                        CardShark Bridge Tutor
                    Copyright 1993-1995 Nelson Ford


Benefits of Ordering The Full Program:

Any fee that you paid for the shareware version of this program went
entirely to the disk vendor, BBS sysop, etc. The author, Nelson Ford,
did not receive any of this payment. This allows you to try out
software at the lowest possible price.

Payment to the author of a license fee is required for continued use
of this program. See the next section for complete copyright
information.

In addition to becoming a legally licensed owner of CSBT, you get the
following extra benefits:

1. The ability to purchase and access advanced CSBT courses.

2. A special Level I Review course file.

3. A printed bidding summary chart.

4. A disk with the latest updated versions of the CSBT program and
   course files.

In addition, the shareware version has order screens which will not
appear in the licensed version.

For more information, see the "Ordering" section following the
Copyright section below. Also see the order form at the end of this
file.



Copyright Use & Distribution License:

This license covers ONLY the CardShark Bridge Tutor program and Level
I course files. Level II and higher course files and any bonus course
files may not be copied except for personal use and backup by the
original licensee.

You should have received this program free from a friend or BBS or for
a low fee through a shareware disk vendor for evaluation purposes
only. You may use the program for a reasonable evaluation period.
Payment to the author of the program is required for use beyond simple
evaluation. See the order form at the end of this file.

This program may be copied for others to try, so long as no changes
are made to the program nor any of the accompanying files, including
this one, and ONLY if you write to the author for permission. Vendors
who are current members in good standing of the Association of
Shareware Professionals must still notify the author that you are
distributing the program, but you do not have to wait for permission
to begin distribution.

VENDORS and BBS's must agree to stop distributing this program when
requested or automatically if your membership in A.S.P. is dropped for
any reason.

CSBT is written in Visual Basic. The Visual Basic runtime module,
VBRUN300.DLL, is Copyright by Microsoft Corp.

CARDSHARK BRIDGE TUTOR, CARDSHARK HEARTS and the CARDSHARK card game
name prefix are trademarks of Nelson Ford, PsL.


Overview:

The CardShark Bridge Tutor (CSBT) is a program that can read and
display CSBT course files.

Level I is made up of 5 courses, 4 on bidding and 1 on play.

Level I courses assume that the user knows nothing about the game of
bridge. When defining terms and concepts, every effort has been made
not to use any other terms and concepts that have not already been
defined.

The goal of Level I is for the user to learn enough about the game to
be able to play socially with other novice to intermediate level
players.

The courses are -

L1-BID1.CSC - Introduction to Bridge; Opening Bids
L1-BID2.CSC - Responding to Opening Bids
L1-BID3.CSC - Rebids In Non-Competitive Bidding
L1-BID4.CSC - Competitive Bidding
L1-PLAY.CSC - Basic Declarer Play and Defense

Each course is divided into lessons with frequent review questions to
reinforce learning.

Level II courses and above are not shareware and may be purchased only
from the author using the order form included with these files.


Ordering the Software:

The Level I Course price of $25 is for more than the Level I courses.
It is also for the CardShark Bridge Tutor program, for which many more
courses are available, with more to be developed in the future.

The CSBT program is similar to the mechanical AutoBridge device which
costs over $30, but CSBT is much more flexible.

In addition, CSBT lets you write your own course files. You could, for
example, write a course for your own bidding system for review or for
training a new partner.


Installation:

To install, simply create a directory for the files in this set and
copy the files into the directory.

You can run the program using File Manager or using Program Manager's
Alt-F & Run menu selections.

You can add the program to Program Manager using the Alt-F menu
options.

The program requires VBRUN300.DLL, the Visual Basic runtime module.
Because of the large size of that file and because it is widely
available by itself, VBRUN may not have been included with this
program.

If you cannot find a source for VBRUN300.DLL, you may get it on disk
for $5 from the address or phone numbers on the order form at the end
of this file.


Running CSBT:

After starting CSBT, click the button to load a course.

The lessons in the course will be displayed.

You can start with the first lesson and work through other lessons, or
you can select lessons individually.

The CSBT program itself is pretty simple to use. If you do need any
kind of assistance, call the technical support number shown on the
order form.


Answering Questions:

When entering answers to questions, use the following abbreviations to
help assure that your answers will match the program's:

For suits, use the first letter. (C, D, H, S). Use NT for notrump.

Use Dbl and Rdbl for Double and Redouble.

For bids, do not leave spaces between the number and the suit. (eg:
1NT, 2S)

Enter "P" for "Pass".

For cards, use one-letter: A, K, Q, J, T, 9... etc.

For cards and suits, omit spaces:
   AS = Ace of Spaces. TD = Ten of Diamonds.

For a range of points, use the format: "6-9".

For an open ended range: "10+".

Less than some number: "<10".

For Yes/No questions, use the first letter (y or n).

Case does not matter. "Y" is the same as "y".

If you enter the right answer, the computer will say "Right", but it
will still give you the same explanation as if you enter the wrong
answer.

At the end of each lesson in a course file, the program will tell you
how many answers you got right.

*********************************************************************
*********************************************************************

[If you are not interested in creating your own bridge training course
 files, you can skip the rest of this file up to the (ahem) Order Form.]


Making Your Own Course Files:

If you are an experienced bridge player, you may wish to make
customized course files for CSBT, you can easily do so with any editor
that can save in straight text ("ASCII").

You might wish to make up a course to cover your own bidding system
and give it to a new partner or use it for reviewing yourself.

Please remember that CSBT is copyrighted and that if you give a copy
to someone to use (as opposed to passing it along for someone to try
out), either you or the recipient must pay the license fee of $25 for
the program.

However, you MAY distribute courses for CSBT without the program
itself without any kind of license fee, but you must clearly identify
at the start of the course that you have written the course file and
that you have no connection with the author of CSBT.

If you want to distribute a large number of copies of the CSBT program
with your own course(s), call or write for a volume license agreement.

Versions of CSBT are available both for Windows and for DOS.

*********************
Course File Structure:
*********************

The following is the simple structure used to create course files:

1st line: Title
2nd line: Blank
3rd line: Start of the Index

The Index section ends with a line containing two slashes ("//")
followed by a blank line and then the line with the first lesson title
matching exactly the title line in the Index, except that it must end
with a colon.

You do not HAVE to have an index entry for every lesson if you do not
wish to. The user can get to such lessons by clicking Continue when in
a prior lesson.

A lesson can extend over several screens. A large font is
intentionally used so that the user is shown only small chunks of
information at a time. This should make it easier to read, comprehend
and remember the information.

To indicate the end of a screen full of data, put a line with "//" on it
followed by a blank line.

When CSBT hits a line with "//", it looks forward two lines to see if
that line ends with a colon. If it does, it assumes that the line is a
new lesson title and displays "<End of [current lesson name]>" at the
bottom of the current screen; otherwise, it displays "<continued>" at
the bottom of the screen.

Because of the proportional font used by Windows, there is no way to
know how much data you can get on a screen, nor (due to the limitation
of the programming tools used) is there any way for the program to
detect when the screen is full.

Therefore, you have to experiment. With CSBT in one window and a text
editor in another window, you can go back and forth between the two to
make sure that everything fits as it should. You have to reload the
course every time you make a change in the editor.

The course must end with "//" on one line followed by a blank line
followed by a line with "[End]" on it.

***************
Displaying Bids:
***************

To enter a bidding sequence, the structure is as follows (in this
example, the bidding starts with South):

[Bid,S]
1S
Pass
2H
Pass
???
..

Put N, S, E, or W after the comma in the Bid line to indicate the
starting hand. If you are quizzing the user, put "???" to indicate the
position they are supposed to bid.

To add a bid to a previous sequence, put a "+" in place of the comma:

[Bid+S]
2NT
Pass
3NT
Pass
???
..

The above sequence will be added to the previous one with "2NT"
replacing "???" in the previous sequence.

End the bidding sequence with a blank line. If you are using a text
editor that will save a line with blank spaces on it, be sure to
delete the spaces. There must be nothing on the line.

****************
Displaying Hands:
****************

You can display one or more hands of cards by indicating on the first
line which position it is (eg: "[N]") followed by Spades on the first
line, then Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs. For a void, put a dash ("-").

A blank line terminates the hand for that position. If you forget to
put a blank line, it will mess up the program and/or the display. No
permanent harm is done, but you may have to restart the program.

To display only a Spade suit, you can put:

[S]
A K x x x

However, to display only a Heart suit, you must put a dash for the
Spade suit:

[W]
-
J T x

******************
Erasing Bids/Hands:
******************

To erase a previous display of hands and bids, put "[Erase]" on a line
by itself.

Do not leave a blank line after an "[Erase]" unless you want an extra
blank line to display. (You do not have to put Erase to clear the
previous text, just the hands and bids.)

Do not put [Erase] (or anything else) before a lesson title line. All
lesson title lines must be preceded by a blank line and before that, a
line with "//" on it.

At the end of each lesson in the course, the previous bids and hands
are automatically erased.

If you do NOT put an "[Erase]" line and if not at the end of a lesson,
any new display information will replace the same field of a previous
display (eg: [Bid] or [N]) but leave other fields alone.

In other words, if you want to add North's cards to a display of
South's cards, just put "[N]" followed by the cards as previously
described.

To add a bid to North's already displayed sequence, put "[Bid+N]" and
the bid on the next line. For South, put +S instead of +N, etc. If the
last entry for the specified hand was "???", the question marks will
be replaced by the new bid; otherwise, the new bid will be added on.

************************
Displaying Vulnerability:
************************

To display vulnerability, add a line with "[Vul]" followed by a line
with "Neither", "Both", "E-W", or "N-S". Do not leave a blank line
after these lines unless you want an extra blank line to be displayed.

**********************
Using Multiple Screens:
**********************

Each screen of text is delimited by a line with "//". A lesson can
span multiple screens.

If you display a hand on one screen and refer to it on a following
screen, the hand will not be displayed if the user is using the "Go
Back" button to bring up the second screen from a later screen.

To get around this problem, put a "[+]" at the start of the second
screen. When Go Back sees this, it will continue going back until it
reaches a screen without the "[+]".

CSBT normally displays everything between two delimiting lines at
once. In other words, it doesn't matter whether you place bids and
hands before or after the text, it will all appear on screen at once,
with one exception.

********
Graphics:
********

You can display small BMP graphic files by entering [BMP:filename] on
a line by itself.

CSBT expects the BMP file to be in the same directory as the course
files.

CSBT will replace the bidding window with a graphics window with the
named graphic in it. The graphics window will adjust itself to the
size of the graphic.

In Paintshop, you should set the image size to no more than about
1.75" square.

When you no longer want the image displayed and want to get the
bidding box back, enter a line with [BMP:DONE] on it.

***************************
Question & Answer Structure:
***************************

If you have Question and Answer lines, the program will pause until
Continue is clicked before printing the answer (and the rest of the
screen). So if a hand or bid is entered after an answer, it will not
be displayed until the answer is clicked.

You can have more than one Question and Answer on a screen and CSBT
will pause before each answer.

The format for Questions and Answers is to start the Question line
with "Q:" and the answer line with "A:". The text of the questions and
answers may be as long as you wish.

However, you should make the key part of the answer as brief as
possible to help insure that the user's answer will match it if
correct.

For example, you will notice in the courses that come with CSBT,
answers are usually something like "H." or "1S." or "Y.", etc. Note
that the answer must end with a period. You can put as much text as
you want after the period. The user's answer is only compared to the
text up to the period.

If you have more complex answers, you should make them multiple choice
so that the user only has to enter one letter or number. For example
you could say:

Q: Which suit do you normally lead from against Notrump? (Enter "1" or
"2".)

   1 - Shortest and weakest.
   2 - Longest and strongest.

A: 1.


Load L1-BID4.CSC (or one of the other files) into a text editor to see
all of the above implemented.



DON'T MISS THE PSL MONTHLY CD-ROM!
==================================

PsL has been the leading distributor of public domain and shareware
software for the PC since 1982. If you have a CD-ROM drive and enjoy
having a variety of software, our Monthly CD-ROM is a must-have.

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You are charged monthly and can cancel at any time. Call today (see
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Or if you are interested in a specific area, you can order any one of
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DON'T MISS CARDSHARK HEARTS!
============================

If you like playing Hearts, be sure to get the strongest, most
feature-filled Hearts game around - CardShark Hearts.

Windows Sources Magazine calls it "a must for serious Hearts players".

Windows Technical Journal heaped praise (and a $3000 prize) on
CSHearts in their Windows programming contest as the #1 game for
Windows in its contest.

Features:
  User-selectable playing styles/strengths.
  Optional Multimedia sounds/voices.
  View all hands at any time.
  View a record of the current or past game at any time.
  A number assigned to each randomly generated deal lets you
    replay any deal.
  A "duplicate" scoring option (similar to duplicate bridge)
    lets you compare you ability to the CardShark's.
  Automatic cash-out when all points are in or when one player
    is forced to take the rest of the tricks.
  Hint button.
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  Jack (or Ten) of Diamonds Option, 1st-Trick Rules,
  ... and much, much more!!



                 CardShark Bridge Tutor(tm)  Order Form
                 ======================================

     Date: ____/____/____                            Version 2.21

     (PLEASE PRINT:)

     Name: _______________________________________________________

     Address: ____________________________________________________
     _____________________________________________________________
     _____________________________________________________________
     _____________________________________________________________

     To Order:
     ========
       License Fee for 1 copy of CardShark Bridge Tutor
         Level I  @ $25.00 ...............................  ______

       License Fee for 1 copy of Level II @ $25 ..........  ______

       Combined license for Level I and II @ $39.95 ......  ______

     To Get Shareware Disks Only:
     ===========================
       Shareware copy of latest Level I @ $5.00 ..........  ______
       Shareware copy of CardShark Hearts @ $5.00 ........  ______

     PsL Monthly CD-ROM @ $19.95 .........................  ______

     Shipping & Handling on all orders....................    4.00

     Sales tax @ 8.25%, if shipped in Texas ..............  ______

             Total .......................................  ______

     Disk size preferred: __ 5.25"   __ 3.5" (1.44MB)

     Method of Payment: __Check/M.O. __Amex __MC __Visa __Discover

     Credit Card Information:  (PLEASE PRINT)    Expir.: ____/____

     Name on Card: __________________________  #: ________________

     Cardholder's Signature: _____________________________________

     Where did you get CSBT? _____________________________________

     Mail To:                        Or Call:

     Nelson Ford                             Orders:  800-242-4775
     P.O.Box 35705                       FAX Orders:  713-524-6398
     Houston, TX                       Tech Support:  713-524-6394
       77235-5705                    CompuServe Orders:  71355,470

