Virtual Club Games on BBO This Week, June 29 –July 4

All games will be held at their regular times, see Bulletin to the Left. Saturday being the 4^th of July.  We will still be holding our regular games on Saturday; both games will finish in time for lunch and an open afternoon/evening. 

Partnership requests:  As we announced last week, some of you may be looking for partners for specific games and want to play with someone from the club.  We have a player looking for partners for the ACBL 4:30 Support Your Club game.  Call Gerri Carlson at 310-377-0316.

Table chat:  One of our regular announcements is to please keep chat to the end of the round.  It is very distracting for players to chat to the table during the round, especially if time is getting short.  Did you know that the directors keep track of the remaining time in each round and can see which tables have finished and which are still playing?  At about 5 minutes, the director will be moving from table to table to check on the progress of the final board.  There will be chat to the table from the director if the table needs to speed up play to finish.  So players, please don’t interrupt play with chat to the table about time or other matters.

Disconnected players and frozen players:  One of the downsides of BBO is the frequency with which players can be disconnected.  When a player has lost the connection, a message is sent to the director.  In most cases, the player is able to sign on again quickly and play resumes.  The director will usually come to the table to monitor the situation.  If the player is unable to reconnect within a minute or two, a robot will be temporarily brought to the table.  The original player will be reseated as soon as they are logged back in.

A frozen player, one that is online but unable to bid or play, is different from a disconnected player.  The director will not know that a player is frozen.  In that situation, the partner of the frozen player should call for the director.  Please tell the director that partner may be frozen.  It has happened that the player is not, in fact, frozen, but instead is distracted or thinking or typing an alert.  That is why the director will come to the table and ask, “Are you frozen?”  This will “wake up” the player who is distracted, thinking or typing.  If there is no answer, then a robot will be temporarily brought to the table and the frozen player will be reseated as soon as they are able to act again.

See you on BBO!

Disclosing your partnership agreements and answering questions about bids is not optional.  We have now been running BBO games long enough that we are asking players to please post a convention card when playing in our games.  If a profile contains all the necessary information, that will work for now.  But we would prefer that our players start posting proper convention cards.  If you don’t know how to do this, we are here to help you. Let us help you with a card, we will make it easy for you.  Contact Sheryl or Laura.  If you play with multiple partners, you can set up a “master” card and then make minor changes for each partner.  It is not that difficult.  You are already used to paper convention cards at the club, and the online convention cards look the same and convey the same information.  Also, if your opponent asks for an explanation of a bid, please be precise and use bridge terminology.  Answers such as “normal” or “nothing special” are not acceptable.  If a bid is natural, please answer “natural”.  If a bid is a convention, please explain the convention.

Please remember the self-alert system.  Alert or announce your own bids.  Please don’t forget to alert such bids as a forcing no trump, new minor forcing, fourth suit forcing, transfers, inverted minors, Drury and other commonly-used conventions.  Don’t assume that “everyone knows that”.  The bids need to be alerted and a score adjustment can be made for failures to alert, just like in a face-to-face game.  We want you to enjoy the game while at the same time playing by the rules.