The 2023 Victoria Regional Start Page

Gateway to masterpoints, results, photos

Alert: your browser may be showing you an old version of a page which is updated often. F5 (computer) or the ↻ button (phone or tablet) will get you the most recent version.

Basic Tournament Information

Tournament Website: There is a website set up for this tournament at this link, which will, especially in the weeks leading up to the tournament, contain newer information that will eventually find its way to the Daily Bulletins.

Location: Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, and the largest city on Vancouver Island. The tournament site is the Victoria Conference Centre in downtown Victoria, near the Empress Hotel and a short distance from the Parliament Buildings. Downtown shopping, as well as dozens of hotels, motels and restaurants of all types, are within a few city blocks. Victoria's climate in early April is usually nice, with little rain and cool to warm temperatures.

Driving: Victoria's downtown area features two north-south roads about a block or two apart: Douglas St., and Blanshard St., a block or two east of Douglas. If you arrive from the BC Ferries terminal at Swartz Bay, from Victoria Airport, or from the Anacortes Ferry in Sidney, all about a 40 minute drive north of Victoria, the highway will put you onto Blanshard St., and you'll need to make a right turn somewhere to get onto Douglas St. Arriving from other Vancouver Island cities will take you through Langford and View Royal, west of Victoria, before putting you onto Douglas St. The Port Angeles - Victoria ferry docks just a few blocks from the site.

Transit: Victoria Transit has many routes that go through the downtown area, connecting places as far as the ferry terminal, airport, and communities to the north and west of the city.

Bus: BC Ferries Connector connects Vancouver's Pacific Station and Vancouver Airport with downtown Victoria, leaving Vancouver twice daily.

Restaurants and Shops: The Convention Centre is near many local restaurants and shops of all types, mostly north of the site. The Bay Centre is a shopping mall built from historic buidings in 1989, about five blocks north of the playing site. The downtown area has a few small grocery stores but for a large grocery store you will need to travel a bit further.

Underground parking is available at the venue. The entrance is on Douglas St at the east end of the VCC. Tournament attendees benefit from an exceptionally good rate, $10/day (mention to the parking attendant that you are with the bridge group) with in-and-out privileges (normally $30). Parking spaces are quite small and in limited numbers within the underground, labyrinthine parking garage. A number of wide handicapped parking stalls are available right next to the elevators. If you don’t mind a little exercise, the city-run Broughton St Parkade, a six-minute walk away, offers a more pleasant experience for only slightly more ($12/day). Parking wherever you see an open spot in the downtown area is not recommended, and has led to difficulties for bridge players in the past.

COVID: ACBL requires all players to be fully vaccinated (boosters are not necessary). Your proof of vaccination will be checked before you are allowed entry into the playing area. No exceptions. District policy is that masks are optional but players should expect to perhaps be asked to wear one for a round or perhaps two in each session. Just as some players are more unconfortable with strong scents, some have serious concerns about the closeness of players at the table, and courtesy dictates that we do our best to accomodate both. Please co-operate if asked: masks will be available for those without one on hand.

Slience Those Ringtones Please! While we discuss courtesy (which I have always found in abundance with Victoria players in many pleasant visits), let's be sure to silence our gadgets. For today's cellphones this means more than simply setting the volume to zero: some phones play alarms and ringtones even if the sound is turned down. ACBL has recently relaxed the rules on penalties when a ringer goes off, but this shouldn't be happening. The onus is on each of us to discover how to prevent our gadgets from causing unnecessary distractions — not just cellphones: tablets you carry with you, watches that beep every hour, music players that sound a few tones every time they pair with headphones, gadgets you've left inside a coat somewhere, all can be major distractions to someone trying to recall the auction or the cardplay or the conventions partner has forced on them. Take a moment and find out how to silence your gadgets, and get into the habit of doing it before each session, and undoing it afterwards. If you must be 'available,' vibrate mode is entertaining to all (as long as it is set to a level that avoids the production of penalty cards...)!

Dates, Times, Events, Fees: 8:45 am, 1:00 pm, and 7:00 pm are the start times from Tuesday thru Friday. The tournament begins on Monday April 17 at 7pm, with a three-session Monday-Tuesday Knockout Teams (second round on Tuesday afternoon), and an Open Pairs which is the first Evening Side Game. ALERT! On Saturday, April 22, times switch to 10am and 3pm, with only two sessions that day, ending about 6:30pm, so make your restaurant reservations for Saturday night early! Sunday April 23 play begins at 10:00 am with a two-session Open Swiss Teams, a Fast Open Pairs, and a two-session 0-2500 Bracketed Round-Robin team event. Sessions end about 200 minutes (3¼ - 3½ hours) after they begin; on Sunday things should end by about 5:30pm, earlier for the Fast Pairs. Morning Sessions (8:45am) from Tuesday to Friday have two pair events: the Morning Side Game Series (open pairs), and a 299er Pairs game. Main Events are afternoon and evening until Friday, and then on Saturday, there is no 8:45am game, all of the events are 10:00am and 3:00pm. New Knockouts start on Monday (three sessions continuing Tuesday afternoon), Wednesday, and Friday (the second day is 10:00am and 3:00pm for the Friday-Saturday KO only). All three KOs have a corresponding two-session round robin teams that starts on the second day. Each day from Tuesday thru Saturday has a two-session Open and Gold Rush Pairs, and Side Game Series for Morning, Afternoon and Evening Games (except that there is no Saturday Evening Side Game). There are single session 299er games every morning and afternoon from Tuesday thru Saturday Players in all games will need to have an ACBL number (even from a membership that has lapsed); those without an ACBL number should get take a few moments before the tournament and get a Guest ACBL Membership at this link — it's free and takes only a few minutes to sign up. The per-session entry fee of $16 per player will have a $4 surcharge per session for players whose memberships have lapsed.

Four-session knockouts are played on the Soloway Format, where each bracket will play a round robin of short matches against all other teams in the bracket, to qualify four teams in each bracket to the semifinals. The top team may choose their semifinal opponent from the third- or fourth-place teams but must do so after the round-robin ends. The four teams that advance are in most cases required to play a third-place match for extra gold points after a semifinal loss. This format removes the random draw that can pit your team against the top team in your bracket and give you a difficult assignment in the first round, and gives all teams a full two sessions of team play and an equal chance to get the gold points that come with making the semifinals. (Note: the Monday-Tuesday knockout is only three sessions and will be played in the standard way with brackets of 6-8 teams.)

Friday, April 21 will be Hawaiian Shirt Day in memory of Peter Herold. The day is sponsored by Peter's friends and will feature Hawaiian-themed decorations and music (during the breaks) as well as a late-night special event. Players are encouraged to wear Hawaiian or at least brightly-coloured shirts. Prizes will be awarded.

More detailed schedule information is here and on the flyer (pdf) here, as well as my colourful graphic listing of all tournament events here.

This Web Site: My plan for the Daily Bulletin site is to provide you with a quick daily digest of the events of the tournament, with direct 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. The site consists of a group of pages linked together by links bars like this one:

If you ever lose the entry spot to the tournament pages, there is a easy-to-remember link from the District 19 website ( d19.org ) and from my own simple website ( mcbruce.ca ).

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
• Morning-only Single Session 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 I will process the results 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 from members of the Victoria organizing team — you'll see them interspersed throughout, with the heavy double hot pink rounded border and a distinctive typeface to let you know this is official info!
• Two Session Pair Games: Open Pairs, Gold Rush Pairs
• Two Session Swiss or Bracketed Teams
• Completed Knockouts
• Rosters for Surviving Teams in Knockouts that are not yet complete
• Side Games
• Side Game Series Leaders
• 299er Pairs

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 when those boards are played later at other tables.

Once a day's results are posted, I may revise it later if there are late scoring corrections. Many 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, or a swipe down will reload the latest version.

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. Whistler 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 now 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 2023 to that of 2019, the last time we were here. If we get close to that attendance level we'll be extremely well. A more realistic goal is about 60% of the 2019 attendance, which happens to be a target of 1159 tables. If we get there it will be a good sign that bridge is continuing to recover. It's important that you support your local live clubs as well, they need players more than ever at this point.

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! For this Welcome page, I used a sky blue and a pink to reflect the daytime and sunset skies we hope to see during the week. We have a lot more colour in the pages since the covid hiatus, 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.