Why don’t you join us for Stratified Simultaneous Pairs?

What are Simultaneous Pairs?

In a club duplicate all pairs play the same set of boards, thereby allowing a comparison to be made to see who played them to best advantage. Now imagine all around England (or even further afield) pairs in different clubs playing the same set of boards at the same time in a single event allowing comparison over the whole of the country. That is in essence what a Simultaneous Pairs event is – an event run concurrently at different clubs over a wider area.

Participants in Simultaneous Pairs (often abbreviated to Sim Pairs or Sims) enjoy being able to compare their results with a much bigger field – literally hundreds or thousands of other pairs – from the comfort of their local club.

Sim Pairs are not expensive to play in, (£5 for Members £6 for visitors) and participants have the benefit of a written expert commentary afterwards, to give them some idea of what they might have done on the hands, as well as generous master point awards due to the larger number of competitors. It is exciting to watch the website results and see how they change as more clubs upload their files. You can see how you did nationally very soon after the event.

Where the events run on more than one day, different sets of hands are played on each day.

So where does the Stratified come in?

As usual for Simultaneous Pairs, there are generous point awards. In addition, national ranking lists and master points will be produced each day in each of four categories:-

1. Overall

2. For pairs both members of which are below the rank of Tournament Master.

3. For pairs both members of which are below the rank of Star Master.

4. For pairs both members of which are below the rank of District Master.

Is it scary or difficult?

No. On the evening it just seems like an ordinary night at the Bridge Club, it is directed and scored in the usual way