Local Rules

One of the unique features of our Club is the relaxed playing atmosphere. Your Committee wishes to enable less experienced players to enjoy bridge in a “no fear” environment. We are not affiliated to the EBU which gives us scope to introduce our own playing rules - in particular allowing players to look at the last trick up to the moment when the first card is played to the next trick. A Suggestion Book is kept for comments or suggestions which members wish to bring to the notice of the committee.

 Purley Bridge Club uses electronic Bridgemate scoring at all sessions.

Announcements, Alerting and non-standard methods

Please note it is no longer necessary at this Bridge Club to announce 1NT as 12-14 point count. Any variation to this does require to be announced. 

For non-Acol based unusual bidding systems please ensure that a full description is available on the PBC website under the heading 'Unusual Bidding Systems'.

Strong no trumps and/or 5 card majors should also be announced.

Psyche bidding is not permitted in any club session. A psyche is a deliberate and gross mis-statement of honour strength and/or suit length. A misbid is an inadvertent mis-statement of honour strength and/or suit length. A deviation is a deliberate but minor mis-statement of honour strength and/or suit length (partner should be as unaware of this as the opposition, otherwise it should form part of the partnership agreement and should be alerted).

Any player who considers that they have been psyched should call the Director

Before replacing your cards in the boards, please give them a little shuffle.

Latest EBU rules on Alerting and Announcing are available on the website on the EBU information tab,

Opening bids which may be of less that 4 cards in the bid suit should be announced.

Slow Play

In the interest of fairness to all, players are encouraged to complete each round within the allocated time.  

Directors usually call the move when one or two tables are still playing and will warn tables that are falling behind consistently.  

In extreme cases, Directors can ask such a table to move without finishing a board, and award a ‘game not played’ to both pairs.  

If the table has not yet played the first card (i.e they are still bidding) this should occur automatically.  

The aim is to avoid more and more tables being delayed in starting the next round.  

The Committee realises this may result in a pair losing a potentially good result through no fault of their own, but in order to maintain fairness overall, this will have to be accepted on such occasions.  

Directors may call out “You should be on your second board" at the half way mark to make people aware if they are falling behind

Table Manners

To maintain a good atmosphere whilst allowing members to take the game as seriously as they wish (and play a good number of hands), we ask members to observe the basic courtesies:

Arrive in time, at least 10 minutes before play is due to start

Treat the game as a friendly encounter – introduce yourself to players you haven’t met before

Go to the bar and loo when it doesn’t keep others waiting