It has been 6 months since we closed our club doors due to the world pandemic. We have had to learn a lot in a very short time in order to continue our existence and offer online bridge to our members. One thing that I can say for sure is that we are forever changing to adapt and improve what we offer. Lots of things have changed over this past 6 months and I expect it will continue to change on us.

Let’s start with the news from ACBL. They are running a week long special “Star Dust” event from Monday September 21 through to Sunday September 27 when you will be able to earn double masterpoints (¼ gold and ¾ black).  The table fees for this event will be $6 BBO to cover the extra fees that ACBL is charging the clubs. We hope that you will “stay home” and play with us to earn your extra masterpoints for every game that we are hosting in this week.

Other changes that your Board is implementing:

• Imp Pair scoring will be delayed by one week. Initially, we scheduled Imp Pair games on the 3^rd Monday of each month for both the Open and the 499er games. However, with the special ACBL Star Dust games we will be delaying our Imp Pair games to September 28 to accommodate competition in a similar environment to other clubs for these special games.

• We are in the process of setting up a new game for players with less than 300 masterpoints in the near future. If you are qualified to play at this level please contact Brian Jones at bjcanada439@gmail.com to let him know of your interest and which days and times are best for you. We hope that you will come out and support your club playing in a friendly game with people that you know and enjoy playing bridge with.

• We will be re-starting our Sunday Open game effective October 4^th at 7:30 pm. This game will be a 21 board game allowing 6 minutes per board. We hope that an evening game after a relaxing weekend will provide you with a wonderful way to share with your fellow members your experiences and enjoy a fun time playing your favourite game.

• Our Tuesday afternoon Open game will have 21 boards, 3 boards per round  starting October 6^th. We have set the time per round to 18 minutes.

• Some of our members have not yet learned how to create a convention card for the partner that they are playing with. You probably know that at the Bridge Centre you are required to have a convention card available for your opponents to look at before or during the auction. It is also required for online bridge games in ACBL Virtual Clubs. Our directors will be watching for players who do not have a convention card. They will let you know that you need to prepare one. Our President, Wiebe Hoogland has offered to help anyone who needs help to create their convention card. As an ACBL sanctioned club, we need to follow the rules of the game. Please ask for help to get your convention card created for each of your partners. It is really quite easy and once you have created one, you will be able to create one for each partner.

• We are working on posting results on our Club’s website for each game, but we have run into some difficulties so please bear with us. Currently, some of our games are being posted, but not all are available. In the meantime, you can see your results on ACBL live and also in BBO History for all of the games that you have played in. I really like what I can see on BBO because not only can I see my results, but I can check difficult hands to see how other players bid, played and defended. It is a great opportunity to learn and improve your game.

• Our Head Director, Jane Jennings and Web Master, Dena Jones have been very busy updating the information on our website for playing bridge online. Please check out the page Help Playing Online, or click on the link. There is lots of information that may help you better understand how things work differently in online bridge.

• Running restricted games, such as 99, 299, 499 comes with its own complications. For open games, while we prefer to have substitutes from our own club, we can allow anyone to join our game if there is no one from our club available. With restricted games we can not open it up to anyone because we cannot limit entry to the masterpoint limit that we have set. As a result, we tend to have half table games with a sit out. This has caused us to consider several options:
  • A 2-board sit out, where the sit out pairs only play 16 boards
  • Use of robots to complete a table – with our players feeling just as bad as when they play against “experts” because that is what robots have been programmed to do
  • A 3-board sit out when we hold 21 board games to ensure that all the pairs sitting out get to play a minimum of 18 boards

We would be very happy if the players in these games would sign up to be subs so that we could fill the tables and not have to deal with any of these options. In the meantime we have chosen the option that is most beneficial to our members – 21 boards with a 3 board sit out for the direction that has more pairs and an opportunity for all members to play at least 18 boards.

We are looking towards the future of our club and want to prepare for re-opening. Based on instructions from ACBL, it does not look like we will be able to get together at the club until sometime in the spring of 2021. If you have any suggestions on how we can prepare for this, please send me an email to muriel@cmtmc.ca . I would very much like to hear from you.

Muriel Tremblay

Club Manager

It has been 6 months since we closed our club doors due to the world pandemic. We have had to learn a lot in a very short time in order to continue our existence and offer online bridge to our members. One thing that I can say for sure is that we are forever changing to adapt and improve what we offer. ..........