Welcome to mcbruce.ca !

Just a simple webpage for stuff created by McBruce

I direct bridge games and tournaments and create stuff for my bridge work which people seem to want. So I set up this web page to slowly put the things (essays, programs, information) I've created into the public domain. If I were a better writer or programmer I would not be giving them away, but since I am not, I trust you will not descend upon me in anger should they not interest you or work for you...

Nothing on this site has ads or asks for a credit card number (some of the external links might). Since I maintain this site for information and entertainment purposes only, there is no security layer and some browsers may get antsy. I'll do my best to ensure none of these pages is infected with something transmittable so you can safely ignore the warnings that today's browsers insist upon, and we can keep this all free and simple.

Among the things you may currently — or eventually — find here:

• Online Daily Bulletins for District 19 tournaments:
  • Next up: Victoria Regional 2025, April 7-13 in Victoria BC, watch for the Daily Bulletin pages to appear in mid-March. Or maybe earlier.
  • Final 2024 Kirkwood Trophy Standings, the District 19 annual masterpoint race, after Regionals in Penticton, Lynnwood, and Ocean Shores. Congratulations to Ray Miller of Seattle!
  • Ocean Shores Regional November 4 - 10, 2024 in Ocean Shores WA, 75 miles west of Olympia, on the Pacific Coast.
  • Puget Sound Regional August 19 - 25, 2024 in Lynnwood WA, north of Seattle. Possibly the DINO regional site with the most variety in nearby eateries!
  • Penticton Regional, June 10 - 16, 2024 in Penticton BC, still Canada's largest Regional, this year with the added Canadian Championships running alongside the tournament.
  • (The 2024 Vancouver Regional was canceled when the venue became unavailable.)
  • Finally! Final 2023 Kirkwood Trophy Standings, the District 19 annual masterpoint race, after Regionals in Victoria, Penticton, Lynnwood, and Leavenworth.
  • Leavenworth Regional October 23 - 29, 2023 in Leavenworth WA, a Bavarian-themed town about two hours drive east of Everett WA.
  • Puget Sound Regional August 21 - 27, 2023 in Lynnwood WA, north of Seattle. Possibly the DINO regional site with the most variety in nearby eateries!
  • Penticton Regional, June 17 - 23, 2023 in Penticton BC, recovering towards the pre-pandemic status of Canada's largest Regional.
  • NEW! After the 2023 Victoria Regional I did some programming and created a new set of daily pages with round-by-round leaders for all pair and Swiss Team events. Following the usual list of overall winners, each strat has its own leader table which lists the top X pairs in that strat. (X is a bit less than double the number of overall places in that strat; I figure those who did worse than that don't need the details of their struggles publicized...). The tables are colour-coded by current percentage after each round and include popups that appear showing even more details. These will appear in the Penticton Bulletins and the Victoria Bulletins with them are also online (add a 2 before '.html' in the address: tue.html is the original page; tue2.html is the new version with the round-by-round details.) A full explanation and an example is here.
  • Victoria Regional, April 17-23, 2023 in the capital city of B.C. (New versions of pages with the new round-by-round results: Monday  Tuesday  Wednesday  Thursday  Friday  Saturday  Sunday )
  • Final 2022 Kirkwood Trophy Standings, the District 19 annual masterpoint race, after all four Regionals (Whistler results now included).
  • Whistler Regional November 3-9, 2022 in Whistler BC, 2010 Olympic co-host city, about 125km (80 miles) north of Vancouver.
  • Puget Sound Regional August 22-28, 2022 in Lynnwood WA, north of Seattle.
  • Penticton Regional, June 13-19, 2022 in Penticton BC, Canada's largest Regional, in rebuilding mode.
  • Leavenworth Regional April 4-10, 2022 in Leavenworth WA, a Bavarian-themed town about two hours drive east of Everett WA.
  • Whistler Regional October 28-November 3, 2019 in Whistler BC, Olympic ski resort about 80 minutes drive north of Vancouver.
  • Tri-Cities Regional October 21-27, 2019 in Pasco WA, in southeastern Washington State.
  • Puget Sound Regional August 19-26, 2019 in Lynnwood WA, north of Seattle.
  • Penticton Regional, June 10-16, 2019 in Penticton BC, Canada's largest Regional.
  • Victoria Regional, April 8-14, 2019 in the capital city of B.C.
  • How These Work: Each link above takes you to the Welcome page for that tournament. There are links from each page to the seven daily pages and the photos, masterpoints, table counts, and ACBL Live links. The daily pages begin with a list of events with detailed descriptions, and the winners of them at the last tournament, but at the end of that day morph into results and updated masterpoint leaders and occasional news items.
  
  
  
• Vancouver Lawn Tennis's Monday Evening Newcomer Game features deals from previous games, with notes by McBruce. Starting on February 12 the notes will appear on the same page as the results instead of the old way with a link to the PDF file. However, this does mean that we'll need to retire some of these large files once they are more than about six weeks old. Here are deals and notes for....
  • (No game December 16, site unavailable. We'll be asking online about December 23....
  • December 9, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • December 2, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • November 25, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • November 18, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • November 11, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • November 4, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • October 28, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • October 21, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • October 14, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  • October 7, 2024 (results and deal notes included!)
  
  
  
• Entry Express has arrived! Now available to some regionals and all NABCs (see below), EE allows you to purchase entries online before you even leave the house! This combines with the introduction of onsite credit and debit card sales in 2022. Check it out here
  
  (In late September 2023 Entry Express went "into the shop" to respond to complaints received by users who have encountered difficulties. Not sure where this is going; it was set up in Penticton and in Toronto in 2024, but at few other spots.)
  
  
  
• Unit 430 Masterpoint Races — 2024-current — 2023-final — 2022-final (see note below) - 2021-final (see note below) - 2020-final - 2019-final - 2018-final - 2017-final using a new (OK, it's no longer so new, I wrote it in 2017) program that combines a long text file of results with an even longer text file of player data.
  
  For 2024, Unit 430 is rotating Unit Games among several clubs so that everyone in the Unit can play one, and the news about where the next one is should be at the Unit 430 site (link). Club directors running the games are sending files to me for processing: the game results on ACBL Live are here, the updated list of free plays given out to Board Members for their service and masterpoint winners is here, and instructions for Unit Game directors are here.
  
  
  
• Deal of The Week! Starting in November 2021 I began using Bridge Base's Handviewer program to create quick reads containing one deal and comments on the bidding and play. We'll try to add one of these a week, based on hands I see online as a Director, and hands I play when fighting against various bridge programs and apps. This has taken a back seat to my Directing schedule now that the pandemic is over and I am somehow the only one left directing tournaments in B.C., but we add a few more from time to time. There is an index and next/previous links on each page. Check it out!
  
  
  
• Something NEW! I finally got the time to move from Phase 1 (read as much as you can about JavaScript from as many sources as possible and try to get your head around at least the basics) to Phase 2 (actually write some [censored]ing code) and my first project is Gametime3, an improved version of the bridge round timer I wrote in the 90s in QBASIC and then in the 2000s in PerlTk. You can try it out here, and view some screenshots and read about it here. Next project is a new version of "sdaphr" - the program that allows you to enter shuffled hands and get a PBN (Portable Bridge Notation) file. I've been using it but it's not really ready for general release: entering cards on a numeric keypad seems to interfere with many common browser shortcuts and changes to your browser setup are required to avoid having the program go off in an unexpected direction...
  
  
  
• Bridge articles of various lengths that I have written for some of my club games or for the Matchpointer, the Unit 430 newsletter that I edited for almost a decade (finally got one, more coming):
  • McBruce on the ACBL Convention Card (the old one, which will be with us for awhile before clubs and tournaments run out, which may be a good thing because the complaints about the new one will be with us for years, bridge players hating to have to conform to anything different....)
  • There is more stuff like this on some of the VVBC pages.
  
  
  
• I've stopped posting to Facebook but have kept a big file of stuff I posted there over about a decade (link), and I'll post some of the best ones here from time to time:
  
  

  (December 16, 2021)

  The Twelve Days Of Christmas. You know the song. On the BBC a math professor was asked this question: how many total LEGS in the 12 days of gifts? Answer, remembering that the lower numbered gifts are given multiple times, and that all gifts except the day five golden rings have two legs each, is ... 808. Here's an even more difficult one: in a normal rendition of the song, which verse are you on when you are halfway through?

  Not so easy, this, since TTDOC alternates between 4/4 and 3/4 throughout. The opening bit of each verse, "on the nth day of Christmas, etc." is 8 beats, 2 4/4 bars. This is followed by:

  • 2 4/4 bars for the first day
  • 1 4/4 bar for the second day (the fourth beat added is where we sing "and a..." as a lead in to the partridge)
  • 1 3/4 bar for all other days ("n something somethings"), except for...
  • 2 4/4 bars for "five golden rings"

  Adding up all the beats, we find the first verse ends after 16 beats, the rest after 36, 59, 85, 119, 156, 196, 239, 285, 334, 386, and 441, although in most renditions the final two bars are sung in halved-time so 449 beats in a full, normal rendition. The 225th beat falls in verse eight as we sing about the five golden rings.

  
  
  
  

Writing is something I do a lot of, editing not so much. If you are prone to the TL:DR* comment, go watch a video on YouTube, the stuff posted here will not interest you. I'd rather read something than watch something and I hate seeing sites switch to video. 
 
* TL:DR stands for 'too long; didn't read.' For someone who struggles to get words and phrases and sentences to fit together, the only comeback to that lazy slam is DILLIGAF, which you'll have to look up on Wikipedia....

That's all for now. I'll put the date of the latest update at the bottom of this page so you can see what's happened.

Last update: October 26, 2024 (at least, the last time I updated and scrolled down to the end to change this line......)