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...

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

Online Daily Bulletins for District 19 tournaments:
- (Coming in 2024: Vancouver Regional Daily Bulletins, April 8-14 in Vancouver BC, a short walk from the neighbourhood I grew up in.
- Current 2023 Kirkwood Trophy Standings, the District 19 annual masterpoint race, after three of four Regionals (in: Victoria, Penticton, Lynnwood; to come: Leavenworth WA, October 23-29).
- 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 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.
SMILE, Short Match IMP League Evenings, is my latest project, a new type of IMP League which began on November 14 and will continue on Tuesday nights at the Vancouver Bridge Centre. Quick summary:
- Tuesdays at VBC, $40/team, 24 boards starting at 7pm, ending around 9:30pm
- usually four 6-board matches (if two or four teams show up, 3 8-board matches)
- preduplicated boards, BridgeMate scoring, optional comparing at the end with teammates
- all year: three "seasons" (Summer, Fall, Spring) divided into 2-3 "segments" of 6-10 weeks
- standings reset each segment so each team gets a new start
- masterpoints are awarded at the end of each season for overall leaders and match awards
- play as often as you wish; teams playing most often may get to remove some of their worst results
- teams trying it out are welcome, as are spares, substitutes, fifths and sixths
- version 1.0 of the SMILE website with colours, smileys, results, standings, hand records, rules, and signup sheets is now at mcbruce.ca
Vancouver Lawn Tennis's Monday Evening Newcomer Game features deals from previous games, with notes by McBruce. Here are deals and notes for....
- November 27, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- November 20, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- November 6, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- October 30, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- October 23, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- October 16, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- October 9, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- October 2, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- September 25, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- September 18, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- Setpember 11, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- August 28, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- August 21, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- August 14, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- August 7, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- July 31, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- July 24, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- July 17, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- July 10, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- July 3, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- June 26, 2023 (results and deal notes pdf)
- June 19, 2023. This one, originally intended for a previous game, has notes that appear at the bottom of a diagram, as the auction and deal develop, written by McBruce while playing against computer players!
Entry Express has arrived! Now available to regionals and sectionals, 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 last year. Check it out here NEW: At the bottom of this page is The Bridge Table 2023, a list of links to this year's live bridge tournaments in District 19, Unit 430, and NABCs: with links to flyers, Entry Express pages for entry pre-buys, and results.

(In late September Entry Express went "into the shop" to respond to complaints received by users who have encountered difficulties. We expect it to be back in operation in 2024.)
E*V*I*L, the [E]lectronic [V]ancouver [I]MP [L]eague, is currently on hiatus as we continue to concentrate on the post pandemic recovery of live bridge with SMILE (details above) The E*V*I*L main page for results, gives a full description of this online activity.

Further details about the league are here.
Unit 430 Masterpoint Races — 2023-current — 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.

The COVID pandemic shut down offline bridge in March 2020. We moved the Monthly Unit Games online and the 2020 MUG race is complete, but the other masterpoint races were held over and ended at the end of 2022. Free plays given out for the 2019-2021 races will be extended now that live bridge has returned in Spring 2022.
Mentor-Mentee Hand Analyses by McBruce: special sites where the 22 boards in the Mentor-Mentee Games are played and commented on by McBruce, who usually gets trashed by the computer players, making it fun reading for all!
- Older deal sets with comments:
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. We had a bit of a hiatus for most of 2022 but the project has been revived for 2023 with several new articles. 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...
Phil Wood Invitational Games. Invitational games run by me at the Arbutus Club, Capilano Golf & Country Club, Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club, and Vancouver Lawn Tennis (3 of these were begun by Phil Wood many years ago) pooled their player lists together and began a new game in 2021, which lasted until two of the four clubs returned to live bridge (three of the four have now re-started!).
Virtual Vancouver Bridge Centre. Since we were all stuck at home for most of 2020, all of 2021 and the start of 2022, ACBL and BBO teamed up to give us a way to support our local club and play with local people. This page had details on how to sign up as well as results, schedules, and articles with tips and stories. Currently not active, although E*V*I*L, the [E]lectronic [V]ancouver [I]MP [L]eague, has returned, see above.
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....)
- There is more stuff like this on some of the VVBC pages.
Other usually funny articles, mostly from my Facebook feed, or occasionally from another source (also eventually)...

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: November 27, 2023