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ACBL District 21 |
Let's Play Duplicate Bridge |
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(Information courtesy of the ACBL)
- Open game
- An open game is one in which everyone can play, no matter the level of
bridge ability.
- Novice game
- A novice game is limited to beginning players, usually those with under 50
or 100 masterpoints.
- Non-LM
- A Non-LM game is limited to players who are not Life Masters, which is 300
masterpoints with a certain amount of colored ones. Games which are listed as
"open/strat" or "open/novice" are open, but will be stratified for the benefit
of players with a lesser level of bridge experience.
- Barometer
- A barometer is a style of duplicate in which all tables play the same
board during the same round. After each round, the director posts the results.
Partnerships can keep a running total of their scores, so they know how well
(or how poorly) they are doing. Some people find this kind of game
distracting, but many like the immediate feedback. If you are among the
leaders, the finish can be exciting, like a close horse race.
- Stratified
- In a stratified event, all players play in the same group. Although
participants may have as little as no points to as many as 5000 or more, your
scores are compared only against those in the same strata. For example, Strata
C (the higher the letter, the lower the masterpoint limit) could be for pairs
in which each player have fewer than 300 masterpoints. The pair who does
better than all the other C's in the group will place first in C, even if they
don't do very well relative to the A's and B's in the group. However, if a C
pair does well, they can also place in B or even in A. The B stratum would
typically be 0-750 masterpoints, while the A stratum is usually unlimited.
- Flighted
- In a flighted event, players are segregated in their own masterpoint
range. So C players compete only against others who have less than 300
masterpoints.
- Stratiflighted
- In a stratiflighted event, the format is the same as a stratified game,
except Flight A is unlimited and separate from the rest of the players. The
remaining players play in a stratified B/C or B/C/D game.
- Swiss teams
- Swiss events consist of teams of four, where your team's north-south plays
against the opposition's east-west and vice versa. Each round is usually seven
boards (a caddy trades them for you as you play). At the end, you rejoin your
teammates and compare the north-south scores to the east-west scores and tally
the difference. For example, north-south making a vulnerable 4H game is worth
+620 points, but if east-west defeated the opponents two tricks for +200, it
gives the team +820. Then the team uses a scale called "IMPs" (for
"international match points") scoring which appears on the back of all
convention cards to assign a value to the score.
One usually effective Swiss team strategy is to avoid jeopardizing game contracts for an overtrick and to bid all marginal vulnerable games and slams, because the rewards for success are higher than the penalties for failure.
After each round, the director pairs teams with similar records. So, winners are paired with other winners, and losers with losers. Therefore after the third match a team with two wins and one loss would play a team with the same win-loss record.
- BAM Teams
- Board-A-Match team events are an unusual cross between matchpoint pairs
and team events. The concept is similar to a Swiss, but instead of using an
IMP scale, a team's score on each board is either zero, one, or one-half. The
strategy more closely resembles matchpoints, since making an overtrick can be
the difference between a zero and a one. Sometimes the event is organized like
a Swiss, and sometimes like a pairs event.
- Knockouts
- Knockouts (or KOs) are team games in which the matches are longer than
Swiss, often 24 boards. The winning team advances to the next round; the loser
is eliminated. A knockout event is thus simply a single-elimination
tournament. Despite the risk of elimination with each match, they are also
more relaxing, in some ways, than other forms of bridge competition--you play
against the same pair with the same system one entire session, with little or
no time pressure to hurry your bidding and play.
- Bracketed Knockouts
- A bracketed KO is formed when too many teams enter an event to allow it to
be completed in the given number of rounds (usually four). The teams are
divided into two or more brackets based on their level, usually calculated by
adding the masterpoint totals of the top two team members. Thus, if 64 teams
sign up for a KO, it is divided into four brackets: the top 16 teams are in
bracket 1, the next 16 are in bracket 2, and so on.
- NAOP
- North American Open Pairs ("NAOP") is a grass-roots tournament sponsored
by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). Club players who play in this
event qualify to play at the next level by doing better than half the other
pairs. Winners of the entire district qualify to enter to a national
competition.
- STAC
- The ACBL sponsors the Sectional Tournaments At Clubs ("STAC") to encourage
players to play at local clubs. The incentive is silver point awards. A STAC
is the only opportunity that players have to earn silver points at a club
level event. Players need at least 50 silver points (plus other colors) to
become Life Master of the game of bridge.
- Charity
- A charity game is one in which the extra fee (usually a dollar) charged goes directly to a charity. The game has higher masterpoint awards. Local clubs and the Unit may sometimes designate other beneficiaries for a charity game.