RBC 6-monthly Cups March to August 2010 Revised

The current series of the Brown and Laycock Cups were completed on Tuesday, 17th August. The Brown Cup was won by Mike Perkins, ahead of John Howard and David Barnes.The Laycock Cup was won by Joyce Baldock. The final table for the Brown Cup is listed on the Competitions Page. The Laycock Cup result is displayed on the Notice Board at the Club.

The current Boucher and Bilbey Cup series were completed on Thursday August 26th. The Boucher Cup was won by Martyn Jordan, from Andy Fothergill and Ken Jones, with the full results displayed on the Competitions Page. The Bilbey Cup was won by Martina Zwieflhofer who pipped Gloria Arzberger, who was leading with one session to go, by doing rather better in the final session. The confirmed results are now on the Notice Board at the Club.

Apologies for the lack of information about the ongoing competitions through the summer. Initially this was due to sloth on my part, but this has been exacerbated recently by the failure of my PC so I have been primarily occupied in rebuilding it. Nearly there now, so there should be more info available in the future.

Tony Parkinson

Change to Bridgemate ID Numbers

From Tuesday August 3rd the way you identify yourself via the Bridgemates at Duplicate sessions will change. Instead of the Reading Bridge Club Id numbers used currently, you will need to input your EBU number, so those of you not already familiar with it will need to ensure that you have it to hand. This will ensure that the Tournament Director does not have to spend time and effort in updating participants names manually. Of course anyone without an EBU number or anyone who has genuinely not got it to hand can still play and be correctly defined.

Tony Parkinson

RBC SPRING IMPs Series & BRIDGE PLUS CUP

Last night was the final session counting for the Spring IMPs Series.  In the event there was no change since the only contender gaining any Master Points was the leader Peter Hawkes.  Peter therefore won the first prize from a distant second Tony Parkinson.

The Bridge Plus Cup was won (again by a large margin) by Tim Rees, Chris Cooper, Ben Paske and Bryony Youngs with +96 IMPs, ahead of David and Janet Barnes, Pat Dowdeswell and Roger Donato with +46 IMPs.

Tony Parkinson

Master Points and Pay to Play

Now that the EBU's Pay to Play system is up and running you no longer receive paper slips indicating your haul of Master Points from your Duplicate Sessions. All Master Points are now directly credited to your EBU account whenever the results of a session in which you did well are uploaded to the EBU. At Reading this usually happens around a week in arrears. You can check your Master Point holdings by logging in to your account with the EBU via the Members Area section of the EBU website. To access this you need your EBU number and password both of which you will have received in the last few days attached to the letter accompanying the June issue of English Bridge. Be aware that the Members Area pages are extremely slow to load, even with broadband, so don't kick your PC thinking it's died.

Any problems email me via the link on the LH column of this page.

Tony Parkinson

READING SPIRIT HANDICAP TEAMS

The result as shown in the Results section gives the scores without adjusting for the Handicap Allowances. This is because it is not allowable to award Master Points for scores based on Handicaps (and also because Scorebridge doesn't have a facility to award allowances along the Reading Spirit model).  The result of the competition for the Reading Spirit therefore is as follows:

1. Team 1  Tim Rees, David Barnes, Mike Ribbins & Gordon Maxwell  51+12  =  63

2. Team 4  Ray & Maureen Dawson, Leon McArdle & Patrick Moore   3+52 = 55

3. Team 8 Keith Goswell, Cecile Pattison, Dale Thomas & David Spielmann  29+24 = 53

4. Team 5 Tom Moore, Pat Dowdeswell, Jennie & Roger Griffiths  10+35 = 45

Tony Parkinson

Table Slips

Table Slips should be filled in by members with your name and pair number. Visitors should identify themselves either by their EBU number (if they have one) or by specifying their House Number (or House Name) and Post Code. The only reason for putting your Id number on the slips is to assist in inputting the number to the Bridgemates. The real purpose of the table slip is to allow the Director to check that the players have been correctly identified via the Bridgemates. He can only do this if you put your names on the slips. So trying to identify players x and y from their Id numbers means trawling through the list on the board to match the numbers - very trying.

Tony Parkinson

All master points awarded for the Duplicate sessions up to the end of March 2010 have now been registered with the EBU for those members who have a valid EBU membership number.  Now that the Pay to Play Universal membership system has commenced all club members are members of the EBU (you will shortly, I believe by the beginning of June, receive confirmation of this along with details of your EBU Number) and will have their Master  Points electronically registered after each session.  There is an explanation on the EBU web site as to how they will deal with paper Master Points issued before April 2010. Everyone should therefore extract all their current certificates from the boxes on the mantel shelf and register them without delay.

If any of these "new" EBU members need to know their EBU number before receiving the information directly from the EBU then they can email me and I can let them have it. The numbers are also recorded in the Player Database on the Reading Bridge Club Scorebridge system.

Tony Parkinson

Berks and Bucks Bridge and the EBU Pay to Play system.

The method of financing the organisation of Bridge in England has changed from today, 1st April 2010. All members of affiliated Bridge Clubs now pay a small levy via their table money each time they play in a licensed event rather than paying an annual fee to the county and the EBU. Interestingly, they always did pay such a levy, since the Master Points that were awarded had to be paid for. The difference now is that all members of such clubs automatically become members of the EBU. All Reading Bridge Club members who were not previously EBU members have been issued with an EBU number and will shortly be receiving confirmation of this from the EBU.

The Berks and Bucks County Bridge Association have issued a welcome notice to all those new members which explains the changes in more detail and can be accessed by clicking on this news item.

Once everyone has received notification of their EBU number (which I understand will occur by the beginning of June) I intend to change the way that players identify themselves on Duplicate evenings via the Bridgemates, so that they use their EBU number rather than the Reading Player Database Id number. This will mean that we do not have to maintain the separate list of individual numbers and members will only need to remember one Bridge Id number.

Tony Parkinson

Berks & Bucks County News

There is now a page (County News) on the web site for the latest county news and notices of forthcoming events. Click on the page for links to the Mixed and Seniors Pairs announcements.

The tables for the ongoing competitions are currently disposed as follows.

The current Presidents and Francis Cup tables are fully up to date on the Competitions Page as they are updated automatically by the Bridgewebs system after each relevant session. The final results for the previous period can still be seen on the RBC Full Competitions page.

The results for the Boucher and  Brown Cups are calculated automatically by the Bridgewebs system so that after each session the updated positions are computed and displayed on the Competitions page. The final results for the period just ended can be seen on the RBC Full Competitions page.

The results for the Bilbey and Laycock Cup Handicap competitions cannot be computed directly by Bridgewebs so these tables are shown on the RBC Full Competitions page. Currently the final results for the period just ended can be seen there.

Tony Parkinson

Brown & Boucher Cups

There will be a slight change in the rules of the Brown and Boucher Cups starting from the next 6 monthly period, March 2010 to August 2010. Both competitions specify that if competitors play on more than 8 qualifying occasions their score in the competition will be calculated from their best 8 scores only. In each competition also, there is a requirement that in order to qualify, one must play with 3 different partners. Up to the present competition however, these requirements have been implemented separately. From the period commencing in March 2010 the requirement will be changed so that the 8 qualifying scores themselves include results obtained with 3 different partners. As an illustration I have included in the Competition pages an additional table representing the Boucher Cup rescored for the current period but using the new rules. This will not affect the trophy for the current period but is included for illustrative purposes only.

One effect of this change is that the rules correspond with the way in which Bridgewebs calculates results where a minimum number of partners is specified. This means that the up to date positions in the Boucher, Brown, Francis and Presidents Cups, as well as the Spring IMPs Series, will all be immediately available on the web site following every qualifying competition.

Tony Parkinson

BRIDGEMATES

We have now used the Bridgemates to score both the Tuesday and Thursday Duplicate sessions this week. I hope you are all happy with how it has gone so far. Using new methods slows us down a little initially but I think over the next couple of weeks you will all become more au fait with what needs to be done. One difference is that players identities are now input via the Bridgemates. To do this each member (and most visitors) have an RBC Scorebridge Database Number which is input at the beginning of the session. There is a list of these numbers on the Notice Board in each room. The other major difference is that the overall result will be available as soon as the score on the final board in play has been entered. You won't have to wait while the scorer keys in 24 travellers. One thing which remains the same however is that you need to make sure you play the boards the correct way round, otherwise all your good scores go to your opponents. The Bridgemates do specify at the start of each round which pairs should be at the table, which way they should be sitting and which boards they should be playing. If you check this each round then everything should go swimmingly.

Tony Parkinson

The Annual competitions for the Presidents and Francis Cups for 2009 were completed on 17th November. The Presidents Cup was won by Tim Rees and the Francis Cup by Tim Rees and Mike Perkins. The outstanding nature of Tim's bridge over the year is shown by the fact that he and his varied partners held a virtual monopoly on the top places in the Francis Cup. On the other hand Ian Reissmann may be considered slightly unfortunate in that his average in both events was slightly higher than the winners but he missed out in both by being one appearance short of qualifying.

The full results can be viewed on the RBC Full Competition Tables page.

Tony Parkinson

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