Now that you have a general idea of the layout of BBO, have created your profile and marked a couple of friends..... lets continue

Please refer to this snapshot which shows the scene when you are at a table either as a player or a kibitzer.


How to talk to people:
There are 2 main ways of chatting. When you first log in, the chat area (bottom left part of screen) will probably be empty. The way to talk to a friend who is currently online is to click on their name in the "Who's Online" window - that brings up their profile (agrillis in this example). At the bottom of their profile you see a narrow box with a "chat" button to the right of it. Click your cursor into this box and type your message, click on the chat button beside it and you will have sent them a private message. You will now see your message appear in the chat area at bottom left of screen. Once they have responded you can now continue chatting using this area.

First - lets get to the table. When you open your friend's profile you can tell if they are currently playing somewhere by looking at the bottom left corner of that box. "Join Table" will be hilighted. Click on it and you should see something similar to the screenshot above.

Now make your adjustments:
Look at the top right of your screen. Click on "My Results". Even though you are only kibitzing you will be able to see the results of all the hands played at this table sofar and at the bottom right you can see the replay window. You want to resize your screen so that it looks similar to the example above. To do that - Can you see the narrow beige bars between the 4 windows? Each one of these has a riffled area in the middle of it. Click your cursor onto it and hold it down while dragging the window to the size you want. ( note: before doing this make sure your BBO window fills the whole screen of your computer. To do this look for the riffles at the bottom right corner of the window - grab it with your mouse and drag it to fill your whole screen). Two things to look for: Your replay window(bottom right) should be large enough so that you can see the box with the bids made without obscuring the east hand and you also want to be able to see the buttons at the bottom that are used to replay the whole hand card by card. ( it corresponds with the hand that is currently highlighted in the "My table" window. This feature lets you look not only at the way things were bid and played at this table but also all others!) Ok - the other thing to watch for is the size of your chat window. Keeping it small will make the card table larger but when you are watching a table where there is a lot of chatter you might want to make it large so that you can follow the conversation more easily.

More talking:
Now that you are at the table you will use the narrow box at the bottom left of screen for your chatting. Before you type your message into this box make sure the proper addressee is showing to the left of it. (In this example it shows "Table") Your choice is made by clicking on any of the blue boxes showing above it (in this example Table and Kibitzers) or any of the names currently showing in the chat box ( in this example delank, agrillis, 34 andre, etc.) Now type your message and click on the "Chat" button to the right of it. When you are playing with friends just have it set to "Table" all the time - that way everybody - partner, opponents, kibitzers can see what you have to say.

Join the game:
When someone leaves their seat their name will be replaced with "Sit Here". Click on it and you will find yourself at the table which is now turned so that you are sitting at the bottom position. To leave the game - just click on your name and you will get a message: "Are you sure you want to leave the table". Click "yes" and you will be returned to the ranks of the kibitzers.

That's it for today