A few pointers at the table

This is a friendly reminder of a few ground rules at the table:

• When playing on BBO, please post a convention card. If you don’t have one, you should play Standard American.
• When playing on BBO, make all alerts and announcements during the auction in the Alert box. Never to the table!
• When playing on BBO, to call the director, click the blue box that has the 3 lines in it.
• When a declarer makes a claim, state the line of play, especially if trumps are still out.
• If you think opponent's claim is bad, either a) call the Director BEFORE rejecting the claim; or b) reject the claim and play the hand out.
• If you play an artificial 1 bid, such as short club or precision, please pre-alert that each round. You still need to alert the bids if they come up in the auction. e.g. 1C (could be as short as 1).
• If you transfer, say the suit. e.g. 1NT 2H (announce: spades). If you play 2S transfers to clubs and can be changed to diamonds, announce: either clubs or diamonds

Our First Game On Amherst College Campus

 

College Games

Yan Drabek

On March 25, 2023 the Northampton Bridge Club offered its first club game on campus. We had total of 8.5 tables at play with 13 players from the Amherst College Bridge Club, 18 from the Northampton Bridge club and three special guests from Shrewsbury, Victor Xiao and his sons Eric and Jeff, the two youngest North American bridge champions. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the players present here today will become world champions one day, and their pictures will be on the ACBL magazine cover!

Thank you all for coming!

Thank you Philippe for directing, and thank you Judy Larsen and Sheila Ryan for bringing delicious home baked goodies! Thank you Tom Ye for coordinating this event with us, and thank you Michael Xu for starting the student club on campus!

Future Games

Our second college game will be played on April 23, Sunday at 4 pm at the same venue, the Amherst College Powerhouse on 10 East Drive.

Future games are planned for every second Sunday at 4 pm, starting September 10 2023. We plan to offer this game on campus year round except June, July and August. So for the rest of 2023, the dates are:

September 10 at 4pm

October 8 at 4pm

November 12 at 4pm

December 10 at 4pm

Please mark your calendars!

I hope you had fun today and will join us again!

Seven pairs from our game made it to top 20 on CommonGame among 16 clubs. Check this out:

https://tcgcloud.bridgefinesse.com/MornResults/20230325Rank.html

Well done!

Meet the Future Stars of Our Beloved Game!

On March 4, despite the snow storm, the Amherst College First Collegiate Tournament took place. Seeing the new energy for the game is truly encouraging and exhilarating. The organizer, Michael Xu, has written a report which can be read here: https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/amherst-college-first-collegiate-tournament/. 

The Northampton Bridge Club, whose players are from all over the valley, welcomed the future stars of our game, and extended our invitation to everyone to play our Tuesday and Thursday 7pm games on BBO. Several students expressed interests to play with us online, and several requested to have in-person games offered at times more suitable for them to attend (our current Wednesday 1pm game will not work for them). We will discuss this in our next board meeting. Comment and suggestions? Send them to treeomatic at gmail dot com.

Players from Amherst College and Brown University. There were five tables at play. Some had already left when this picture was taken.

Is it bad etiquette to discuss a bridge hand after it has been played? - by Yan Drabek

In 1996 Champion USA bridge player Zia Mahmood co-authored with David Burn a bridge book called Ask Zia (subtitled “Your Top 50 Bridge Questions Answered”). Question 2 in that book was ‘Is it bad etiquette to discuss a bridge hand after it has been played’. As part of the answer, Zia said: “If you watch the great American pair Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell at the table, you will not hear them utter a word to each other during the entire period of play. They don’t say ‘Thank You’ when the dummy is displayed, they don’t say ‘Sorry’ on the rare occasions when they make a mistake, they don’t even say ‘Well played’ on the less rare occasions when they do something well. Meckstroth believes that this policy can give them a competitive edge. He says if your opponents hear you apologizing to one another, it gives them strength and reinforces their sense of well-being after they have obtained a good result. Or if your opponents hear you congratulating one another, it will increase their determination to do well on the next deal, just to knock the smiles off your faces. By saying nothing, you can build an aura of omnipotence and invulnerability around you which can only work to your advantage”.

ACBL has a law written for Etiquette as following:

As a matter of courtesy a player should refrain from: 

1. paying insufficient attention to the game. 

2. making gratuitous comments during the auction and play. 

3. detaching a card before it is his turn to play. 

4. prolonging play unnecessarily (as in playing on although he knows that all the tricks are surely his) for the purpose of disconcerting an opponent. 

5. summoning and addressing the Director in a manner discourteous to him or to other contestants.

You can view the entire document by clicking here: LAW 74 - CONDUCT AND ETIQUETTE

Are the Common Game Hands Truly Random?

Short Answer: Yes they are truly random. This is a common misperception since many players are often used to relatively "flat" hands produced in typical shuffle and deal games. We use the industry standard utility Bridge Composer which does not provide any options for attenuating or manipulating hand distributions. In addition, we are using the open source utlity "Big Deal" (an option inside Bridge Composer) to generate the actual hands. These hands are added to our library and NEVER touched thereafter.

Long Answer: Click Here.