The 2025 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. Even though "mainlanders" must cross to Vancouver Island by boat or plane, it is easy to spend a week in Victoria without needing a vehicle: transit or walking will get you easily where you want to go!

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).

Detailed instructions for parking at the tournament venue:

• Attendees must take a ticket when they first enter the parking lot, and if they intend to leave and re-enter, pick up a parking pass at the toll booth. They must then present their parking pass as they leave the parking lot to receive their $10.00 rate.
• If they plan to re-enter, they must keep this parking pass, take a regular ticket when they enter for the second time and then present the pass as they exit the parking lot.
• There is no guarantee that they will receive a spot if they leave and then come back. Parking is still on a first come, first served basis.

ALERT: Parking wherever you see an open spot in the downtown area is not recommended, and has led to, let us say, difficulties for bridge players in the past.

COVID: ACBL and District policy recommends, but no longer requires, that all players be fully vaccinated. District policy is that masks are optional but players should expect to occasionally be asked to wear one if requested by the 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 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 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: 10:00 am, 3:00 pm, and 7:00 pm are the start times from Tuesday thru Saturday, except that there are no games on Saturday evening. The tournament begins on Monday April 7 at 7pm, with a single session Swiss Teams, and an Open Pairs which is the first Evening Side Game. No Knockouts: There are no knockout team events at this regional; instead, team events are single-day bracketed round robins, where usually 7-9 teams at about the same masterpoint level will play a complete set of matches against each other team in their bracket, and Victory Points will decide the winner. Sunday April 13 play begins at 10:00 am with a two-session Top Flight Swiss Teams, a Fast Open Pairs, and a two-session 0-3000 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.

Main Events are morning (10:00am) and afternoon (3:00pm) from Tuesday thru Saturday: single-day Bracketed Round-Robin Teams, and two-session Open Pairs and Gold Rush 0-750 Pairs.

Morning and Afternoon Sessions (10:00am, 3:00pm) from Tuesday to Saturday also have two single-session pair events: the Morning and Afternoon Side Game Series (open pairs), and 299er Pairs games.

Evening sessions (7:00 pm) will have only one event, the Evening Side Game Series (open pairs).

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 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 $21 per player will have a $4 surcharge per session for players whose memberships have lapsed.

Selling areas: Pairs events will be sold in the room outside the playing area with windows facing Douglas St., near the Langford Room. Team events will be sold at the teams station at the south end of the playing area, near the rack containing team numbers and table assignments.

Speakers: All of these take place in the View Royal room at 2:15pm, but - ALERT! - the batting order has been changed from what is on the displays. The new lineup is:

• Tuesday: John Valliant, Victoria BC — Opening Leads
• Wednesday: David Taylor, Seattle WA — Count Signals, sometimes timing is everything
• Thursday: Donna Compton, Omaha NE — Four Auctions, Four Suits, and Four Leads!

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:

• Two Session Morning-AfternoonGames
• Single-Session Morning Games
• Single-Session Afternoon Games
• Single-Session Evening Games
• Games Held Last Time But Not On The 2025 Schedule

There will be details on each event, what type of game it is, what the strat limits are, and last year's winners in each strat (which is why we include discontinued games!).

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 green background and 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
• Side Games
• Side Game Series Leaders
• 299er Pairs

Round-By-Round Leaders!: 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: if so I will note this in the event headline. 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. Victoria 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 deep sea blue for the Welcome page this time, after looking at the photos of Ocean Shore this seemed to be appropriate; hopefully the weather will behave and we will get some nice sky blue hues as well. We have a lot more color in the pages post-pandemic, with each page having its own palette. Two years off during the pandemic 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.