Pasting a Deal

It is possible to copy a deal to the clipboard, and then paste that entire hand into the Enter Deal feature.

First copy a hand record to the clipboard. A standard Window's approach to do this is to highlight text and then press <Ctrl>-C.  Then open the Enter Deal screen and either click the Paste Deal Record button or use <Ctrl>-V.

There are two general formats that are acceptable:

•Twelve lines - following the usual newspaper or book format, or

•One line - following the PBN format

12 Lines

Suits are expected to be in the order spades down to clubs. You need not include a letter for the suit, and  each suit may be preceded by as many spaces as you wish. Notice that one or more dashes ‘-‘ are used to indicate a void suit. No more than one space should separate cards of the same suit, but the east and west hands should be separated by more then one space. You may use “T” or “10” for a ten card.

Here are two sample formats that can be read:

                  S  A K 8
                  H  A J 10
                  D  K Q 5
                  C  5 4 3 2
      S  J 10 9 6 3             S  7
      H  K 9 7 5                H  8 6 4 2
      D  A 10 9 7               D  J 8 4
      C  ---                       C  K Q J 8 7
                  S  Q 5 4 2
                  H  Q 3
                  D  6 3 2
                  C  A 10 9 6
 
 
         A6
         A5
         AQ63
         J7542
K3               J942
942              KQJ10
9852             107
10986            AQ3
         Q10875
         8763
         KJ4
         K

One Line

In this format DDS expects to see 69 characters on one line, following PBN standards. For example:

 N:AKQ.JT9.876.5432 JT9.AKQ.5432.876 5432.876.JT9.AKQ 876.5432.AKQ.JT9

                 or

 W:KJ7.K84.AKJ62.54 Q.JT63.Q9843.K97 A5432.A95.5.AQJ3 T986.Q72.T7.T862

The first character is the dealer, followed by a colon and then 4 sets of 17 characters, each interspersed by a space character, representing the cards in each hand. The first hand is the dealer, followed by hands clockwise from the dealer. For each hand, the suits are in order spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs, with each suit separated by a period.

A slight variation of this is also acceptable - 67 characters per the above, with the first two characters absent. In this format the dealer is assumed to be North. e.g.

 AKQ.JT9.876.5432 JT9.AKQ.5432.876 5432.876.JT9.AKQ 876.5432.AKQ.JT9