer. And like mycroft, I have to work out the GMT offset from principles -- I know it alternates between -4 and -5, and we "Spring forward", so it must be -4 in the spring/summer/fall.

But I'm a science nerd with some math interest. I can't imagine most ordinary people working that out regularly. I also used to work for a company with an sister office in Phoenix; since Arizona doesn't have DST, we'd have to figure out whether we were 2 or 3 hours ahead of them at different times of year.

[Vampyr]

OK. I have always found it easy, but I guess that's not true for everyone. Still, I think it is harder for people to figure out how their local time relates to some unrelated time zone, when they might not even know what the initials stand for. Since they can get their differences to GMT on their phone.

[mycroft]

My argument is that as much as possible "that's what computers are for".

My second argument is that automatic translation can't be done for certain things; at that point explicitly putting the timezone on the time helps (as does using 24H clock, as does providing at least two timezones). Then at least the world clock becomes your friend.

My third argument is the one I use with clients: "Unless I state otherwise, any time I mention will be *your local*." That does tend to make it easier for me to compute time differences in my head, but only because I do it a lot. How relevant that is to BBO is arguable.

[barmar]

These things are just hard-coded names. I wonder if we even need the times, we could just call them all "Hourly ACBL Speedball". No one else puts times in their tourney names.

The main benefit of putting the times in the tourney name is when you're looking at a list of all the recent ACBL tourneys, they won't all have the same names.