Thanks to all who attended the Bolton BC RealBridge Trial on Wed 21 October and all feedback is welcome. The results have been posted. There is a link to read about RealBridge at RealBridge

Competitions

a)   Quarterly championship pairs in two categories – Open, NGS 10 and below.

       Heats on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of Nov, Dec & Jan
       Starts Mon 9 Nov
       Best 4 scores with the same partner
       Prizes £10 per player as free BPS sessions to each player

b)   Single session Mens Pairs on Wed 11 Nov
c)   Single session Ladies Pairs on Wed 9 Dec
d)   Single session Mixed Pairs on Wed 13 Jan

 For each of b), c) and d) there are two Categories - Open and NGS 10 and below
  Prizes of £2:50 per player paid as free session to the leading partnership

Swiss Pairs
The Swiss pairs on 2nd Tuesday per month Swiss pairs will revert back to MP from November

Undos on BPS
Undos should only be requested for bidding mis-clicks i.e. you shouldn’t request an undo for a carding mis-click

Thursday Evening beginner's sessions
14 boards, start 7:30pm on Thursday 5 November

Christmas/New Year
There will be no BPS sessions on Thu 24, Fri 25, Sat 26, Sun 27, Mon 28 December and Fri 1 January

Thanks to all who played in this charity event this week - we hope you enjoyed it. We had a great turnout of 14 Tables.  Congratulations to the NS Winners: Dave Thomson and Ken Wood, and our EW Winners: Barrie Newall and Brian Ripley.  Together with the event held on the 29th September our members have helped raise over £315 in the last month for the NHS and our chosen local Bolton charities.   Well done everyone and Thank You.  

Playing BBO Online bridge presents certain challenging behaviour patterns which players may forget and overstep the EBU Best Behaviour guidelines.

1)  No one is out to get you. Hopefully everyone is looking for a fun and friendly game, so if you notice someone who you feel is being particularly unpleasant, you should report them to the TD and/or to the organising committee. What you must NOT do is make accusations or your own law rulings at the table.

2) There is nothing wrong with talking to the table, or your partner, or your opponents. You may congratulate partner within reason as long as it isn't gloating or incessant without need. Some BBO jargon : 
WDP – Well done partner :
HLP – Hard luck partner : 
GLP – Good luck partner :
WPP – Well played partner :
TYP – Thank you partner :
“Thinking” (it is courteous to let the opponents and partner know if you are taking some time over a decision) : is perfectly acceptable.

3) Undos are generally allowed at all times since misclicks are fairly frequent. In any doubtful case, best to call the TD. Interrogation of the perpetrator is not generally appropriate.

4) Sarcastic or patronising comments are highly deprecated. Recent examples relayed to me are "Haven't you got a claim button?", "Even I can cash my two winners in the 3 card ending", "You should have made that after opponents' bad defence", "Yes well played cashing you 10 tricks, when 12 were cold",  "Please keep your comments to yourself", "Did I ask your opinion?" etc. One particular issue is explanations of unalerted calls (unless you really need to know). If a bid is not alerted, then it  is assumed natural - if you really feel damaged at the end of play call the TD and let him deal with it.

5) It is polite to introduce yourself and your system at the start of each round, but this can get tedious, so there is absolutely no problem with "Hi, weakNT, 3 weak2s" at the start and nothing else. There are many players who don't chat or want to chat much but that is entirely their prerogative and should in no way be deemed discourteous.

6) Slow play and failure to claim is technically an offence in F2F bridge, but due to the nature of the online game, I would not consider that an issue, although a certain kind of player will find this galling at times!

Enjoy your bridge but try not to upset other people at the online table. If you have any specific questions please send to Jeffrey Smith at  jasmith@nildram.co.uk

The EBU Summer Sim Pairs took place in the BPS session on Thursday 23rd July at 11am, hosted on BBO. NS Winners were M Farr & J Morrell and EW Winners were Ann Adkin and Kevin Holden.  The overall results, commentaries are on the EBU site (Sim Pairs) at EBU Sims