| Welcome to Grantham Bridge Club |
COVID 19
Until further notice the Committee have suspended all face-to-face bridge sessions. But from the 21st July we will be running a Virtual Bridge Club, as info below.
This will be a temporary measure, we will keep in touch with members and recommence playing at the Club once conditions allow.
We are an EBU club playing duplicate bridge. We welcome all standards of players and run sessions on Monday and Tuesday evenings at the Barrowby Sports Pavilion and on Wednesday morning at Barrowby Reading Room. We play in the Leicestershire League and currently run two teams. New members and visitors are welcome but please contact us first.
Bridge Base Online (BBO)
Quite a few members have now signed up to play Bridge on Bridge Base Online (BBO). It is free to join and many of the games are free to play, although BBO also run tournaments that you have to pay for if you want to play in them. If any members are unsure about playing online, we are happy to run some sessions to help them get comfortable playing in the online environment just email us and take a look at the help sections in the right hand column.
Self-Alerting on BBO
The EBU has produced some additional regulations to govern on-line Bridge. These are encapsulated in their ‘Sky-Blue Book 2020’, a copy of which can be seen at this link here, and which builds on the regulations contained in the EBU ‘Blue Book’.
Section 1.2 contains the EBU regulations on self-alerting on BBO. Key points are:
- In face-to-face Bridge, it is the partner of the player making the artificial call who should alert, or announce the meaning or range, and most artificial calls above 3NT should not be alerted other than on the first round of bidding – and this has been the case for some years. However, when playing on-line, it is incumbent on the player making a call to self-alert any call that partner would have been expected to alert or announce in face-to-face Bridge. Additionally, all artificial calls above 3NT should also be self-alerted.
- Players wishing to ask a question about a bid should not chat to the table and alert their partner to their interest. They should click on the bid in question where it is displayed on the table and the person making the bid will be able to type an explanation which his or her partner will not see.
- BBO allows bidders to click on the alert button in the bidding box before bidding and without writing any text by way of explanation. This puts a thin red line around the bid when it is made which alerts the opponents to the call – but there is no explanation. This is intended to allow the player to then click on his or her own bid in order to give a full explanation, which will pop up in the ‘explain’ window, without delaying the bidding. However, the Sky-Blue Book does require the explanation to be typed before the bid is made.
Autumn Lockdown League
Thank you to those who have entered the Autumn Lockdown League. The rules and match schedule can be downloaded from this link here. Match results and current league positions are available in the panel on the right immediately below our pairs results. If you haven't yet organised your first match, please start to do so soon: the first round should be completed by 13 September and remaining rounds at weekly intervals thereafter.
Grantham Virtual Bridge Club
We have now launched the Grantham Virtual Bridge Club, running a duplicate pairs session on Bridge Base Online (BBO) every Tuesday evening starting at 6.45 pm. We are also running a Gentle Duplicate pairs session on BBO on Wednesday mornings starting at 10.00am. You may play in either or both sessions, whatever you feel comfortable with. Please have logged in to BBO and entered with your partner by no later than 5 minutes before the session is due to start.
These will be just like duplicate pairs sessions run in the club with Master Points awarded and the results submitted to the EBU for NGS and membership purposes. Results will be available on the website soon after the session has finished. To cover the costs of running these events (which are not free) we will need to charge ‘Table Money’, which will be £2.50 – just like at our normal club evenings. Members will be billed monthly in arrears: there will be no need to buy BBO $ to play in our Virtual Club. We are asking members to register to play in the Grantham Virtual Bridge Club. Registration will cost £5 and, when we do eventually get back to playing at Barrowby, this will be taken off your normal annual membership fee. Members can register by completing the form here. Once registered, members will receive an email explaining how to pay the registration fee. Non-members are welcome to play in the Grantham Virtual Bridge Club and can do so by completing the form here and paying the £5 registration fee.
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| Club News |
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AGM our AGM will be postponed until further notice
Are you looking for a partner?
Have you tried using the “Find a Partner” facility?
You can let others know that you are wanting a partner, or register that you need a partner for a specific bridge session. If you need help logging into the members area just ask a committee member.
We are looking at raising money for a new electronic scoring system along with a laptop following the successful introduction of the Bridgemates.
We are always looking for volunteers to help within the club. If you are interested please speak to a Committee member.
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| County News |
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LCBA Competitions
LCBA has two on-line competitions starting shortly that may be of interest to members.
The first is an on-line version of the Stanley Trophy competition (but there will be no trophy or prize money – LCBA still hopes to run the full Stanley Trophy competition next year). This On-line Stanley is aimed at players with an NGS of 10 or higher and will comprise 5 ‘heats’ of Imp scored pairs run by the LCBA Virtual Club on BBO on the following evenings:
16 September 2020
21 October 2020
8 November 2020
16 December 2020
20 January 2021
The overall ranking will be based on the average of the best 3 results for each pair. The cost of entry will be BB$3.00 per player per heat, which will be payable at the time of entering the heat on BBO (although this may be increased to BB$4.00 per player if BBO put their charges up!). Full details of the competition are at this link here and any pairs who wish to enter should do so through the form on the LCBA web site (www.bridgewebs.com/leicestershire/).
The second event is a Swiss Teams competition for Teams of 4, which will be run on BBO from 7 Oct to early 2021. Each team will play roughly one match of 12 boards per fortnight online. A random draw will be made for the first round and assignments for subsequent matches will be determined by overall ranking following the Swiss Teams format (so teams normally play opponents with a similar score at that point in the competition). Although the rounds will be played as much as a fortnight apart, the event will be classed as a single event for scoring purpose and cumulative results will be displayed on the LCBA Web Site. There will be no trophy or prize money at stake, but local points at the county scale will be awarded for matches won and to the top 25% in the final ranking list. The rules for the competition are at this link here.
Although there is no prize money or trophy at stake, LCBA does incur costs for running the event on BBO and so there will be an entry fee of £20.00 per team. If you would like to enter a team, please complete the form on the LCBA web site (www.bridgewebs.com/leicestershire/). Once you have completed the form, you will be contacted with details of where to send the entry fee and you will be asked to send in the details of your team for the first round shortly before it is due to start.
The closing date for entries is 30 September 2020. LCBA has advised that, to avoid the need for playing ‘Triples’ in the event of an odd number of teams entering the competition, the last team to enter may be asked to withdraw if a standby team cannot be brought in to make up the numbers.
LCBA AGM
We have been notified that the LCBA AGM has been postponed to Wednesday 30 September 2020 starting at 7.15, and it will be run on-line this year using Zoom. A copy of the Agenda for the meeting is at this link here. Please note the following in particular:
- Any member who wishes to attend the AGM needs to email the Secretary (Dave Pollard - dpollardle23ad@hotmail.co.uk) to register their intention to attend, or complete the form on the LCBA website. Dave will then email the latest Agenda, accounts and any other papers in due course, as well as the link so that they can join the Zoom meeting on-line.
- Any resolutions that members wish to raise at the AGM need to be forwarded to Dave at the same email address.
- LCBA have a number of vacant committee posts and would welcome nominations for any Club members who wish to join the committee.
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