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.
Lockdown League
A big thank you to all those who took part in the Lockdown League and we hope you enjoyed it. Congratulations to Sobhag and Charu who won the competition with an average of 13.33 VPs, closely followed by John and Andy on 12.56 and Martin and Carol on 12.00. The full results table is in the panel on the right.
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. The first session was on Tuesday 21 July. These sessions will start at 6:45 pm. We will also be running a Gentle Duplicate pairs session on BBO on Wednesday mornings starting at 10.00am. The first Gentle Duplicate session will be Wednesday 5th August. You may play in either or both sessions, whatever you feel comfortable with.
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. This is to provide us with a little cash reserve to pay for the training of our TDs to run these on-line competitions. Members can register by completing the form here. Once registered, members will receive an email explaining how to pay the registration fee.
Many members now have some experience playing online on BBO and will find playing in the Virtual Club is painless and easy. The way it works is very simple: before each session, you will need to log in to BBO and put you and your partner’s name down for that session – this signing-in window normally opens a couple of hours before the start time. You then log back in to BBO a few minutes before the start and wait to be allocated to your table – which will happen automatically. You will then play your first set of boards as normal and, at the end of the round, you and your partner will automatically be moved to the next table – and so it continues until the end of the session. The same boards are played at all the tables at the same time and you will be able to see your running percentage at the end of each round. The full results will be available on our Website soon after the end of the session.
If anyone is unsure about playing on BBO and would like a friendly session just to get use to how it all works, please let us know by email to granthambridgeclub@gmail.com and we will arrange this for you.
Non-members are welcome to play in the Virtual Club
If you are not a member of Grantham Bridge Club, you are still very welcome to play in the Virtual Club but we will ask you to register and pay your £5.00 registration fee before you play your first game. Please complete the non-member's registration form which can be found here. Once the form has been submitted, an email will be sent detailing how payment is to be made along with details of what you will need to do to play in each session. If you enjoy playing with us and subsequenltly become a member of Grantham Bridge Club, the registration fee will be deducted from the normal membership fee of £10.
You will need a BBO user name before registering - if you don't have one, please follow the process here first.
We really would welcome your support and would ask you to pass this on to any of your bridge playing friends.
If you are unsure what to do or would like some help playing online, or if you have any other queries, please email granthambridgeclub@gmail.com and someone will get back to you.