Again, this is a final bid group example we are talking about here. Perhaps I made it appear too complex by having an example of a picky bidder with 10 Avoids. So I'll break it down a bit.

Remember that the Award = Move while Avoid = Freeze.

With the first command being Award Work L--, every trip in the base is moved from the supply pool to the L-- bucket. If you are above the G-line, the bid group will not fail. Ultimately, PBS has access to whatever it needs to finish building your line. However, that does not mean you can't still layer out your preferences. That is where freezing and moving things between buckets comes into play.

Let's say that the one thing you hate the most is all night flying. You want to tell the system that giving you an all night trip is the last thing PBS should look for to build the line. Also, if they can't be avoided all together all nighters should be minimized as much as possible. So, you want to use an Avoid to Freeze the all night flying in the bottom (L--) bucket. Once you freeze all nighters there, you then use another Award command to move all the rest of the flying into a higher bucket:

Award Work L--
Avoid All Night Flying
Award Work L-

If you now clicked on the yellow highlighted number to view the trip pools, you would see nothing but all night flying in L--, and everything else in L-.

Now lets suppose that the next thing on your list of Avoids is early showtimes. You would then Freeze early report times in the L- bucket with an Avoid statement, and Move all the rest of the flying up to the next highest bucket. So you have this:

Award Work L--
Avoid All Night Flying
Award Work L-
Avoid Report time before 0700
Award Work L

If you now click on the yellow trip pool number you will see the three buckets. L-- will be nothing but all nighters, L- will be any trips that show before 0700, and L will be everything else.

Compare the above to this:

Award Work L--
Avoid All Flying
Avoid Report Time before 0700
Award Work L-

The difference between the two is that all nighters and early shows are now both frozen in the same L-- bucket. Let's say that PBS finds 3 decent trips for you in the L- bucket and now goes to the L-- to get one more. In this case, you would have told the system that you don't care if that last trip is an all nighter or an early show. So the system will pick for you. In the previous bid group, you told the system that if there is a choice between an all nighter and an early show, please give me the early show.

Sorry to be long winded, but I hate to see guys let PBS choose at random when they could have ordered their choices and possibly made life a little better. I shake my head at the thought of someone putting Award Work L-- or something not much beyond that as their final bid group.