The 2024 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 central and 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, some close by, others near the northern beachfront, and 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 doorways, so let's do our best to comply please.

COVID: ACBL and District policy no longer requires that all players be fully or even partially vaccinated. Masks are not required but players should expect to possibly be asked to wear one if requested by opponents who must supply them. Just as some players are more uncomfortable 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.

Let's use common sense and remember that while we are all happy to see the end of the mandatory restrictions, COVID is still out there and everyone is still returning to normal at their own pace. Players should stay away from the crowded playing areas when symptoms suddenly develop that might be COVID. Most pharmacies have COVID testing kits available for free if you'd like to be sure before you play. At the same time, let's not ostracize anyone who sneezes or coughs a time or two and trust that they are being as vigilant as we all should.

Slience Those Ringtones Please! While we discuss courtesy (which I have always found in abundance with Okanagan 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 and connection jingles 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...)!

Another Common Issue: A British tournament director's amusing article about his daily trials included this recurring gag of complaints received from players at roughly the same time, familiar to any tournament director in the world and adjusted here for ACBL play:

"Director, it is far too hot in here. You would think the ACBL could get a decent venue sometimes, considering all the money we spend on them. What are you going to do about it?"

"Director, it is awfully cold in here. You would think the ACBL could get a decent venue sometimes, considering all the money we spend on them. What are you going to do about it?"

Welcome to the Director's Endplay. Here's what I know from experience. We usually* get both complaints in roughly equal proportions. This means that there is a wide variation in perception among players themselves. The majority do not complain and are comfortable with the current temperature. If you are not in the majority and freeze up in air-conditioned space, taking matters into your own hands by opening doors to let in warm air from outside may work temporarily, but eventually the sensors will detect this warm air and compensate for it, making you and others even colder. Modern buildings constantly monitor the temperature and are making the changes you are demanding before you even ask. Even so, a bridge tournament, where at 12:20 there may be 36 people in the playing area and twenty minutes later there may be ten times as many warm bodies affecting the temperature, all changes are gradual. The best solution is to be prepared and have a sweater or jacket with you.

* Usually, but not always. In Osoyoos a few weeks ago we were faced with a venue where the AC was on August mode in a warm late May. "Fifteen to seventeen" was not a notrump range, it was an estimate of the room temperature in Celsius! By the fourth session, with help from the players, we were out in the hallway where it was a bit dark, but the blasts of cold air couldn't reach us.

Dates, Times, Events, Fees: 9:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 7:00 pm are the start times from Tuesday thru Friday. After a Barbara Seagram workshop on Monday Afternoon (preregister with an e-mail to imorrow@telus.net), the tournament begins on Monday June 10 at 7:00 pm , with a Monday-Tuesday Knockout Teams, an Open Pairs which is the first in the Evening Side Game Series but has been quite large in the past, and a 299er Pairs. ALERT: On Saturday, June 15, 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 hungry bridge players will be released early Saturday evening! (Note: the flyer for the tournament has a Saturday typo and the Morning 299er Pairs starts at 10am with the other events, not 9am as printed.) On Sunday, June 16, play begins at 9:00 am with a stratified two-session Open Swiss Teams, a Bracketed 0-3000 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 Morning Side Game Series (open pairs), and a 299er Pairs game, with a Thursday-Friday Morning Bracketed Team event. 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 afternoon-evening Knockout Teams starting on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday (as well as the Monday-Tuesday opening KO where winners get to wake up early...). The Friday-Saturday Knockout Teams is afternoon-evening on Friday, then morning-afternoon on Saturday. Knockouts in Penticton are played traditional style with brackets of 9-16 teams playing head-to-head or three-way matches. For teams not advancing there are single session Swiss Teams on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, and also a two-session Bracketed Round-Robin Teams on Thursday afternoon/evening and another on Saturday morning/afternoon. There is also a Zip Knockout Teams on Thursday evening starting at 10:30pm where the winners will be decided in the wee hours of the morning! Each day from Tuesday thru Saturday has a two-session Open and Gold Rush Pairs, and a game in the Morning, Afternoon and Evening Side Game Series, except that the Evening series begins Monday evening and concludes Friday evening, while the others begin on Tuesday and end on Saturday with the different start times. 299er Pairs games are on at every session of the tournament, morning, afternoon, and evening (there is a typo in the flyer and the Saturday Morning 299er game begins at 10:00am with the rest of the events, not 9:00am.), 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 (Canadian dollars) $18.00 per-session entry fee will have a $4.00 surcharge per session for players whose memberships have lapsed.

No Cash, Please! All entries, online and after waiting in line, will be cashless, on debit or credit card only please. Pairs and teams must purchase entries all at the same time, but entries can be split up among multiple cards (let the seller know if this is what you intend!) For purchasing entries on site, directors will need to know for pairs and knockout teams an approximate masterpoint total for your pair or team (except for Swiss Teams), and if you have more than four players on your team. This helps us ensure that no section or group of tables is significantly stronger than the others in a pair game, and helps us determine the brackets in a knockout (so be as accurate as you can, please). "We're A's" is insufficient since we usually try to place the best of the A-strat in certain spots so the opposing pairs don't face you all in consecutive rounds!

O Canada! Along with the main tournament are the 2024 Canadian Bridge Championships, which will be taking place in a separate quarter of the playing area. Most of these events are the finals or semifinals of online qualifying tournaments earlier this year, but there are two events that Canadian Bridge Federation members can play in: the Canadian Open Pairs Championship (which, if you have not pre-qualified, will cost an extra $25 per player) on June 12-13, and the Canadian IMP Pairs Championship (no pre-qualification required, but CBF membership probably is a must) on June 14-15. There are two events open to all CBF members that may be of interest to Regional tournament players: the CBF Annual General Meeting on Thursday, June 13 at 9:00 am, and the CBF Hall of Fame Ceremony on Saturday, June 15 at 7:00 pm. We'll try to keep you updated with the news on the various events each day, using this white on red format.

Welcome back to Live Bridge!: All of us have returned to live bridge at our own pace, which means that some will have more post-pandemic live bridge on their speedometers than others. As I have noted in a piece last year, this is a bigger hurdle than some of us expected after two or three years of having the computers score for us, move us to new tables automatically, remove the hubbub from surrounding tables, and prevent us from the most common irregularities. Let's welcome those returning (we need them!) and understand if they are a little slow as they re-learn the basics of live play.

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 Today's 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. Near the end of each page we will add a list of Tomorrow's Events, in the same format.

At the end of the day Director-In-Charge Matt Koltnow will send me the day's results and I will process them into the website in the early hours of the morning. The "day completed" version will remove the Today's Schedule section and add 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 purple 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

Race for the overalls!: Most events will include, just after the overall leaders, a colourful round-by-round account of the top pairs in each strat: where you were after each round, what you did, how far you were from the lead. There is much more on this new feature here.

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.

Each daily page also has a set of puzzles from the Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection, a free online source of endless puzzling fun, a "this day in history" trivia question at the top and an answer at the bottom, and an actual bridge deal with bid-by-bid and play-by-play commentary from my collection. We'll have a report on the CBF Bridge Week results every day, and other news items as they come in. Enjoy!

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. I've added two more lists that will not change nightly: the complete masterpoint results from the previous District 19 Regional, way back in Fall 2023 in Leavenworth (the April Regional in Vancouver was canceled when the venue suddenly became unavailable and an alternative site was not found.); and, the final standings of the 2023 Kirkwood Trophy, which covers all District 19 Regionals in a calendar year (with the exception of the one in Alaska). The Photos Page will depend on people sending me photos taken (although we may add some information later here; Penticton usually has a dedicated photo taker who sets up in the room where they give out the door prizes so you can't claim one for a win without getting your photo taken!). Now that everyone's cellphone has a camera, anyone can take a photo of winners for the Bulletin! 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 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 2024 to that of 2023, the last time we were here. On the daily pages near the top we'll also be comparing current attendance to the 2019 attendance (3217½ tables!) before the hiatus and hoping to get to 60% of that lofty figure, making the target 1930 tables this time. Maybe we can do even better!

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 for each event, even each bracket in the knockouts, are available from the event results on the daily pages and should be quicker.

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! The cancellation of the Vancouver Regional means this is the first District Regional of 2024, the first since last fall, and I may be a bit out of practice after such a long hiatus, especially Monday night. Feel free to contact me (see above) with reports of errors or if something isn't working for you.