Running Monthly Unit Games

Instructions for Club Directors

Unit 430 began rotating its Monthly Unit Games among several clubs in 2024. Since these games are still Unit events, they are reported to the ACBL under the Unit's quasi-club sanction along with other Unit events by Bruce McIntyre. If your club is scheduled to run a Monthly Unit Game, or some other Unit-sponsored event, here is what you need to do:

1) Pre-Game: Update masterpoints in the club database. It is important that everyone's masterpoints be updated from the latest ACBL database before you begin, so that the strats will be accurate. You will need your club computer with internet access and ACBLscore running in the main screen. Select Data Base, then Import/Merge, then option 5: Update MP holdings from D99MP.lzh, etc. Select Yes to get the file from the ACBL website, and type 99 to get all districts. The program will now update everyone in your club database with their latest masterpoint totals (but not for recent name or address changes), based on their ACBL numbers. It will not update anyone whose ACBL number is not in your database correctly, nor will it update players with #nnnn numbers that they enter into the BridgeMates. If such players actually have ACBL numbers from guest memberships (even if long expired), you should replace their #nnnn number with their actual ACBL number in your club database and ask them to use their ACBL number. The ACBL file is updated monthly, usually on the sixth of the month, and it is a good idea to keep current.

2) Selling entries: Some players may claim free plays based on the previous year's masterpoint race. An updated list is online here. The current state of all Unit masterpoint races is kept here, and updated a few days after each Monthly Unit Game is reported to me. Monthly Unit Game sanction fees are paid by McBruce and the cost is US$2.40 per table, which at the current (October 2024) ACBL exchange rate is C$ 3.24 per table. Your club will not be charged any ACBL sanctions for the game (unless you fail to follow instruction #4 below...) You are free to charge your normal club fees for the game or any other amount you feel appropriate. There is no longer any need to collect sanction money and give it to a Unit Board member (except perhaps for extra Unit events that are not Monthly Unit Games): Unit 430 has decided to pay the sanction fees itself, allowing the clubs that run the games to keep those funds as thanks for participating.

3) Running the Game: Here are some things to watch for:

The game should be run as a Unit Championship (F9, 10 Set Masterpoint Rating, 4 District / Unit Game (ALL), 1 Unit Championship). You may enter your club number since that will be what you have in your database (I will change this to the Unit's club number of 904300 when I receive the file).
Feel free to set the strats however you wish and try to set them so that there are at least three pairs in each direction in the bottom strat. Almost everywhere now, masterpoints are by average but sometimes ACBLscore assumes the opposite; be sure you have this right! Monthly Unit Games tend to attract some strong players, so you may need to have strats somewhat higher than for your regular club game. While it is OK to adjust the strats during the game to ensure that there is about 25-40% in each strat, and that there are at least three pairs each direction in the bottom strat, it is absolutely not OK to change the strats after the game to maximize the number of pairs that win masterpoints!
Use a movement that you are familiar with; do not feel you have to impress the one or two players in the game who think they know something technically better. Good advice to compensate if you’re unfamiliar with the “technically-best” movement: keep an eye on the best players and balance the field between East-West and North-South; pick only Howell or Web movements that you are sure will be completed (stopping early in a Howell or Web creates a lot of factoring, some boards played 1-3 times more than others, and looks bad on ACBL Live, which gets confused when this happens...); avoid if you can movements where there are many more board sets than rounds: the fewer boards players don’t get to play, the better!
Advice: import the pbn or dup file into the BridgeMate software and have it check for suspicious scores. There is also a quick old school method in ACBLscore that works well near the end of the game: the VIEW command graphically shows results on each board at all tables (even over two or more sections), and a 680 or 1430 on the wrong side to check is quickly spotted.
If there is a difficult Director judgment call or movement problem you need help with, feel free to e-mail me or consult other directors or even write the details down for a later decision. Let me know that there is something to be resolved when you send the files.
Please do your best to ensure that all players in the game have a complete (and not abbreviated: "Van" is a city in eastern Turkey, not anything local) city and province/state, and an accurate ACBL number (7 numbers, or a letter and 6 numbers, not #nnnn — if the player has an ACBL number they should be encouraged to use it — and your database should be updated to accept it). Once you have all the names in and the strats set, run command 'LR' to screen and check that all the names and numbers and cities and provinces/states are there. The program that calculates the masterpoint races bases its results on these fields and having one player from Vancouver, Van, and Vanc., or one player with three different #nnnn numbers may split that player into three!
Something appears to have happened in mid-2024 and the masterpoint awards you print out from ACBLscore is later recalculated by ACBL Live for Clubs, almost always resulting in about 10% more points for most awards, but sometimes for some unknown reason going down a bit. You may want to let your players know that the printed masterpoint awards are approximate. (I think this applies to club games as well: what I hear in the Directors grapevine is that the ACBL IT department has decided it is too difficult to update ACBLscore, which is written in TurboPascal, a computer language nearly as dead as COBOL, FORTRAN, or ancient Aramaic, and easier to update Live for Clubs, which I presume is mostly JavaScript, the language IT people know and love.)

4) Reporting the Game: When you have a final result and further corrections seem unlikely, attach three files:

the game file (YYMMDD.ACM or .ACA or .ACE)
(if using BridgeMates) the BridgeMate file (ending in .BWS)
(if the hands are pre-made) the hand record file (ending in .DUP or .PBN) ...

... to Bruce McIntyre at oogashawca@gmail.com. (Alert: the short version, ooga@shaw.ca has been retired.). IMPORTANT: Do NOT post the results of the game to ACBL Live for Clubs. Do let me know which players used free plays so I can update the free play page. The game results will appear here once I have received the files and processed them, possibly checking and correcting errors. Occasionally I will be out of town at another tournament and it may take some time before I can post the results. Players who expect to be able to check results online for errors after arriving home may stray outside the correction period; you should encourage them to check their scores on the BridgeMate's postgame screens, or confirm with the results you have using ACBL's [SU]mmaries command (which you can print to screen to save paper and let them look), since the posting of the game online may take some time if I am out of town or there is a problem with the file. The normal club process where errors this week can be corrected next week is not in place for a Unit Game; we cannot post and repost for days after the event, updating the Unit masterpoint races each time new data comes in, until all the errors are corrected.

Unit events that are NOT Monthly Unit Games: Please use the above instructions for these other games as well. Run them all as a Unit Championship Game and I will change the masterpoint rating to the appropriate level. Don't post the results on your site.