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You and your partner will have partnership agreements. They may be simple. Most of your bids may be "natural". However, there are always some assumptions attached to every bid or call. Many pairs play using well known sets of partnership agreements such as Basic Acol. Other pairs may play their own unique system.

In either case, it's a fundamental part of the laws of the game that these agreements must be disclosed to opponents. It is against the laws of bridge to have “secret” agreements. (See law 40.)

Some agreements must be explicitly disclosed using "Announcements". If you agree that an opening of 1 club may refer to a hand holding no clubs, partner must announce "May be zero". If there could be one club in the suit, partner must announce "May be one", if  it can be as short as two cards in the suit, partner must announce "May be two". The authorities regard opening on a three-card club suit to deny a five-card major to be "normal". However, most of us play ACOL and expect an opening suit to be at least four. For this reason, we have a local rule in our club that you tell your opponents that you are playing five-card majors. This makes them aware that your opening club, and often opening diamond, bid may show a three-card suit.

Some agreements must be implicitly disclosed using the ALERT card. If you ALERT, you do not announce. For example, if you have agreed that your 1C opening shows a hand with 16HCP or more, and says nothing about clubs, then this bid must be alerted.

There are occasions when a bid is made, has an artificial meaning, and is neither announced nor alerted. However, at your turn to bid in the auction, you may ask the partner of an opponent, what they understand by their partner's bid. You should need the information to bid or call. If you do not immediately need the information, wait till the end of the auction and ask for a "Review of the Auction".

In formal competition, partnership agreements are disclosed using written documents called convention cards. There is a specific layout required in the regulations. A convention card is different from a system card. A system card should fully document the agreements of all kinds between the players and is used to improve their success rate. NEITHER a convention card, nor a system card, may be used as an "aide memoire" during the auction or the play of the cards. You must rely on memory.

Convention cards are getting very rare in all but the most competitive clubs. We do ask that you give a general idea of the system you use verbally, and you find out about more details through Announcements, Alerts or by asking Questions as you play.

Every bridge session can only proceed at the pace of the slowest player. All must finish the current round before the move to the next round can start. Some boards are more difficult to play and may slow everyone who plays them down. As a non-playing director, you can often watch such boards go around the room.

However, there are also players who are always last to finish. They seem to resent being asked to speed up. They don’t understand it is not acceptable to hold up the whole room.

If you often play your last boards against rising noise, with the TD standing over you, you are one of these players. The noise is caused by players who have already finished, chatting while they wait for you. You are not popular with the director or other players. You won’t get a lot of sympathy about the noise level.  

Occasionally the director will remove a board from your table to get you caught up with the rest of the room. We don’t like doing this, but sometimes its unavoidable. You should be penalised by a score adjusted downwards. Your opponents should be compensated for losing a board through no fault of their own with a score adjusted upwards. We are probably a bit lenient here as we like to keep things relaxed, but if you persist in holding up play, we’ll get a bit tougher.

There are some simple habits to help you keep up, that don’t lose “playing” time:

• Don’t chatter at the start of the round. We are amazed how often slow players ignore the next opponents standing by the table, waiting to sit, and yet talk to each other about the last hand (not good practice at any time) and take time greeting the opponents. Just say “Sorry to keep you” and get on.
   
• If you are scoring, select the number of each board as the cards are being drawn from it. It avoids mistakes and saves time at the end of the auction.
   
• When the auction is over, if you are on lead, make your lead before entering the contract and lead. If you are dummy, wait for the lead to be turned over and then put the dummy hand on the table before entering the contract and the lead.
   
• Always enter the lead before the card play starts. It wastes time to find out what was led after the hand is played. If you are scoring, return your cards to the board, shuffled, before entering and agreeing the result. Don’t make the director wait or ask for cards to be returned to the board to move the board.
   
• Advise your opponents, if moving, where they are going and encourage your opponents to move promptly. Make a note yourself if you are moving and move promptly yourself Listen for the call to move, and don’t miss it because you are too busy chatting and make the director ask your table to move again.

None of this will cut into your “playing” time and will help the whole session move smoothly for everyone else.

The beginning of every duplicate bridge session sets a puzzle for the Tournament Director. He or she has to pick out a “movement” or pattern of play consisting of a suitable total quantity of boards, in a suitable number of rounds, that gives the players who have turned up for the session an opportunity to play the highest possible proportion of the boards they can manage in the time, against as many of the other pairs as possible.

If there is an odd number of pairs, there will be a “sit out” round. The TD will try to keep the number of boards per round low so that the sit out time is short.

Suppose ten pairs arrive to play a two and a half hour session of bridge. Generally their pace of play is about 8 boards an hour. It should be possible to play twenty boards. Dividing the boards into rounds of 4 boards would give 5 rounds altogether. The TD might choose that all North South pairs will remain stationary; East West pairs will move “up” one table; and boards will move “down” one table at the end of each round. After two rounds, the boards previously played by a given East West pair will “pass” that pair as they move for round three. The movement will complete when all five East West pairs have visited all five tables and each set of boards has been played at all five tables. Very neat!

This is a Mitchell movement because North South pairs have sat still, and East West pairs have moved up one table. There are many variations on Mitchell movements, but if that is what is (mostly) going on, it’s a Mitchell.

In this case the North South pairs have all played the boards one way, and the East West pairs have all played the boards the other way. It’s effectively two competitions, and is often described as a “two winner” movement with two separate ranked lists.

Suppose that nine pairs had arrived. If you use the above movement, there will be a long sit out round (about half an hour), and some players will play much fewer boards than others. This is a more difficult puzzle. The TD may choose a “Howell” movement.

A Howell movement is based on the principle that the rounds will be shorter, perhaps only two boards, and each pair will play every other pair, making nine rounds of eighteen boards in all. This means that pairs will only sit out for two boards, hopefully about fifteen minutes. All pairs will play sixteen boards. However the room will have to move eight times, taking up time each time. The next step up is 27 boards which could never be played in the time.

Only one pair will remain stationary at a table, and everyone else will find their new position in each round and it may be either North South or East West. There will be no discernible pattern in the table numbers. TIP: Work out which pair you are “following” and look around for where they are at the beginning of each round. Then just go to that place at the end of the round.

Most pairs will play some boards as North South and others as East West, so the results are well “mixed up”. There will be only one ranking list, and this is described as “single winner” movement.

So there are easy solutions to some combinations of time to play and number of pairs, but others are tricky. The TD has a short interval between the time he or she can be sure of the numbers of players for the session and the time the players expect to start playing to choose the movement, set it up on the computer, distribute the boards and pass out the scorers.

So please try and arrive a little before the start of play, or at least make sure that your partner will, to give the TD time to think. A late pair arriving when the movement has a half table may seem a small problem, but from the above, you can see the TD may have made a very different plan for the movement when there is half table and has to decide if they are committed already or whether they change it for a simpler movement, quite possibly allowing more boards to be played.