Scarborough Bridge Club is a friendly bridge club with over 100 active members ranging in experience from beginners through to experienced masters of the game. We run weekly sessions designed to meet the full range of our members needs from those looking for introductory lessons, or maybe a relaxed sociable game or those wanting to play in a serious competitive environment.

We have our own premises dedicated to the needs of the membership where we play face-to-face duplicate bridge five times a week. We also run online SBC bespoke tournaments on Bridge Base Online (BBO) for those who prefer the convenience of online play. We play every weekday, with sessions held throughout the day - mornings, afternoons, and evenings to suit all.

The Club has a Hosting System in place for all the sessions at the Club, so any member arriving without an arranged partner is guaranteed to find one. 

We offer a range of support services for new members including bridge lessons to improve players skills, and special "tutored” sessions for inexperienced players and improvers, where participants can ask for advice during play. They can then move on to our Next Steps events where they can play more competitive bridge unaided.

The Club has an extensive library of bridge books available to members and the more experienced players are always on hand to provide advice and guidance for anyone needing help.

We welcome new members whatever their experience and non-members are welcome to join in the face-to-face sessions held at the Club premises.

Feel free to have a tour of our website and then contact us to find out more about us, or come along to the club and introduce yourself.

Our "Class of 26" bridge beginners and returners graduated this week. Twenty students undertook their first gruelling assisted-tournament against existing members, experiencing duplicate scoring and bridge movements for the first time. They all performed creditably and the results can be found on the Club website or here.

The tournament was won by Carol Fisher-Bailey and Judy Locking - congratulations to them.

We hope that they now feel confident to apply for full membership and begin to enjoy our assited Wednesday morning Improvers sessions.

The Club also wishes to thank all of the existing members that contributed to the 30 week course, particularly David Lewis and Sue Wagstaffe.

Improve Your Bridge

For our beginners and improvers, there are various tools you can use to analyses and improve your play.

You can watch these video here if you maximise them to fullscreen, or head over to the Club Youtube Channel to view them there.
Maximising the videos will also make them much easier to read.

Pause the videos and/or rewind, if you need more time to digest something.

Club Play

If you've played at the Club, you can:

i) view your tournament results

ii) compare them with other pairs, and

iii) play the hands again at your leisure, whilst the solver will show you what contracts could be made and the optimum line of play.

Play on BBO

BBO is a free bridge site where you can practice your bridge, analyse your play and join club competitions.
Unfortunately, BBO is based in America, so their robots, along with most players on BBO, do not play Acol as we do at the Club.
This video will show you how to:

i) Practice your bidding and play daily against 3 Acol robots
ii) Analyse your play in an on-line Club tournament
iii) Find the Acol Club in BBO, where you might find other Acol players to play against.

Following on from promotion to Division 2 from the Winter session, Scarborough have now won promotion to Division 1 of the Online Yorkshire League.

League details can be found here.

In the Club we almost always play Match Point (MP) % scoring. There are many other types of bridge scoring, all with different advantages and disadvantages, one method is not better than the other, but some variety is nice. International Match Points (IMPs) is just one other scoring method, which it’s very popular on BBO, particularly in casual games. So we will be experimenting with an IMP tournament for the next Caste Trophy on Tuesday afternoons.

At the end of a 24 board session we might expect the winning pair at MPs to score 60% or more and the bottom pair to be 30% or so.

At the end of the 24 board session we might expect the winning pair at IMPs to have scored something like +50IMPs and the bottom pair to be -50IMPs.

Suppose we have ten tables playing and all N/S pairs bid and make 4S non-vulnerable for 420.

All of the N/S pairs score 420 and all of the E/W pairs score -420.

In Match Points scoring it’s an even field and every pair scores 50%.

In IMPs scoring, for an even field, every pair scores 0 IMPs.

So at the end of the tournament a score above 50% in MPs is good, or above 0 in IMPs is good.

Now supposing Pair 1 N/S played brilliantly, got a lucky lead or their opponents made a mistake and they made an overtrick 4S+1

In MP, Pair 1 N/S score 100% and Pair 1 E/W get a 0%.

In IMPs scoring Pair 1 N/S gain only one IMP for their overtrick and Pair 1 E/W lose only 1 IMP.

There are no big gains or losses for anybody

Now, supposing Pair 10 N/S accidentally went one-down in 4S.

At MPs, Pair 1 N/S still get their top and 100%, but now pair 10 get a bottom and 0% and everybody else scores in the middle.

At IMPs the field is also flat for 9 pairs, all gaining 2 IMPs for 4S
and 4S+1, but Pair 10 N/S score -10 IMPs and Pair 10 E/W gain +10 IMPs.

So, at IMPs, if you bid and make your contract you are rewarded with a positive score. Making an overtrick makes little difference. If you go down in your contract when most other pairs make, you are penalised with a negative score.

One other characteristic of IMPs scoring is that things can change quickly. If you’ve played well for 23 boards of MPs, but you score 0% on the last board, it won’t make a big difference to your overall score or position, as it’s only one board in 24 with board scores limited to somewhere in the range 0%-100%.

At IMPs you can get some big swings. Supposing, on those same hands, vulnerable now, Pair 1 N/S bid and made a 6S slam, whereas pair 10 N/S went down in the same contract.

At MPs there is a top (100%) and a bottom (0%), but 4S+2 still scores twice what 4S does, so the overtricks matter.

At IMPs there is a swing of 20IMPs from top (8) to bottom (-12) which could make a big difference at the end of play.

However, the scores in-between differ only by a few of IMPs.

At MPs you may risk sacrificing and going one-off for -100 if your opponents look like making 3C and 110, and you could get a top. But at IMPs it makes no difference if you score -100 or -110, so you probably wouldn't.

You actually score IMPs depending on your score relative to the average. So, in the above the average score is 605. Pair 1 N/S scored 930, which is 325 above that, so they receive 8 IMPs on the scale below. Pair 10 N/S scored -50, a difference of -655 so they score -12 IMPs etc.

Members can login to the club website from the Members Area tab. 

Some Detailed Instructions on the workings of your members account and the Partnership Desk are also available.