HOW IS YOUR HANDICAP CALCULATED?

Bridgewebs, the people who run our website, hold all of our results since we started using them.

At the end of each month they work out every player's average over the previous year and they use this to calculact a handicap.
This is a simple calculation: they subtract the average from 50.

Example 1
Your average is 48, subtract his from 50 to get +2, and this is your handicap.

Example 2
Your average is 55, subtract this from 50 and get you a handicap of minus 5.

But Bridge is a Pairs Game
Yes.  The handicap for the pair is simply the average of the two players.

Any player who has played fewer than 5 sessions is given an artificial handicap of -10.
 

How is the Handicap Used?

After each session a pair's handicap is added to their score to get a modified score.

During the course of the month the average of these modified scores will be shown on the website in the form of a league table.
And at the end of the month we have a winning pair.

Pair 1
The players have averages of 47% and 49%, so they have handicaps of +3 & +1, and a handicap (for the pair) of +2.
In one session they score 49% giving them a modified score of 51%.
If they play three times in the month scoring 49%, 47% and 54% they will have modified scores of  51%, 49% and 56%.
and an average of 52% will be put on the league table.

Pair 2
Pair 2, a better pair, have a combined handicap of -5 and they play four times scoring 52%, 53%, 54% and 57%.
They have modified scores of 47%, 48%, 49% and 52%.
and have an average of 49% on the league table.

So in this month Pair 1, the weaker pair, beat Pair 2.