The 2022 Penticton Regional Start Page

Gateway to masterpoints, results, photos

Basic Tournament Information

Location: Penticton is one of several main cities of the Okanagan region of British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province. The tournament site is the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre in northern Penticton, near the Okanagan Lake waterfront and its many surrounding hotels and motels. Downtown shopping, as well as dozens of hotels, motels and restaurants of all types, are all within a few city blocks, while several larger shopping centres are a short drive away in south Penticton. Penticton's climate in early June is usually nice, with very little rain (they warn vociferously on the local weather channels if rain is coming and often it lasts only a few minutes!) and very warm temperatures.

Driving: Penticton is right in the middle of a sequence of south Okanagan communities from Kelowna and West Kelowna in the north, south along highway 97 through Peachland, Summerland, Penticton, then further south through Kaleden, Okanagan Falls, Oliver, and Osoyoos near the U.S. Border. From the west coast most will take the Trans-Canada highway from Vancouver to Hope, then the Coquihalla Highway to Merritt, then east on 97C to the Peachland exit, then south to Penticton, but an alternate route is Highway 3 from Hope to Princeton, east to Keremeos, then north on 3A to Kaleden and then north to Penticton. From the north Okanagan and eastern BC, most will go through Kelowna to West Kelowna and Peachland, then south, but there are other routes. From the USA there are no interstates in northern Washington state, but several highway crossings into the Okanagan region, and Highway 3 on the Canadian side connects Osoyoos, near Oroville WA, to points east and west just north of the border: from Hope and Princeton in the west to Grand Forks and Castlegar and Creston in eastern B.C. This means that you can easily reach Penticton from wherever you choose to cross.

Transit: Penticton Transit has several routes that go past the tournament site, and connects places as far as Cherry Lane Mall, Skaha Lake, and downtown to the Trade and Convention Centre. Some routes go way up the eastern hillside and allow for panoramic views of the city! Other routes go as far as Princeton, Osoyoos and Kelowna, but are much less frequent.

Restaurants and Shops: The Trade and Convention Centre is near many local restaurants and shops of all types, mostly near the northern beachfront but with many good options a short drive away. Cherry Lane Mall, about 10-15 minutes drive in south central Penticton is the main shopping mall, about 2 km away on Main Street, but there are several other shopping centres. The downtown area has a few small grocery stores but for a large grocery store you will need to travel a bit further.

Tournament Site: Parking in the lots outside the main playing area is free; as the complex expands they have built a bit more parking on the southwest side a short walk from the site. Like most places, Penticton bylaws ask that smokers not smoke near entrance doors, so let's do our best to stay on the right side of that one. Players should note that the use of cellphones (which includes them making noise even though you thought you had squelched it) in the playing area is a bad habit that may lose you matchpoints and leave you with a difficult explanation to partner or teammates.

Dates, Times, Events, Fees: 9:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 7:00 pm are the start times from Tuesday thru Friday;. The tournament begins on Monday June 13 at 7:00 pm, with a Monday-Tuesday Knockout Teams, an Open Pairs which is the first Evening Side Game but has been quite large in the past, and a 299er Pairs. NEW THIS YEAR: On Saturday, June 18, there are only two sessions, at 10:00am and 3:00pm, so make your late Saturday dinner reservations at your favourite Penticton eatery in advance since many bridge players will be released early Saturday evening! On Sunday, June 19, play begins at 9:00 am with a stratified two-session Open Swiss Teams, a Bracketed 0-2000 Swiss Teams, and a Fast Open Pairs, as well as a Morning single session 299er Swiss Team event. Sessions should end 3¼ - 3½ hours after they begin, on Sunday things should end by about 5:15pm, possibly earlier, and considerably earlier in the Fast Pairs.

Morning Sessions from Tuesday to Saturday have two pair events: the Early Bird Side Game Series (open pairs), and a 299er Pairs game. (A second daily 299er Pairs single session game goes Tuesday-Saturday afternoon.) There is a two-day Round-Robin Swiss Teams on Thursday-Friday morning, and on Saturday the Open and Gold Rush events start in the morning, alongside the Morning and Afternoon Side Game and the 299er Pairs. The main sessions from Tuesday-Friday are afternoon and evening, with new afternoon-evening Knockout Teams starting on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The Friday-Saturday Knockout Teams is afternoon-evening on Friday, then morning-afternoon on Saturday.) There no new knockout on Wednesday, instead Wednesday's feature is a two-session Round-Robin Swiss Teams, with another on Saturday and the familiar single session Swiss Teams on Tuesday and Wednesday evening for teams that are unlucky in the main knockouts. There is also a Zip Knockout Teams on Thursday evening starting at 10:30pm! Each day from Tuesday thru Saturday has a two-session Open and Gold Rush Pairs, and Side Game Series for Morning, Afternoon and Evening, except that the Evening series begins Monday evening and concludes Friday evening. There are two single session 299er games (morning and afternoon) every day from Tuesday thru Saturday, as well as the Monday evening opener, and a morning single-session 299er Swiss Teams on Sunday.

Players in all games will need to have an ACBL number (even from a membership that has lapsed); those who have never had an ACBL number will need to obtain a free guest membership at this link. The per-session entry fee will have a $4 surcharge per session for players whose memberships have lapsed. We understand that the ACBL has solved the Canadian issues with credit and debit card payment and Canadian TDs will be initiated into that world, while accepting cash as well if that works best for you. As we learn the new system, entry selling may be a bit slower than usual, so give yourself enough time.

Welcome back to Live Bridge!: As I prepare this page, the good news continues to come about easing of restrictions and we hope you will consider Penticton as a great way to emerge from the pandemic and play tournament bridge! Officials on both sides of the border continue to stress that everyone will emerge at their own pace, and local rules, venue regulations, and ACBL regulations for tournaments will continue to evolve, and the tournament organizers will follow whatever restrictions remain in place. But the general sense really is that things are beginning to look up! Be aware that masks may still be required in some locations and on some forms of transport, and that we should be courteous to those who prefer to keep them on. As things continue to change, we will try to keep up with the latest local conditions and keep you informed.

This Web Site: Our plan for the Daily Bulletin site is to provide you with a quick daily digest of the events of the tournament, with links to ACBL Live for each event if you want the complete details and deals. I write (or create software that writes) simple HTML that should render well on computers, tablets, or phone screens of most sizes. We have a group of pages linked together by links bars like this one:

Daily Pages: Before the day's events are processed, these will contain a schedule of events in this order:

• Morning-only Games
• Two Session Afternoon and Evening Games
• Afternoon-only Single Session Games
• Evening-only Single Session Games

There will be details on each event, what type of game it is, what the strat limits are, last year's winners, and a direct link to the ACBL Live results, which will be active following each session.

At the end of the day Director-In-Charge Matt Koltnow will send me the days results and I will process them into the website in the early hours of the morning. The "day completed" version will replace the schedule section with the day's results, in this order:

• Masterpoint Leaders at the end of the day (not including events that are not yet complete)
• Noteworthy News Items Received — tournament chair Marv Norden and other members of the Penticton organizing team will have messages and you'll see them interspersed throughout, with the heavy double white rounded border and a separate typeface to let you know this is official info!
• Two Session Pair Games: Open Pairs, Gold Rush Pairs
• Two Session Swiss or Bracketed Teams
• Single Session Swiss Teams
• Completed Knockouts
• Rosters for Surviving Teams in Knockouts that are not yet complete
• Side Games
• Side Game Series Leaders
• 299er Pairs
• New this time: since the masterpoints and results section can be quite lengthy, we'll separate the events with another links bar so you can quickly jump to the event you want, without getting scroll-fatigue!

Some of the comments I write about how the event leaders emerged comes from software I am working on to track everyone's scores round by round. In a pairs game this is a bit different from the one-round-to-go posted leaderboards: I figure if you get what eventually is scored as two top boards in round one you are leading at that point, even though it will take twelve more rounds before your tops are fully confirmed by other scores.

Once a day's results are posted, I may revise it later if there are late scoring corrections. Some browsers save a copy of a page and do not check to see if the content has changed; in most browsers you should be able to hit F5 to reload the page and stop using the one your computer has saved. On tablets there is usually a circular arrow that does the same thing.

Other Pages: You're looking at the Welcome page right now. The Masterpoints! Page, which we call DUMPS (Daily Updated Master Point Summary) will be updated every night first, before the daily pages of results take shape, and will contain the latest masterpoint totals and tournament leaders, both overall and limited to non-Life Masters. Also, they will have everyone's current total broken down into red and gold points, but will not include masterpoints already won in events that have yet to be completed. The Photos Page will depend on people sending me photos taken. Now that everyone's cellphone has a camera, anyone can do this! Here is a good guideline on how to get best results:

• Above the Strike Zone: Try not to include in the frame any part of the body below where the letters would be on a baseball uniform. People want to see faces, not waistlines. If you have people of different heights, you might have to include the tall one's strike zone(s), but make faces your focus.
• Fill the Frame: Don't stand so far back that only 10%-20% of the frame is faces. Move up close and look at your screen as a guide. I will always crop out legs and shoes, and if this leaves an image that is small, the quality will suffer.
• Send the biggest version you can: It's important. ooga@shaw.ca is the address to send photo files to. Don't send the one that takes up the least bandwidth, it will look blurred on a screen if the resolution is lowered beyond a reasonable level.
• Identify!: I need to know who the people are and what they did. If they won an event, tell me which one and first names from left to right in the photo will suffice (I can get the rest from the data I am sent). I'd also like to credit the photo taker, so tell me who you are as well.
• Watch the lighting and background: At night, photos taken in the dark may not look too well and require touchup. The playing area is usually best for light. I have taken a lot of photos that seem to have trees coming out of the tops of people's heads, so avoid that if you can, although now that all photos will appear online in colour (as opposed to monochrome on paper), this is not as big an issue as it used to be. Leavenworth has some great outdoor scenes that would make great photos: if your team goes out for dinner, take a photo of the team somewhere and send it along if you win! Simple is usually best, against a wall inside the playing area, or even in a space in the middle with people milling around a distance away can sometimes work.
• Patience: There's a lot to do at scary hours during a Daily Bulletin week, especially when I have daily Director duties that require a reasonable amount of rest, and it may take a day or two before I can get around to posting photos. Or responding to those who have sent them.

The Table Counts page has been rewritten from a pdf of a spreadsheet to a Python program that puts the attendance data into a colourful HTML table. You can check it out to see a graphical-display of the events of each session, by type, and compare our attendance in 2022 to that of 2019, the last time we were here. If we get close to that attendance level so early in the pandemic recovery we'll be doing very well indeed.

Finally, the ACBL Live link goes to the list of tournament events, from which you will need another click or three to find the one you want. Direct links are available from the event results on the daily pages and should be faster.

Thanks for visiting! This is still a work in progress and the progress in getting it where I want it to be continues slowly, but that's web development for you! We have a lot more colour in the pages this year, with each page having its own palette. Two years off and a look at what I did in 2019 produced the impression that we needed a splash of non-white for the pages, and a bit of CSS work made this happen quickly. (I've already heard the line that it now looks like a Canadian billfold and I approve!) Feel free to contact me (see above) with reports of errors or if something isn't working for you.