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Quick summary:
Description: SMILE games happen every Tuesday evening, from 7pm to about 9:30pm. Most Tuesday nights, teams will play four six-board matches against four of the other teams, using pre-duplicated boards and BridgeMates, completing all twenty-four boards before meeting teammates to compare scores and find out who won. The IMPs will thus be computer-scored and as a team's E-W pair finishes and meets its finished N-S pair, they will be given hand records, and a sheet summarizing their results on each board and the IMPs that have been swung as a result. Teams can compare scores if they wish in the normal way and confirm that the results entered into the BridgeMates are correct, or can simply await the results that will be available when all teams are complete and talk about the most interesting hands. Matches will be scored on the 'every IMP counts' 20 VP scale which has VPs to two decimals so that almost every IMP won counts for some fraction of a victory point.
Seasons and Segments: Unit 430 has three extended teams competition sanctions in each calendar year, so we will run three SMILE "seasons" each year, with the dividing points being the January sectional, the May sectional, and the September sectional. The first one in this format is starting a few weeks early in mid-November 2023 and will instead conclude the week before the Vancouver Regional in April 2024. After that there will be Summer, Fall, and Spring SMILE seasons each year. Seasons will be sub-divided into two or three "segments" of 6-10 weeks, so that the standings reset to zero often enough to attract new competing teams. But any team of players may play at any time to try it out and have fun. Each session will be named SMILE [season][ending year] A/B:C/D, where A is the segment number, B is the number of segments in the season, C is the week number in the segment, D is the number of weeks in the segment. The first game on November 14 was Spring 2024, 1/3:1/6. Overall masterpoint awards will be based on total VPs in all segments, and small match awards for each win. At the end of the Spring SMILE season each year, some fair method of determining a winner of the Gordie Davis Trophy through playoffs among the leading teams over the preceding Summer, Fall, and Spring seasons will be devised.
Attendance each week is not necessary, but teams that play more often will have a better chance to place higher in the standings. New teams are welcome any time, as are players or pairs without teammates who can substitute for missing players if needed. Whenever there are six or more teams in attendance, each team's four opponents will be, as much as possible, teams that they have not yet played in the current segment. But whenever a team has played often enough to have met another team for the third (or beyond the third) time, the standings will be based on adjusted VP Average, which only reflects the top 50% of their results against that team; other results are discarded from their total. Each match is on the 20 VP Scale where each IMP counts for some decimal number of VPs. So...
What this means is that teams that manage to field a team for most of the nights will effectively get to discard more of their poorer results as a segment gets closer and closer to the end, but teams that can only manage to play three or four nights in a segment can still win by dominating the nights they do play. On the results page at the bottom I will (eventually) add a grid of match results, showing all results between each pair of teams and how that combines into an adjusted VP Average.
Players and pre-registering: Each team needs to have a captain that will try to arrange a team each week and will confirm their attendance using the online form at mcbruce.ca more than an hour before gametime, or call the club (604/267-2202) between 6pm and 6:45pm on Tuesday evening to let us know you are coming or cannot make it. It's important for us to know before gametime how many teams to expect, so please use the form to let us know you are or are not coming, as well as other details that might help. Captains and other team players may attend on weeks when their team is unable to field a lineup to play as a spare. Only six players can earn masterpoints for a team, more on the team means someone will not be able to earn points for placings and wins. Players need to play at least half of the matches that their team plays to be considered for overall masterpoint awards for a team. Teams can use more than four players in an evening, but only four in any one match unless there is some emergency.
Masterpoints and prizes: The three annual competitions will each be sent to ACBL separately for masterpoints thru the Unit sanction, in May (April 2024, then May thereafter), September, and January. Only teams that have played in 70% or more of the weeks in the series will be eligible for overall awards, other teams will be eligible for match awards only. This also being the Unit's IMP League, the Gordie Davis Trophy will go to the winner of a playoff which will involve the three winning teams in the Summer, Fall, and Spring events, with a secondary playoff to decide a fourth team if necessary. If the same or a nearly same team wins more than one of the three events, they will play the winner of a playoff among the other winner and the second-place teams from the three events.
Recognizing newer players! In addition to the regular standings, a handicap standings will also appear on the IMP League web page at mcbruce.ca, and the VBC will provide some prizes for the winning team. Here is how the handicaps are calculated:
A team of players with 3000 points each against a team of players with 25 points each would earn a near-maximum handicap of 3.3 IMPs per board, 19 IMPs in a six board match.
If the league takes off and there are more than 13 active teams, we may consider splitting into two strats for an upcoming season.
Spring 2024 season: This season starts in November 2023 and goes up until the Vancouver Regional in mid-April. There will be three segments of six weeks: 1) November 14, 21, 28 and December 5, 12, 19; (two weeks off for holidays), 2) January 9, 16, 23, 30, and February 6, 13; 3) February 20, 27, March 5, 12, 19, 26; playoffs on April 2. The Summer 2024 season will begin on April 16, after the Vancouver Regional.