Vancouver Bridge Centre Virtual Bridge Club Q&A

What was it? It was the online version of VBC games, limited mostly to VBC players (others can be added, see #7 below). With excellent support from local players we established a bunch of weekly games, including daily open games at the height of the pandemic, and two limited weekly games. With the re-opening of the VBC live games on April 1 (see below), we have stayed out of the way for a while, and it's not certain whether online VBC bridge will return. The re-opening of live bridge has been a bit slower in getting players back to the tables than we expected, and current thought is that adding online games at this point will not help the more important goal of re-establishing the live games.

Director McBruce watches a Short Club "auction" go off the rails with growing horror...

Breaking News: (some of this news has been here awhile, but CNN has redefined the term 'Breaking News' and I'm just following along...)

• VBC Re-Opening: Your Help Needed!: With the restart of live bridge at the VBC, this website has become inactive, and I have begun the process of taking down a lot of the older material. I still have copies of the older material if you want to check a deal or a hand from some game in the past, but you'll need to give me an accurate date.
  
  Where things are at the moment: Day games on Monday thru Friday are on at 10:30am, and Sunday at 1:30pm, with a Saturday morning lesson program and rare Saturday afternoon special games when warranted. Only the Thursday game is now masterpoint-limited; Tuesday is now open, but all games are stratified. Most game attendances have improved to the point where Mitchells and not Howells are being run, with Sundays and a few of the weekday games occasional exceptions. The solution to this is to get more players out, and there is at least a general long term improvement. Not as much as we had hoped, but perhaps the summer and fall will continue the process
  
  Free parking in the adjacent parkade has changed slightly; Level C 166-180 and Level D 208-217 are the VBC spots; on weekends the ASK parking spots on the upper level (entrance from the lane) are available for us as well.
  
  The first Sunday of each month is now the Monthly Unit Game, and the first one was also the club's 31st anniversary game, attracting 20½ tables! So we know the players are out there, and we hope more will continue to return.
  
  Vaccination status of players needs to be confirmed by Ken when you arrive for your first game. Masks are optional and available; we ask that players bring masks (or use the ones provided) when any player at a table asks for them to be used.
  
  Hope to see you at the club soon. Very few COVID cases have emerged from club and tournament bridge, and for fully vaccinated people the effects have been quite minor. The fears we had at the start of the pandemic that the virus could be transmitted through touching things others have recently touched appears to be unfounded, based on the number of reported cases following club and tournament play's return in 2022.
• Older News: The rest of the page includes older posts, with the news items from months ago deleted.
• E*V*I*L [E]lectronic [V]ancouver [I]MP [L]eague Season Eight Complete!: The final matches were played Tuesday night, and now we'll take a hopefully short break for the reopening efforts before deciding on how to continue.
  
  In the Big Ticket Division, regular-season leaders Hong led by 13 at the half, and it was down to a 7-IMP lead on the final board, where the #4 Carr team scored 490 in 3NT at one table. At the other, the Carr defender led a heart, won by the queen in dummy from Qx. The diamond ace was knocked out and the opening leader was back in at trick three. Declarer's original heart holding was Kx, and the match depended on the return: down one would be an 11-IMP swing to Carr. But as you can see from the E*V*I*L page, that didn't quite happen, and Hong survived the scare for the win!
  
  In the Big Show finale, #2 Krywaniuk was the Chris Rock to #4 Zhong's Will Smith in the first half, Zhong enjoying a lead at the half so large I did not bother specifying it online; as I write the Zhong forces have clinched a victory by holding steady in the second half and running their opponents out of sufficient boards for a comeback, although a big final board won the second half for Krywaniuk.
• Club Trick Island: This hand, rotated for convenience, tripped up a few on Saturday in the team game:
  
  
  West passed as dealer and North opened 1♣. East overcalled 1♥ and you (South) bid 1♠. West passed again and North rebid 2♣. East passed and you decided to try 3NT. West led the 5♦ and East played the ace. Not so surprising that West could not lead partner's suit, since we have an eight-card fit and it has presumably split 5-0. What is your plan in 3NT?
• Get Ready For Live Bridge!: We don't yet have an official announcement, but with recent changes in gathering restrictions it may not be long. Here is an interesting problem to get you back into the live form of the game, from one of the clubs that is open and shuffles, deals, and plays.
  
  
  You are the dealer and decide your hand is not quite good enough for a weak 2♦ opener and LHO opens 5♠! Partner passes this after a suitable skip-bid pause and RHO raises to 6♠, which is passed out. Quite the auction!
  
  Partner emerges with the lead of the Q♦. Declarer takes a fairly long look at dummy and says "low please." What's your plan? Scroll down for the complete hand.
• Ping!: A tip for players who suspect that their internet connection is faulty. Send yourself a private message and check how long it takes to be displayed on the screen. The blue button in the bottom left corner that normally says -->Table can be clicked for more options. One of these options, Private, allows you to type the BBO name of any player and send a message only to that person. If you type your own BBO message into the box and then type 'test' as the message, then hit Enter, the message will go from your computer to BBO, and then back to your computer, where it will only then be displayed. If the time delay is noticable--more than a second or so after you type Enter until the message hits the screen--you have some internet delays. If the message doesn't come back at all after several seconds, you are not connected and should restart BBO, or perhaps check your connection. In the early pre-BBO days of online bridge, the first server had a command called 'ping' where you could check how long it took to bounce a message off another player and get it back. This is the modern version...
  
  More connection hints: If you have a cable modem that allows you to connect in two ways: for example, SHAW-Username and SHAW-Username-5G, you should select the 5G version: this is the most modern connection and can handle dozens of simultaneous connections easily. My technician who visited last summer, when I was having problems, said that I should avoid the other and (since I know how to do this) disable it in the modem settings and use the 5G option all the time.
  
  I'm told that the most common source of Wi-Fi problems, and the ones a visiting technician will check first if you request help from your provider, are: the battery level of the receiver, the status of the network software driver, walls or distance between the modem and the receiving device, and the status of the modem that sends the signal. It can be a good idea to once or twice a month unplug and replug the cable modem to reset it (takes about 5-10 minutes usually to come back online, so don't try this just before or during a game). Most operating systems automatically keep careful track of network software updates, but if you are the type of user who doesn't let your machine perform these updates very often, that could be the source of the problem. Walls and distance reduce the reception of Wi-Fi a little, but are seldom a serious problem. Battery levels of less than 50% can affect Wi-Fi reception, so keep your devices charged: most can be charged while active and Wi-Fi reception while wired will improve.
• Deal Diagrams and iOS: The deal diagrams on this site come from Bridge Base's Hand Viewer software, and Safari, the Apple browser included in iPhone and iPad software, must be tweaked in order to display it. The route to do so (on each of your iOS devices) is: Settings, Safari, Preferences, Privacy and then uncheck "Prevent cross-site tracking." An alternative is to download a different browser (Chrome for iOS works fine.)
• Club Trick Island Answer: This hand, rotated for convenience, tripped up a few on Saturday in the team game:
  
  
  To escape a disaster here you will need dummy's club tricks, and the only way to ensure a dummy entry is to drop the K♦ on top of East's ace at trick one! This allows you to later play the T♦ and overtake with the J♦, and if that loses to the queen the third round is won in dummy with the nine! Perfect defense may still defeat 3NT, but it's not easy, and at least you are not going down more than one trick, as several did. Hope you didn't try the nine or the jack from dummy: it might work on this layout but good luck if RHO has the queen...
• Actually shuffled and dealt!:
  Here is the complete deal above (rotated for convenience, it was originally Board 5 with East as declarer):
  It might have seemed like your best bet was to overtake and continue diamonds in the hopes of giving partner a ruff, but declarer is playing a rare thirteen-card fit, and overtaking to ensure a second diamond is led actually gives declarer the rest of the tricks. But if you don't overtake, partner will switch to an ace which will be ruffed in hand, making dummy's king good for a diamond pitch later, and declarer will make the rest. (If partner underleads an ace at trick two, declarer may as well try the king, and gets an immediate diamond pitch from hand and makes the rest.)
  
  The only chance to get two defensive tricks is to overtake and lead another suit. Declarer must ruff, and even if declarer plays out the rest of the trumps to reduce everyone to two cards, partner comes down to the two aces while declarer cannot keep the ace of diamonds and both kings, so there is no squeeze and a second diamond must eventually be lost. Partner, in fact, made the only opening lead that doesn't give declarer an immediate twelfth trick, which happens if an ace is led and ruffed, or underled allowing the king to score!
  
  I have seen the occasional 7-6-0-0 or 8-5-0-0 hand in almost 40 years of playing bridge, but never a 10-3-0-0...until now! This hand produced a lot of fireworks at many tables, with E-W bidding diamonds and sometimes hearts as well! One poor North passed a takeout double and watched helplessly as 2♦ doubled made an overtrick!
• Problematic Probabilities!: This was Friday Afternoon's Board 8 (Jan. 28). How do you play 6♠ when North leads the fourth-best (?) 5♥ and South follows with the ten? One more small clue for you, since everyone will pull two trumps next: South has ♠Q2 and North has the singleton 4♠ and discards the 9♥ on the second spade. Your move...
  
  
  
  Route 1: finesse the Q♦ after pulling trumps. A straight 50% shot. Maybe if South has a singleton club honour and North covers the jack you might avoid a club loser if the finesse loses, but that's not much of an extra chance.
  
  Route 2: lead the J♣ at trick three and run it if North plays low. If North covers the J♣ there is no problem, we win the ace, force out the other club honor, and have the A♦ as an entry to a club winner for twelve tricks. Therefore, let us assume that South will win the first club and return a heart, since any other lead would give us a twelfth trick from the tenaces of A-Q♦ or A-T♣. This leads to three options:
  
  Route 2A: finesse North for the other club honour. This fails whenever South has been dealt both club honours, regardless of which one South played initially. At the point of decision, assuming North follows low to the second club, even though when we began the double finesse was about 75%, there is a small change in the percentages, since there are only three possible groups of scenarios left: South began with the played honor and 0-2 small cards, South began with KQ and 1-2 small cards, or South has KQ doubleton. These are not equal though, because the correct play on the first trick from a South with both honours is to play one randomly, so the second and third groups above are half as likely by restricted choice (the link has a detailed explanation) and finessing is about a 67% line.
  
  Route 2B: once North follows low, play the ace and ruff a club. If the other honour does not fall, try the diamond finesse. This is better, since we have two chances to succeed. Dropping the other club honour works whenever clubs are 3-3 and whenever either opponent has a doubleton including the missing club honour. Combined with the 50% diamond finesse if the missing club honour does not fall, this seems to be about 85-90%. Is there another way?
  
  There is.
  
  Route 3: run the J♣, win the heart return, and play out the rest of the trumps. This brings everyone down to three cards; dummy keeps ♦AQ and ♣AT as the last spade is led from hand. Whichever opponent holds the K♦ will need to keep two diamonds; whichever opponent holds the missing club honour will need to keep two clubs. If you keep the 7♥ in dummy as another threat as long as you can, even more pressure will apply to the opponents as they choose discards. If either defender holds both the diamond and club threats, they will be under severe (and likely, visible) difficulties. It's not 100%, but you should be able to form a fairly strong opinion from the discards — and especially the tempo of the discards — as to where the missing cards are.
  
  In the actual deal, North began with ♠ 4 ♥K Q 9 5 3  ♦T 9 4  ♣K 8 4 3 — and would probably have little apparent concern about pitching diamonds and would likely not pitch a club until later on, and would have little trouble ditching a heart from ♥KQ on the squeeze card. South would be pitching diamonds with no apparent problem, and then later hearts or possibly clubs a bit slower, all of which would lead you to infer that the diamond finesse was not on and the club finesse was the best shot. Some declarers were defeated on a diamond lead, others chose Route 1 or Route 2A, suceeding, or 2B, failing, but I saw nobody trying Route 3!
• Zhong wins Season Eight E*V*I*L double!: The return of the [E]lectronic [V]ancouver [I]MP [L]eague on Tuesday Evenings after our fall reopening plans were Delta-ed has reached the end of the season and the regular season winners were Zhong, with McMullin a close second, BC Buds third, and (after a scoring misread by the Commissioner; apologies to fifth-place Koblenz who were erroneously listed as fourth for a short time on Tuesday evening) Krywaniuk in fourth. Zhong (Lucy Zhong, David Waterman, Wenminchen, Joel Martineau, Jack Lee, Jack Qi) defeated McMullin in their opening playoff match to claim a spot in the final, and two weeks later defeated BC Buds to take the playoff championship as well!
  
  Season Eight begins on January 25 with fourteen teams in two divisions; here is the updated page.
• Christmas Gift: Quick defending problem for you:
  
  
  RHO opens 1♠, you pass, LHO raises to 2♠ and after partner passes, RHO bids 6♠! You lead the 3♦ and partner plays the queen and declarer wins the ace. Declarer crosses to the ace of hearts and cashes the ace of clubs, pitching away the jack of diamonds. Next is the jack of spades, partner playing the three and declarer the two, putting you in with the king. What do you lead next? Answer below....
• Reminder: It's up to players to be sure to be online at gametime. Recently we have had several people missing as games begin: they are online when they sign up but missing as the game begins. I give a warning a minute or so before each game and when you see that warning you should check to make sure your partner is listed as online. If you don't see that warning, you may in fact be offline: message partner and see if it works. (Those who click the 'privacy' button when they are logging in are listed as offline, but you can send them a private message to confirm their status.) If your partner is offline, you should contact them if you can and try to get them online as soon as possible.
  
  The exact time that a game begins is always uncertain on BBO: it depends on server load and can be a minute earlier or later than expected. The last few minutes before a game is NOT the time for people to be logging off and on in an attempt to improve their connection. And if you see that the game is delayed because we are waiting for an offline player, stay online! Logging off and on at this point may leave your partner stranded as I remove the parterships with missing players. In a pairs game, we can delay the start when there are people missing, but with dozens waiting to begin, I can't wait forever. If your partner is unable to get on you will not be charged any BB$, that is only done at the end of Board 1.
• 2021 MUG Race Winners: Gray McMullin won the Flight A race, Kelvin Raywood won the Flight B race, and the Flight C race was a tie: Ernst Walti and Diana Tchakalian will share the prize. Now confirmed: The first game of 2021 will be on Saturday, January 8. Results Link.
• Substitutes: If you put your name on the Partnership Desk and do not get into the game, I will invite you as a sub first if there is a half-table to be filled. If you accept the invitation, you get to play for free, but you don't have a lot of control over who your partner will be. The same is true if we get a substitute from the general BBO list (which you can join from any list of pending tournaments via the blue 'Substitutes' button below the list). Subs help us avoid half-tables, but in recent games we have seen an increase in subs leaving after poor results without comment. That's not part of the bargain. People who leave suddenly after some poor results slow things down for the others. If you only want to play with good players, and will leave in frustration when things go bad, the Partnership Desk or the BBO sub list may not be for you. My options when filling a spot with a sub are 'any' or 'select,' and I prefer the latter, because I do check, and notice when people leave after bad results and avoid inviting them again. If you're in as a sub and you just can't take partner's crazy bids and plays anymore, at least let me know before you leave. That's better than just jumping ship and looking for a better option.
• Christmas Gift Answer: Did you fall for declarer's clever trap?
  
  You lead the 3♦ and declarer has a problem. If the spade finesse works, there are twelve tricks as long as declarer can win five heart tricks after pulling trumps (if they break 5-0 this may require a ruff). If the K♠ is offside, there are diamonds to lose as well. Cashing the ace of hearts in order to pitch a high diamond on the ace of clubs was declarer's clever solution to this problem. Did you fall for it and return a heart, or a second trump, when in with the king of spades? (If so, we'll just call it a holiday gift....)
• New ACBL Guest Policy:Starting on Friday November 5, a new ACBL Visitor Policy for Virtual Club games means that pairs where the inviter is on the club's "include" or "friends" list will no longer be counted as a guest pair. This means that a regular player can invite anyone without needing to check with me first. (We do have a separate list of players, all of them non-locals, who have earned a blacklist for poor behavior as subs: if you try to invite one of those BBO will not allow it.) One thing this allows is for players not on the VVBC lists to send messages to players on the Partnership Desk and offer themselves as partners. Players not on the VVBC lists cannot sign up on the Partnership Desk, but they can see who has. Be aware of this possibility if you are on the Partnership Desk and watch for messages!
  
  The new policy may result in a few more unfamiliar players in some of our games, but in most cases one player in the pair will be familiar.
• Two more crucial E*V*I*L playoff deals! I don't know how this happens, but the playoffs in the [E]lectronic [V]ancouver [I]MP [L]eague always seem to come down to one crucial board!
  
  
  
  (Read the comments under the hand diagrams first and go through the bridge movie using the Next buttons.)
  
  It took me several days of faulty analyzing (for some reason I thought the Q♥ was good, not seeing the king in the North hand!) to discover that this claim was indeed faulty and most 'normal' lines will lead to down one. That is the first point: double-dummy analysis is NOT the basis for claim resolutions. What the Laws tell us to do is to judge what might happen if the hand is played out, resolving any doubtful points against the claimer. We are supposed to consider all 'normal' lines of play, which includes small errors that even good players might make. While GIB and other double-dummy engines are a good guide to what normal lines might be, a series of very difficult decisions required of a player to get the desired result might be considered unlikely even if it is obvious to a double-dummy engine.
  
  But this is a different situation: a pair has agreed to a claim and now seeks to withdraw that agreement, a scenario covered by Law 69B, and allowed only if two conditions are met: 1) the player has agreed to the loss of a trick his side would likely have won had play continued (check) and 2) the Director is notified before the end of the Correction Period.
  
  That is the sticking point here; this was a hand from the first of two segments, and the first notification I got was in an e-mail sent about 35 minutes after the end of the match. The default for events where a Correction Period is not explicitly set is 30 minutes after the official scores are posted. For a team game this means every segment has a Correction Period, as does every round in a Swiss Teams. And it means that this request to withdraw agreement to the claim is not timely, even though if it were it would have changed the match result.
  
  This is why I try to stay online as much as possible during IMP League play and for some time after the last match ends each Tuesday night. Even if I have lost connection or am away from the keyboard or on another virtual screen playing computer snooker, it is always possible to send a message stating that you have a possible problem with a board, and I will be able to determine when the message was sent and whether it is in time. It's not necessary to provide a full analysis on a complicated hand like the one above, only to state that 'we may have accepted a claim that is faulty' to initiate a review. This allows me to look at it during the next segment, inform both teams that a review is taking place and an adjustment may happen later, so nobody has an end-of-match surprise to spring on the other team.
  
  I don't think that claiming when the result was still in doubt or saving the query to the end was done deliberately. I am sure that declarer genuinely thought he had the rest, and the defenders probably genuinely thought they could look at it after the match. Luckily, both teams in the Big Show final had already claimed a Big Show spot for the next season by their regular season standing, so the only thing really up for grabs is bragging rights. One team can claim to have won it at the table while losing it in the courtroom! And that is how you lose by less than 1 IMP or even by less than 0.01 IMPs.
• IMP League summer holiday coming up E*V*I*L, the [E]lectronic [V]ancouver [I]MP [L]eague, has just finished its sixth season, with playoffs happening over the next three Tuesdays. Normally at this point I would be trying to sign up teams for season seven, but a look at the calendar shows that a season seven would stretch into September and October, which will be critical months in our hopes of getting back to real tables. So we have decided to hold off for a while and concentrate on the reopening plans, instead of beginning a campaign that lose us a small but crucial bit of attendance. The Season Six playoffs will continue, but will be followed by a break from IMP League play, and we'll make a decision on how to continue based on the success of the reopening.
• It's All In The Cards!: (Use the Next button to go through the hand step by step; comments will magically appear at the bottom as you go!)
  
  
• We Need To Talk About Your 1♣ Openers: Everyone's bidding system or style has familiar situations where there are commonly accepted rules. A major suit opening promises five. A major-suit weak two if partner has not already passed is a good six. A takeout double promises support for all unbid suits, at least three cards. A reverse (some of you are a bit shaky on this one, but it is very useful) shows a hand that would still comfortably open without one of its aces and also promises more (not equal!) cards in the first suit bid than in the second, higher suit bid. The clues that result from following these rules early on in auctions allow us to work out what contract to choose later on. We avoid picking four of a major without an eight-card fit. We can compete on minimal values with a known nine-card fit, since the opponents likely have a fit of their own. We can choose notrump in response to a takeout double, secure in the knowledge that partner will have some cover in the unbid suits we don't have stopped. And we can get to the right slam if partner's reverse follows the classic rules.
  
  At the same time, we've seen people break the rules and they sometimes succeed. One situation that seems to be carte blanche for rulebreakers is opening or responding to 1♣. Some players seem to think that you can do whatever you like and claim that it 'seemed right at the time.' In a VVBC game this week, a player opened an early hand 1♣ (no alert) with ♠ K 9 4 3   ♥ 8 7 3 2   ♦ A K 6 3   ♣ Q  ! A few deals later the same player opened 1♣ with a two-card club suit, again with no alert, and soon after opened 1♣ on a four-card club suit, this time alerting that it 'could be short.'
  
  If you want the Director to watch your results looking for any excuse to adjust in the opponent's favour, that's the type of behavior that will achieve that goal. The pair got lucky on the first board (partner had ♣AKJT9 and 4♣ made for a decent score!) but paid dearly on the 1♣ openers that ensued. This is normal; if your 1♣ openers follow no rules, you're going to be guessing later, sometimes on assumptions that are not even close to reality.
  
  Once you realize that partner doesn't seem to follow the rules with 1♣ openers, you're going to bid a bit differently, maybe not consciously, because you have an implicit agreement. Here's where the real rules come in: opponents are entitled to know about these agreements and they must be informed. If you respond to 1♣ with 2-counts or 3-counts in order to avoid the chaos if 1♣ is passed out, you're OK until partner clues into the joke and figures out to pass the response when weak. Now your 1♥ response on junk is no longer forcing by implicit agreements and has become alertable, and if you don't, a shocking adjustment in the opponents' favour is waiting for you in your future. Maybe you'll get away with it today. Maybe tomorrow, when you're having the best game you've ever had, a key result will be rolled back because the opponents might have done something different with knowledge of your implicit agreements that you think are not such a big deal. Hint: they are a big deal, especially when opponents are not informed.
  
  As I've written before, I am not a big fan as a player of these minor suit avoidance ploys, like 2-card club suits so 1♦ openers can promise 4 (it's not a big deal, believe me), and Montreal Relay, which no two enthusiasts seem to play exactly the same way, and explanations vary player to player on the same auction. But opening 1♣ in fourth seat with a textbook takeout double of 1♣ is an entirely new level of insanity. Yes, it is frustrating for newer players to compete against people who have been playing bridge for many years. But the latest science will not help you as much as a complete understanding of the basics as a first step, especially when you adopt trends without learning the regulations that apply. Opening three-card minors are like biting into a bell pepper: tasty, not much spice, you'll probably be OK without breath mints. If you prefer instead to chomp on 2-card club suit Serranos or Montreal Relay Jalapenos or Ghost Peppers ("Temporizing 1♣" was actually the way the player explained his singleton 1♣ opening bid to his partner later!), you better wear a mask and provide the opponents with protection where required!
• New Ruling Reasonings: The deal described in this article took place earlier this month (May 2021) in an online game, and the people involved have been removed from the narrative, so we can present the deal and the ruling and discuss the way changes in the Laws affected things. I actually was not called to the table and only discovered this incident while scrolling through table history looking for a later one at the same table.
  
  Let's begin with a simple poll:
  
  At unfavourable vulnerability, partner passes as dealer and so does RHO. You pass as well and LHO opens 1♥ in fourth seat. Partner passes and RHO bids 2♣, alerted as Drury. You double this as a lead director and opener bids 2♥, passed around to you. What actions do you consider and what's your final answer?
  
  Now, it has been over a calendar year since any of us were asked to participate in a poll to help a Director with a ruling, unless you've done so online. BBO makes this rather difficult since we only get 20 minutes after the game to adjust scores and everyone plays the boards at the same time. Polling someone in the game about a hand they have recently played is like an open book test and the answers you get may be tainted by recent experience. But soon we will be back playing at clubs and tournaments and this deal raises interesting issues. One thing most of us remember from before the pandemic is that we present pollees with the events of a deal with the infractions carefully stripped out so that we can find out what happens in a clean auction. Some very savvy pollees try to guess the infraction in advance even though that's not the goal of the poll. But it's true, I haven't given you the whole story here. However, the object of the game is not to guess the story, but decide what you would do without the infraction (whatever it might have been).
  
  One thing I learned early on as a Director is that polling often gets you answers you do not expect, but with more experience at polling you begin to see which ones are unlikely to get surprise answers. I don't think many at this vulnerability would risk getting into the auction here. Doubling with only two card support for one of the unbid suits is risky, even if the prior auction and the lure of majors makes it clear that doubling asks for black suits first.
  
  In the actual deal, the player who bid 2♣ did not alert the call and the North hand above passed after a few seconds. The 2♣ call was clicked on by South and explained by the bidder as Drury a short time after that, opener rebid 2♥, and it went around to the North player who doubled. South had this hand:
  
  ...and without the double of 2♣, chose 3♦, which went for 1100 when diamonds broke 5-2. North-South were considerably more experienced than East-West, but all four were experienced players. What's the correct ruling?
  
  It's a complicated question and here are some of the factors:
  
  
  • BBO limits what we can do. We can only adjust to another score or to combinations of average, average-plus, and average-minus to both sides. We cannot give an average to one side and a score to another, or give weighted scores in BBO games. The best we can do is to approximate what the ruling in an offline game would be among the options that we have.
  • Nobody actually called the Director, even after North and South discussed the deal during the next one.
  • We have a new Alert Procedure that has taken effect in the ACBL since the beginning of 2021 which does not contain many of the 'admittedly fuzzy' principles that headed the previous one, and replaces many previous patches to ACBL established practices and guidelines.
  • We also have a somewhat new (since 2017) Law 12C, the one that deals with adjusted scores, as well as a change in the ACBL allowing weighted scores (20% of this, 80% of that) when we can reasonably judge that one of a finite number of results would have occured without the infraction and we can take a reasonable guess at the likelihood of each.
  
  I know what my instincts told me initially was the right ruling. The former Alert Procedures had this directive near the top: "An opponent who actually knows or suspects what is happening, even though not properly informed, may not be entitled to redress if he or she chooses to proceed without clarifying the situation." The North player here passed fairly quickly, and also did not call the Director when the 2♣ call was explained a few seconds later. This doesn't nail down the case that North knew all along that 2♣ was Drury, the N-S pair were having a poor game and it may simply not have mattered much. But under the old guidelines, not getting confirmation before deciding what to do over 2♣ would probably lead to no adjustment.
  
  The new Alert Procedures say simply that "a player who is misinformed by an opponent’s failure to Alert will be protected." The way we protect the non-offenders from damage is spelled out, not in the Alert Procedure, but in Law 12C, which in the 2007 Laws has been rewritten slightly. Along with the guidance to "recover as nearly as possible the probable outcome of the board had the infraction not occurred" there is also the reminder that the non-offenders are responsible for self-inflicted damage in two possible ways: if they commit a serious error unrelated to the infraction, or if they "choose a gambling option, which if unsuccessful they might have hoped to recover through rectification." Here's what that means in football terms: If the defensive line jumps offside, the quarterback in an NFL game can throw a long pass secure in the knowledge that if it doesn't work the offside penalty will be the result of the play. In bridge in 2021, you are allowed to throw that long pass after a failure to alert, but if it is intercepted and run back for a touchdown, the result stands.
  
  (Side note: the fact that nobody called the Director is a red herring. The Director can award an adjusted score during the game and the correction period after the game no matter how he becomes aware of the infraction. Law 81C3 if you're interested.)
  
  North-South might reasonably make the case that South, not North, was damaged by the failure to alert, since it resulted in North not doubling for a lead. With the double made, North could well reason that diamonds are a last resort for South, making it considerably less of a gamble, and South might well choose 3♣ instead of 3♦, and this brings in a bunch of new possibilities: 3♣ probably will not be doubled and will go down one, but E-W might compete to 3♥ which makes. This would require several polls to confirm: would players double if 2♣ was alerted? would the South player bid clubs rather than diamonds after such a double? would the E-W side compete to 3♥? That's three more questions to ask pollees, and you can't ask multiple questions to a pollee and expect reasonable results. Polling is a good idea but there is an element of randomness in it when multiple questions are required and you can't get enough respondants to make a decent sample.
  
  But for BBO purposes, adjusting the score to 170 to E-W might be the best solution the system allows. It's probably closest to what a bunch of polls would get you. Needless to say, the actual score on the deal was not adjusted. It took me several days to find out how we're dealing with these now, well beyond the twenty minutes that BBO allows!
  
  Bottom line: get yourself into the habit of asking (preferably at your turn) when you need to know. Don't avoid asking because the opponents might discover a mistake by answering, we'll adjust for that on the rare occasion when it becomes an issue. Not asking and then taking a view is no longer risk-free. The vast majority of players know what they're playing (even the ones who get flustered and explain poorly). Asking is unlikely to create new problems. Not asking and claiming damage later makes the first question "why didn't you clarify?"

• Wild playoff match finish in the IMP League!: This was the #1 vs #2 first round match (winner to final in two weeks, loser plays #3-#4 winner in the semifinal next week) in The Big Show. The E-W side in this match was ahead by 29 IMPs at halftime. Early in the second half, the West player alerted me that board 4 at their table had been claimed as down one when in fact North, the declarer, had made the contract. I checked and saw that it was correct and when I returned to the match, the NS side had taken the lead! The result just completed at the other table on this final board was 130 to NS in 3♦, and the kibitzers and players there joined this table as kibitzers, and I let them all know that the N-S team was now ahead by 6 in the match with the correction. The result at the other table meant making 4♥ wins the match for declarer's side, down two wins the match for the defenders, and down one is a tie, and the top seed advances to the final while the other side goes to the semi! How d'you like this finish? I begin to see why we have so many kibitzers....Press Next to go through the deal and read the comments!

• Turns Online: With more and more people getting at least their first vaccination shot, offline bridge is now a distant light at the end of the tunnel we've all been going through for the past year. It's not going to start tomorrow, but it will at some point, and habits that we have developed playing online may need to be corrected when we get back to the actual tables.
  
  One of these areas in which the online game is very different from the offline game is in the timing of requests for information. We've all become so used to clicking on bids that we'd like to see explained that we've forgotten that such requests are supposed to be done only at a player's turn to bid or play. Online, there is less of a disruption when you get a request for information and if someone asks while you are considering your next play, you can finish considering, make the play, and then get to the explanation. Offline, blurting out "what's 3♣?" when it is not your turn is sometimes seen as a rude distraction, and may pass unauthorized information to partner when you display interest in a specific call.
  
  So I think it might be a good idea to get into the habit now, of waiting until it is your turn, even online, to ask for information about the opponent's bidding or defensive agreements. It's what the Laws clearly require, and although there are exceptions made for events played with screens (where you can write out a question for your "screenmate" at any time), which the online world emulates quite well, there is seldom a good reason to ask (even privately) when it's not your turn. Nothing is lost by waiting — if an explanation reveals a failure to alert, you will be protected from damage.
  
  Online, if a request comes your way and is easy to answer, it is probably best to provide one. But you shouldn't have to answer a series of questions when it is your turn to bid or play — just let the opponents know that you will get to their questions after your turn to bid or play ends, make your bid or play, and then give them the answers they request.
  
  Getting into the habit of waiting until it is your turn will often make the answer to your question obvious. He bid 2♥ and partner raised to 6♥? Are we really in any doubt now that 2♦ was a transfer?
• Try This One!: You hold this hand, all vulnerable:
  ♠ A 3 2   ♥ A   ♦ K Q 9 8 7 6 3 2   ♣ 9  
  LHO and partner pass, RHO opens 1♥ in third seat. You decide to bid 3♦ (not my choice, but that's what happened) and LHO bids 3♥, ending the auction and putting you on lead. Again, I would probably bid 4♦, but you're on lead and choose the K♦ and see this:
  
  
  
  Your K♦ wins, catching the jack from dummy, four from partner, and five from declarer. What now (answer below)?
• Speedy Game!: Our second Swiss Team game on Saturday was a real speedball, 6 minutes per board and even than was too much. Six teams played a full 24-board Swiss and round times were set at 36 minutes, but each round ended at least three minutes early, the whole 24-boards taking only 2 hours and nine minutes to complete at all tables! The undefeated winners were Kathy Bye - Sheila Sache - Aban Gerrie - Robert Gerrie, with 63 VPs of a possible 80. Next one is on Saturday May 29.
• Passed Out! Eight hands for you, would you open any of these?
  
  #1 (1st seat): ♠ A 8 7 5   ♥ K 6 5 4   ♦ Q 8 5   ♣ 5 2  
  
  #2 (4th seat): ♠ A 5   ♥ T 8 7   ♦ K 8 5 4   ♣ Q 9 5 3  
  
  #3 (4th seat): ♠ K Q 6 4   ♥ A 8 7   ♦ 9 7 3 2   ♣ T 7  
  
  #4 (1st seat): ♠ K 6 4 2   ♥ K 5 2   ♦ A J 3   ♣ 6 4 2  
  
  #5 (2nd seat): ♠ Q T 9 8 7   ♥ A J 6 4   ♦ 2   ♣ K T 8  
  
  #6 (2nd seat): ♠ J 9   ♥ Q 9 2   ♦ J T 6 4   ♣ A K 9 3  
  
  #7 (3rd seat): ♠ J 3   ♥ Q 9 3   ♦ Q T 9 7 6   ♣ A J 7  
  
  #8 (3rd seat): ♠ T 3 2   ♥ J T 3   ♦ A K   ♣ Q J 8 6 4  
  
  Everyone seems to have different answers for borderline hands, but the one thing I have learned is that if you ask what the vulnerability is or who the opponents are, you're avoiding the burden of evaluation and looking for some excuse to answer a difficult question. Some of us open all or most of these, others pass all or most. I've ordered the eight hands by the spade suit's high cards, but a closer look will reveal that these are the cards from two complete deals, in fact the first two deals of the Friday, April 9 game. Five tables passed out the first board, three passed out the second, and at two tables the round was over in record time! A third got seven passes before the North player thought for a considerable time before opening #1 and making a plus for a good score. (I would only open #7 and #8, so maybe I'm not as wild as I once was...)
• You Know Who Y'All Are... It happens almost every game, most often just before it begins, occasionally during the game: I will get a private message from someone asking that I add them to the VVBC list. Quite often the people asking will be completely unknown to me and have never actually played at the Vancouver Bridge Centre before. And because pointing this out seems to invite silly arguments, I have a set procedure for these requests now: I check out the credentials of the person making the request, and if I find no link to the VBC, I ignore the request. If the player is local or has played at the VBC, you're in. But if you are from far away and we've never seen or heard of you, you're out. And since many who are called out bombard me with silly comments (my mom played at your club once, I have been accepted at these other faraway clubs, and on and on and on), I'm just not interested in arguing. So I don't. The description of all VVBC games (which apparently these people do not read) says quite clearly "subs from Partnership Desk or general sub list ONLY, asking is futile." But read this:
  
  ACBL does have a rule that no more than 15% of players in your games can be guest players who are not on your original list of offline players (players who won masterpoints at the VBC offline between January 2019 and March 2020). Exceptions can be made for the handful of players who only occasionally played at VBC and did not win masterpoints in this period, for other local players who have played in the past, and for people who have moved away but often play when they visit Vancouver. I have also allowed a few players access because they play at tournaments with local players, but a few who have pushed the limits on this have been advised to play in other games. The strength of the Virtual Clubs program rests on familiarity. Virtual Club games are a way for people who have been playing bridge offline together for years to keep in touch during this unfortunate time that we cannot. There are several Virtual Clubs (not locally) that seem to be in it to maximize their profit by accepting almost anyone, taking advantage of the fact that the ACBL rule is not easily enforceable. I don't think local players want to play 90% of their boards against unfamiliar people, even if it raises more money to help keep the VBC alive. Sadly, perhaps because some of our games are fairly large, we attract these players who are looking for extra opportunities to play. And since there are ACBL Support Your Club games every day that anyone can play in, but these are not attractive to these people, I believe the majority of them think that we are a potential source of masterpoints, easier than playing the large unlimited SYC games. The number of requests I get does tend to rise when there are extra masterpoint weeks.
  
  So if you are local, or a former VBC player, I will be able to check that and let you in. If you are just looking for another game to play, there are opportunities out there, outside the Virtual Club games program for you. I'm not going to entertain your claims that you visited here once in 1997, or that your sister lives in Vancouver, or that there are no other games running at the moment. That's not what Virtual Club games are for. And if you don't agree, that's your problem.
• Defensive problem: Here is the complete deal from above (use the Next button to play through the hand and comments will pop up in the appropriate spots), played on Friday April 23:
  
  
• Yellow Card for Carding Offenses: Recently we have had a number of incidents where defenders have been slow to respond to the magic word carding. Those who use it are just going to have to accept that pairs who play standard signals and discards often have no goldang idea what the hell you are talking about when you hit them with this unfamiliar term (signals would be the more common term that might be understood) and three seconds later follow it up with a rude all-caps CARDING PLEASE!! So I suggest the following remedy: 1) Stop with the rudeness. People bear down against pairs that have given them a hard time in the past. You're making things difficult for yourself by the all-caps and the sarcasm. 2) Assume standard if they don't respond and don't have a convention card posted (or have one without marking the defensive area with anything), and continue playing. Making a big deal about this and wasting a minute or two on it is not going to impress any Director. 3) If you really, really think that the pair that doesn't know what carding means is deceiving you and they actually play Revolving Nuclear Capsicum Discards, well, good luck with that. I'll need some evidence, like at least three signals that correspond with your hypothesis that show tricks lost because of a signal you couldn't intercept. Every board's cardplay is logged on BBO. Have at it. Just don't be surprised if I am a bit skeptical at first, especially if the concealers are getting 37% on the session. 4) The lack of a convention card is regrettable but not cause for derision. Some of us really need to get off this particular high horse.
• Swiss Teams!: Finally, Swiss Teams have been tested enough for Virtual Clubs to try, and we have decided to introduce them once a month. We ran our first team game on Saturday, March 27, as part of March 22-28 Stardust Week, where extra masterpoints were available. Interested players can sign up as singles or pairs and we'll try to get as many in as we can.
  
  There are still a few niggles and hurdles in this new format, but most people who have tried it have positive reactions. You should try to read the guide I have posted at this new page before you enter the unfamilar two-step signup for the event.
  
  Adding Swiss Teams once a month makes Saturday into VVBC Variety Day! The schedule area below on this page now has a box with a scrollable list of dates so you can see what is coming up!
  
  
  Just so I could experience the team game format, on Sunday March 14th, minutes after uploading the winners and hand records for the afternoon game, I found a BBO team game and added myself to the partnership desk. I invited one of the players and then invited the leftover pair. As I detail in this article, the system did kick me back out into the tournament list after inviting a partner, and I had to come back to the tournament to invite a second pair. But I hit the jackpot, playing a pleasant game with a good player from Madison, Wisconsin who also directs Virtual Games, and teammates who played very well at the other table. After winning 11-9 in the first round, we faced a pair who rudely told us "not to talk" when we discovered we both were Virtual Club game TDs, so we thrashed them 16-4! The hand above helped a fair bit.  We had a few more good results in the third 6-board match as well, took all the VPs and won the 18-team event by a single VP!
  
  How about this one? Having rebid a mere 2♣ with pretty much a maximum for that action, it seemed something was required over partner's jump to 4♥, so I tried the fake cuebid, and partner jumped again to 6♥. I breathed a sigh of relief and passed, but cursed my complacency when partner turned up with ♠ A K 4   ♥ A K J T 9 8 5   ♦ T 9   ♣ Q — which really shouldn't have been much of a surprise; luckily, it was a push, but still a lost opportunity for a 13-IMP swing.
  
  I can confirm that results are a bit klunky, but that just means you can concentrate on playing and talk later, when it is all over.  So I look forward to April 17 and the VVBC's second Swiss Team game, even if I can't play in it.
• New McBruce Rant -- "Losing It": Gotcha! You've just discovered that an opponent's explanation was wrong, or there was a missed alert, or some other infraction, and you seem to be on the way to a bad result. What you're supposed to do is call the Director right away. Playing or bidding on jeopardizes your right to an adjustment, but since we are so much more concerned with timing online, you are usually OK to continue. Offline, everything should stop until the TD arrives.
  
  One extra feature we have online when calling the TD is that we can send a message about what the problem is, and how it has affected your actions. If your initial call says "failure to alert, I might have done something different" the TD will take your claim more seriously than if you ask for an adjustment three rounds later, after looking at the hand records and discovering what was going to work, and composing a dubious way of getting there. We're a lot more sympathethic to a claim that a different bid would have been made if the damage claimer tells us early rather than later, when the entire deal becomes an open book.
  
  There is no automatic penalty for almost any infraction except that the TD is supposed to try to restore equity. In online bridge we have advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that a missed alert does not give unauthorized information to partner as it does offline (unless the missed alert is corrected in public chat!), one disadvantage is that polling players is not so easy and the TD usually needs to make a judgment, with limited options compared to what can be done offline. Often I will leave the score in but warn the offender that alerts forgotten may lead to adjustments.
  
  As I announce in every online game, I am happy to discuss rulings in the 20 minutes following every game. But we need to agree on ground rules. If there is an issue about when exactly something happened, we need to nail that down during the game, when I can consult the table history: after the game it is not available. As stated above, it is a higher bar to say after the game is over that I would have bid thus-and-so when it did not occur to you at the time. The standard is simple: did the misinformation you received prevent you from doing something normal that would have led to a better score, assuming both sides played on normally without the infraction? It's not: they forgot to alert so we get to pick a contract and construct some barely plausible way of getting there and then claim it was obvious that this was what would have happened.
  
  I've heard people claim that they would have made a call that would make, when the call would clearly be interpreted by partner as forcing and that would never be the final contract. I've heard people claim that agreements are not on after a missed alert, in order to get to the perfect spot. I've listened as people claim a tempo break of several minutes and then discovered in table history that it was twelve seconds. I've maintained composure as people constructed possible alternative auctions where opponents ignored very strong hands or long solid suits in order to meekly pass. I've had people claim that they could have played in 2♠ as a sacrifice, even though the actual result was the opponents going down in 3♥! The whole thing has the unsavoury air of an international soccer match where the back of someone's hand lightly brushes against an opponent's chin and three minutes later a goal is scored, then the goal is disallowed for a "foul" which hardly affected the defender at the time, but once the goal was scored suddenly appears to have broken his jaw.
  
  Another mystery source of great frustration is the belief that the opponents are doing this — failing to alert, forgetting their agreements, showing up with cards the auction claims they should not have, etc... — deliberately. In the vast majority of cases, these are accidents, not some personal attempt to mislead. Get over it! This is a game of imperfect information and people make mistakes. You'll get a score adjustment because there was damage. You won't get one for claiming that the opponents are out to get you. They aren't.
  
  (By the way, this notion that the opening bidder just has to have all of the missing highcards, especially the ones you can finesse against, is usually bunk. If there are 17 points missing, the non-opener might have five or even six highcard points worth of honours. People sometimes open 11 counts. The bridge world seems to be full of players who will risk their contacts on an 80% chance and then claim damage one fifth of the time, rather than looking for better lines of play that will ensure the contract.)
  
  I am aware that there are some players who are not good at alerting or explaining, and in most cases this is just unfamiliarity with online bridge or a language barrier. When there is a situation that causes damage or might have caused damage, I almost always warn the opponents that they need to be better, but I do it in private chat. Sometimes I ask the partner to try to teach the micreant the better way. On a few occasions I have been told that partner is impervious to change, and problem players like this get the short end of the stick whenever there is a decision to be made. But they are still welcome to play, we're not going to bar people for not knowing all the rules or being uncomfortable on computers or being deficient in typing messages in English. We will make very sure that they don't gain an advantage when the opponents are clearly damaged by misinformation. But if you're the type that demands that rules infractions be publicly shamed, you're in for a lot of disappointment (especially if we find out that you have taken it upon yourself to do the public shaming).
  
  One comment that comes from the aggrieved party over and over again is a sure fire way to ensure that you are not going to get what you want; it is the 'nuclear option' of player-director interaction, and you should avoid it whenever you have the temptation to succumb to its dubious charms. Someone forgets to alert (or some other infraction) and a player calls the Director claiming damage. I look at the situation and agree that there was an infraction but decide that there is no reason to adjust, or perhaps I adjust but not to what the player wants. A discussion between us ensues, leading to the frustrated player making some such comment as "well, I guess I will just never alert anything again, then."
  
  I understand the frustration but this is childish, and, to a Director patiently trying to explain a decision, insulting. Once you pull this argument out of the bag, you lower yourself below anything the offender might have done. You're not winning this ruling, and future ones are going to be carefully checked before giving you the benefit of any doubt. Directors are a strange breed: we expect to be insulted from time to time and will not give a break to those who do -- you can't 'work the refs' in this game. On the other hand, if you can refrain from the nuclear option and at some point agree to disagree, respect will come your way and your future calls won't face as much extra scrutiny. Is that fair? Probably not. Vanishingly few rulings actually change due to the perception TDs have of the people calling the Director, we just tend to take longer before ruling in favour of those who can't accept a decision they don't agree with.
  
  I must say that I have many, many times witnessed (mostly as a player) that a Director call that does not immediately get the result the caller wants, very often leads to absurdly bad bridge from the caller on the following deals. It's not good for your game to get so worked up over decisions that don't go 100% your way. If it takes a round or two for the Director to decide to turn your 35% score into a 72% score, but in the meantime you have given away two tops, are you really ahead? Nobody plays at full potential with smoke coming out of their ears and a face that is as red as a supernova. Keeping calm and collected always gets you more matchpoints than relying on steam power to overwhelm your latest mortal enemy. "Losing it" is not winning bridge!
• More from the McBruce archives: Found this in a file containing old handouts I wrote for games I directed at the country club games Phil Wood began in the 1960s. Perfect for the hand viewer toy. Enjoy!
  
  
• Bridge Puzzle #1: This came up on Monday March 1:
  
  East opened 1♣ and South overcalled 1NT.
  
  North transferred to hearts and South jumped to 3♥.
  
  North bid 4♥.
  
  It looks like two spades and two minor suit aces to lose, but one of the spade losers may be pitched on a club winner.
  
  However, East gets off to the best lead, a small spade, and West plays the king.
  
  Can you still make it?
  
  (Answer at the bottom of the page....)
• Brain Damage I have a new toy, thanks to BBO; check it out by using the Next button:
  
  
  
  I'd like to feature examples of really good play with this new toy more often than the deplorable display above, so if you have an example of a really interesting hand in one of our games, lay it on me!
• A new "tip": You may find that using a stylus helps with selecting things off of a touchscreen. Especially if you play on a cellphone or small tablet like an iPad mini, our fingers are quite unreliable when precision is required. The pens sold by the computer makers for their specific machines are expensive and have specialized features, but just for online bridge these special functions are not needed. The one at right that I bought from Amazon costs less than one-sixth the asking price of a Surface Pen or an Apple Pencil, and has two pointing surfaces, either of which works well for online bridge and functions equally well on my iPad and my Surface Pro. Once you get used to using it, you will find that you can hold it away from the screen as you touch portions of the screen, leaving more of the screen visible as you do so. You'll also make fewer selection errors when choosing cards or plays. (Another option that few try is the 'hand diagrams' option instead of 'pictures of cards' during the cardplay, which keeps the suits in the same spot throughout.)
  
  I am finding that it is also useful to do everything from playing computer snooker to sudoku-type puzzles, and if I had any aptitude at all for drawing it would be all kinds of fun, especially with the advanced apps available these days for free. There are even apps out there that allow you to write notes with your pen that it turns into text!
  
  A link to this stylus (which comes with two replacement tips for each end) on Amazon is here.
• New Alerting Regulations Effective January 1: Not much has changed specifically for online play, we still alert our own bids (preferably before making them, or as quickly as possible afterwards, to avoid confusing the opponents), and the online environment shields partner's self-alerts and announcements from us, so we have no choice but to assume that partner's conventional and alertable calls have been properly alerted to the opponents. The changes for 2021 are not numerous and mostly revolve around a new way of presenting the rules. ACBL has in the past few years revamped it's convention charts, the rules about what conventions are allowed in what circumstances, and now has extended that new format to its regulations on alerting. But the basic principles remain, and we expect very very few, if any, score adjustments based on a lack of knowledge of the latest changes.
  
  The most trouble when the rules change often comes from players assuming something they haven't seen before is part of the changes, and from players extrapolating based on changes that they have seen to make up their own rules. When announcements first were introduced, players began announcing everything and very few bids were not immediately explained by partner — chaos! A related problem which we likely won't have this time because of the pandemic is that ACBL clubs are free to adopt alternate rules if they wish (unless they clearly affect the bridge results in a significant way), but are strongly encouraged to use the ACBL rules that will be in effect in all higher ACBL events (including those played at clubs). Each year we would have people returning from some club in Palm Springs telling us that the ACBL had given up on getting players to announce their opening notrump ranges, because one Palm Springs club had decided not to use that rule. More than once I actually had to tell a player that "you returned last year from Palm Springs and made the same claim; it is as false now as it was then." People mess up bid-boxes all the time by insisting on "plucking" — pulling only the 3♦ card out of the pack instead of every card from 1♣ thru 3♦, because they've watched Zia play and he does it; in reality, this is something only done when using screens, because those piles of cards can't pass under them easily, not because it is some expert secret to good play! So, take what other players say about the new rules with a grain of salt, especially if they have just earned a bottom by some silly line of play completely unrelated to your so-called 'infraction' and are grumbling about it. Just call the Director calmly and ask for a clarification.
  
  Changes to alertable status: these calls have changed from Alertable to not Alertable, or vice versa: support doubles and redoubles (now not alertable), jump shifts that are natural, regardless of strength, in an uncontested auction (now not alertable), direct cuebids like 2♥ over RHO's 1♥ (now alertable UNLESS Michaels: minor suits promising majors, major suits promising other major and an unspecified minor — bridge lawyers claiming to play "Improved Michaels" when forgetting to alert their slightly-different scheme will be laughed out of court), 2♣ openers that might not meet the definition of Very Strong now require an alert. (The definition of Very Strong is: 20+ highcard points, or within a trick of game assuming suits break evenly with either 14+ highcard points or 5+ control points: ace=2, king=1. If your partnership even occasionally opens 2♣ on distributional hands without a lot of defense, you probably need to alert your 2♣ openers.)
  
  Changes for announcements: A few carefully-selected expansions here, do not get into the habit of creating your own! Notrump opener ranges remain announceable (even if you have played in Palm Springs), overcalls and rebids of notrump that fall within a defined range are not announceable. The other three announceable situations have slightly changed: Opening bids in a suit that by agreement could be less than three cards are still announceable, but the form is now "could be [number]" instead of "could be short," so you will hear (or see online) "could be 2", "could be zero", etc. (This will spoil a whole class of dirty jokes about unlikely sleeping arrangements at bridge tournaments using "could be short" as a punchline, by the way....) 1NT Forcing calls (including those made by passed hands that are Semiforcing) are still announceable (say "Forcing" or "Semiforcing"), and the only small addition here is that pairs that play that 1♥ - 1NT may bypass a four-card spade suit need to append "could have four spades." (If you go to the full unreccommended extreme and play that 1♥ - 1♠ is the forcing call, and 1NT shows spades, you are no longer playing Forcing Notrump over 1♥ and you need to look at the next paragraph....)
  
  This gets us to the big change: previously, only red suit transfers to majors were announceable — under the new rules, any artificial bid that primarily shows length in another (not previously mentioned) suit, as well as any double or redouble that shows length in the next suit up, is now announceable, and you simply say the name of the suit being shown. For a normal 2♥ transfer, you would say "spades" instead of "transfer". For most of us, this will only cover transfers, but some players will have a few whizbang gadgets that also apply and sometimes fail in the most spectacular ways. Be careful though: the announceable call must promise length in the suit you announce, not possible length. For example, 1NT - 2♠ as an unconditional transfer to clubs is announceable, but if the 2♠ bidder may in fact have diamonds and 'correct,' or by bidding on show a hand that does not necessarily have clubs, the correct thing to do is Alert, not Announce.
  
  It is important to note that online, as long as you do not adopt the bad habit of explaining bids in public chat, you really can announce anything without causing damage. But at some point, hopefully soon, we'll be back at the table alerting and announcing partner's bids, so let's get into the habit of announcing our own announceable calls when necessary, and when we sit down at a club or tournament again it will be routine and the small change of announcing or alerting partner's calls will be picked up quickly.
  
  Pre Alerts: the pre-alert of leading low from small doubletons is gone; such players can consign their cute little cards to the back of their convention card holders forever, but they need to include that information when asked about their carding or leads. You need to let each new opposing pair know, at the start of a round, if you 1) play significantly different systems (more than just a notrump range change) in different seats or different vulnerabilities, OR, 2) play a system that includes at least one 1-level opening bid that is forcing, or not natural. So you'll hear "we play a strong club system" or "we play a short club" or "we play Montreal Relay", and if it's one of the last two you can smile in the expectation of potential matchpoints to come...
  
  There is one more class of Alerts called Delayed Alerts that do not apply online. So, I'll update this when we all get vaccinated and return to the tables.
  
  You can read the complete rules here, although the definitions of most capiltalized terms are only in the Convention Chart document here (note to ACBL: would it have been that hard to repeat them at the end?). The January ACBL Bulletin has an article on them as well. No need to memorize them, just understand that most (not quite all) artificial bids need to be alerted and do your best.
• Questions in Online Play: We're seeing more and more difficulties caused by questioners and responders. Let's remember the following:
  
  
  • Click to ask first. Clicking on a call in the auction diagram alerts the bidder that more explanation of that bid is required, with a pop-up box. This is the easiest way to find out what a call means. If you see such a box, respond to it as quickly as you can with an informative response. If you have no special agreement, simply type 'no agreement.'
  • Keep it private. If you need more information, use private chat only. Don't send questions to the full table. Law 20G disallows asking a question for partner's benefit, or to elicit an erroneous response.
  • Agreements, not Cards!: Questioners should note that you are entitled only to the agreements ("explicitly through discussion or implicitly through mutual experience or awareness" is how Law 40 defines agreements) the opponents have, NOT the actual contents of their hand, or whether they have bid according to their agreements. If your question wakes an opponent up and they explain their agreements even though they didn't bid according to their agreements, that is not an infraction. Answerers should try to explain their calls rather than use a convention name. Questioners who insist on a point count range for bids that are based on distribution will be laughed out of court. Let's be careful about adjectives like 'pre-emptive' (don't interpret this as weak), 'balanced' (if you open notrumps often with singleton high honors, this is misleading), 'invitational' (don't use this one if the last time the bid was passed in your partnership was 1983), and others that might be ambiguous.
  • Ask when you need the information, not when it doesn't matter. If the opponents are at the 5-level, your next bid is not going to be affected by whether 5♦ shows zero aces, or one ace. There aren't a lot of hands that will come in over Stayman but not over Puppet Stayman. If you have a very weak hand and you are about to pass, pass! You can ask a question when the auction ends if it hasn't become obvious by then.
  • Unalerted bids are natural. If it turns out otherwise, your side gets the benefit of the doubt if there is a possible adjustment to be made. If you ask a bunch of questions under the assumption that an alert has been missed, you're just wasting time and jeopardizing your case for damage later. Everyone doesn't play your system. Often these questions about conventions you play will just confuse opponents who don't play them. And in some cases, I am starting to suspect that confusion and intimidation is the strategy. Don't go there.
  • The Show MUST Go On! We seem to have a growing number of irate players who completely lose their nut when a question is not answered, refusing to continue until they get an answer and holding things up. That is a vastly larger offense than a slow answer. People who have actual fork-in-the-road decisions to make that depend on the answers to questions, I have found, ask nicely and call the Director if the answer doesn't appear after a reasonable time. The ones who go postal tend to have no good reason for asking the question in the first place, and are just trying to make some silly point. In 2021, I am done dealing with this. If you pull this "I refuse to continue until the question is answered" I will admonish the player who didn't answer. But first, I'm going to replace you and no refund will be forthcoming. This childish behavior has to stop. Keep things going. If you are damaged, I will adjust.
  • Convention Cards help: If you have one loaded, it can answer many questions the opponents might have. Those of you who blame every poor result on the distractions of questions will see fewer questions by having a card. They are easy to make, adjust, and load: you can have a card for every one of your regular partner's, saved electronically within your BBO account. You can load a generic 2/1 or SAYC card and adjust it little by little to your liking. It's not something you want to do in the few minutes before a game, but something you can do in twenty minutes after a game, then tweak it little by little until it is perfect!
• Welcome to 2021! Here is a list of online bridge resolutions all players should consider for the new year:
  
  
  • Create a personal convention card: Having a personal card means you can load it and ask partner for input. It's not that difficult: start with the generic SAYC or 2/1 card and modify it to your needs, then save it to your BBO account, and you'll be able to use it in any game you play. If you join the sub list for tournaments, many experienced players will be interested in what you are comfortable with, and having a card to load helps greatly. Your personal CC should include conventions that you prefer but probably not ones that are not well-known. Support doubles, great. Support redoubles, iffy. Support 1NT, good luck with that...
  • Cure yourself of bad BBO habits: A partial list: rejecting claims without a decent look from declarer's point of view (your aces will not cash if declarer can trump them) ... delaying at trick 13: whatever ARE you thinking about? ... logging off and on to improve your connection repeatedly (doesn't work, and every time we lose you I get a loud thunk on the Director's screen and when it is the same player over and over again I remember the miscreant) ... adjusting your screen so you cannot see ANY chat (this is like wearing noise-cancelling headphones at an offline game and ignoring everyone) ... alerting or explaining bids several seconds after they are made, instead of before you make them ... not being available and ready to go at gametime after signing up for a tournament ... long pauses to think without letting the others know you are thinking ... long pauses to think when time is running out ... insisting on asking a question the answer to which will not affect your next action (if you have a near-Yarborough it can hardly matter which type of Blackwood they play) and refusing to play while you wait for an answer ... playing out winners hoping for a discard that nobody in the universe would make (if you've ruffed two suits in hand they KNOW what suit your last card will be) ... playing in a Virtual Club game without a name attached to your profile (you can remove it later, but at the club we are all friends and there is no reason to be anonymous) ... etc., etc.
  • Play Up!: A game or two above your current level is never a bad thing. 0-300 players are welcome in 0-750 or open games, and 0-750 players are welcome in open games. You might lose, but you will be able to look at the deals later and see what the others are doing that you're not, right down to individual tricks! Having the cardplay available in the results gives you so much more opportunity to learn. Plus, you might not lose, even open games have strats and your results may surprise you!
  • Sign up for E*V*I*L!: We're always happy to see more teams in the VVBC IMP League, and team play is just as fun as pairs online: results are kept so you can check them later. The biggest improvers in season three of E*V*I*L (Electronic Vancouver IMP League is what it stands for), is a team that has not won a match yet.  But in three matches against the same team, they have improved from losing by 99IMPs to losing by 20. If we get a few more teams of newer players for Season 4, everyone will benefit! A few hours on Tuesday nights, completely free, what more could you ask for?
  • Big screen bridge is easier: 4K external monitors are surprisingly inexpensive and make everything a lot easier. Most misclicking and connection problems I encounter turn out to be people playing on small cellphone screens. Eventually we're going to be back at the club; playing BBO on a small cellphone is like sitting on a kids chair with one hand tied behind your back and wearing an eyepatch. It's not going to be easy...
  • Have more fun!: We're all optimistic but it does look like staying home and safe will be the only way to play bridge for at least the first third or first half of 2021. Every time you play you are making a small contribution to ensuring bridge's eventual return to clubs and tournaments. We really can't thank you all enough for this. Keep playing, having fun, and staying safe and healthy!
• Les Fouks Wins the 2020 MUG Race! After the pandemic was declared and online bridge stopped, one activity that was able to be continued was Monthly Unit Games, by moving them online. We used the VBC's sanction, meaning that masterpoint awards were club-rated only, but for the purposes of the MUG masterpoint race we transcribed the results into ACBLScore to get Unit Game rated masterpoint awards and went with that. Les Fouks, playing with June Keith, won the December game and took over the lead, winning a year's worth of free plays to Unit Games (with one small catch)! Flight B and Flight C (six free plays for each for the next calendar year, again with a small catch) were won by Cindy Oishi, with Harry Satanove very close behind, and since you can only win one prize, Harry will get the Flight C prize. What's the catch? It's not possible in the current system to award free plays online, so presumably the Unit will award the prizes when offline bridge returns, hopefully in mid-2021. Full details on all 2020 Unit masterpoint races (some of which may be combined with whatever Unit 430 manages to run in 2021) are here.
• Delay Key Decisions at Your Own Risk! In online bridge, everything has to end when the time for a round runs out. Once time runs out, you are at the mercy of the computer first, and the Director second. In most cases it will be clear what your plan is, and the computer or director will adjust to the number of tricks that will result. But if there is a key decision that was left undecided when time ran out, and there are two (or more) reasonable ways to play it, it is usually the declarer who will be on the hook. Here is an example from a recent game:
  
  Dummy: ♠ 9 7 3  ♥ Q 6 5  ♦ K 5 4 2  ♣ Q 6 3
  
  Declarer: ♠ K 4 2  ♥ K T 8 7 3  ♦ A 8  ♣ K 9 7 
  
  After two passes, RHO opened 1♦ and declarer overcalled 1♥. Last deal of the tournament, both sides vulnerable. LHO bid 2♣ and partner raised to 2♥. This was passed around to LHO who bid 3♦, and after two more passes, declarer competed to 3♥, ending the auction. The opening lead was the T♦.
  
  Declarer won this on the board and led a small club: jack, king, ace. A diamond was returned to declarer's ace and declarer began trumps by leading the ten from hand: jack, queen, two. A spade to the king was next, both defenders playing low, then a small heart, LHO winning the ace and RHO following. A third round of diamonds was ruffed by declarer and the last trump was pulled, LHO discarding a small club. At this point the table was warned that time had already been extended for the final round by two minutes and they needed to end as quickly as possible. This was the position with six tricks in for declarer and two so far for the defenders:
  
  Dummy: ♠ 9 7  ♥ void  ♦ 5  ♣ Q 6 
  
  Declarer: ♠ 4 2  ♥ 8  ♦ void  ♣ 9 7 
  
  Declarer needs three of the last five and there are two spades to lose, plus the T♣, which might be in either hand. Declarer took a full minute at this point before leading a spade; the defenders cashed two spades and RHO led a third, forcing declarer to ruff as LHO pitched a small club. Before declarer could play from dummy, the time ran out.
  
  It may seem obvious to you to play to the queen of clubs and hope to drop the ten singleton, but if that was the play you were going to make, it could have been made five tricks ago. An equally valid play is to try the nine of clubs, hoping RHO began with J8 doubleton. The point is, when time runs out, it is too late to claim what you were going to do. I know there is a possible (unlikely, but possible) endplay here, and that's why declarer gives up the spade tricks, hoping for a break. But the table had already been warned at that point, and declarer still took a minute to lead the spade. One possible solution: message the director. "If forced to play clubs myself, I will lead low to the queen." That works better than "of course I was going to play low to the queen!" after the time runs out and you can see the deal in your History tab.
  
  We all want to play our best and give ourselves every chance, and delaying a decision can make the difference between a good score and a bad score. But the constraints of online bridge, and the instant onscreen hand records once a hand is completed, mean the Director can't ask after the round ends, 'what would you have done?' because online, nobody ever gets that question wrong. So, watch the clock, if I'm at the table doing my 'tick tick tick' routine and you are delaying a decision hoping for a break, you might want to privately let me know your plans if that break doesn't come through.
• Simple Finesses: Keep Them Simple Please!: I was watching a table that was running a bit low on time. Declarer had pulled trumps to the point where only one high one was out, and was cashing winners to extract it, rather than using two trumps to remove one. With four small trumps left in declarer's hand, declarer led the jack of a side suit from QJxx towards ace doubleton in the concealed hand. RHO played low in tempo. Declarer now spent a full minute, with time running out, before deciding to play the ace, assuring a loser in the suit at least 98% of the time. The BBO Robot of Unfinished Deals eventually decided the result when time expired.
  
  Not the first time I have seen this non-play. Many of us seem to be addicted to the idea that we can work out from the cosmic rays whether to finesse or play for an unlikely drop, even over the internet, by taking some time to take the atmospheric temperature. Some players seem to enjoy basic finesses so much that they waste minutes examining the defender who has played low smoothly, looking for a tell that will let them know when it is right to go up. If the fourth player has the singleton king, that's where the tell will be if there is one. Looking at the player who has already played in tempo, who has seen the QJ in dummy for most of the deal and has been ready to play in tempo for two full minutes, just isn't going to help.
  
  I've asked about such plays politely in the past, not online, but on the rare occasions when I was playing. Newer players will say "I was hoping for a cover" (not explaining why they paused when it didn't happen) or cite the famous Zia tip "if they don't cover, they don't have it," remembering only the catchphrase and not realizing that it doesn't apply when the honour led is supported by another. In the position above, you get two tricks if the king is onside (about 50%, more in this case since the other defender had the long trumps), or if you abandon the finesse and play the ace, dropping the singleton king (a 50-1 shot at best, the suit splitting 6-1 and the singleton is the king).
  
  There's nothing in the Laws preventing a player from playing bad bridge. If you want to gift tricks to the opponents by playing for the once-a-year drop of a singleton king offside, you have every right to do so. Just do it quickly and don't waste everyone's time. In basic finesse situations like this, you should expect the first defender to play low, in tempo--and since that is what happens the vast majority of the time, you should know what you are going to do when it happens. When you lead the queen (or the jack, as here) and they don't cover, that is not breaking news, that is the expected play, whether the defender has the king or not. Now is not the time to think about what happens if the finesse loses: you should have foreseen that possibility before leading. Now is not the time to take inventory to see if the defender who played low must have the missing honour, you should have done that before leading the suit. It doesn't much matter whether you go up with the ace or finesse, it doesn't even matter whether you get it right or wrong: if you take all day over it after the trick has begun, you look like a palooka. And if you cause the round time to run out, or leave the rest of the table with very little time to complete other boards in the round, you are a palooka and a PITA (look it up).
  
  Why can't I think, you ask indignantly? Two reasons. First, if time is running out, everyone needs to expedite their play, especially in online bridge where the rounds are rigidly timed and we can't borrow from the next to finish this one. (Offline, that 'borrowing from the next to finish this one' far too often leads to getting further and further behind, inconveniencing innocent pairs.) You simply don't have the luxury of taking extra time on something that should be obvious when the clock is about to run out, or too much time has already been used on this board with more to play. Second, this pause makes no sense: there is no news here that requires a rethink, the defender did exactly as expected and gave you no new information. If you take a moment or two before leading for the finesse to decide what to do when the second player plays low as expected, you will find that your thoughts will be clearer, since you're not distracted by "was that a tell?" considerations that seem to throw finesse lovers into catatonic fits. Thinking in advance is far less frustrating for the opponents, and makes you look like you belong at a bridge table rather than a bingo hall.
  
  In over thirty years of play, I have seen the singleton king drop work once at the table: the expert who pulled it off later told me he had led towards the ace-queen in dummy knowing that it was quite possible from the distribution so far revealed that my partner had the singleton king, and he knew that partner could switch to a dangerous suit if he got in. But he was still going with the odds until he saw my partner partially detach a card before he called for the queen while 'looking like he was going to his own funeral.' The expert decided that even if the finesse worked, it was worth the insurance to keep my partner off lead, called for the ace, and down came the king. His change of plan, fortified by forethought and locked in by observation, took two seconds, not sixty.
  
  
• The Silent Treatment: I know it has been a while since we all played offline bridge, but we all remember how much fun it was. Imagine playing with a player who never spoke, ignored questions about his partnership agreements, even to the Director when called. You wouldn't expect that to last very long, would you? Somebody that rude would be asked to leave and physically tossed out if they continued to ignore everyone around them.
  
  So why is this happening online?
  
  We seem to have a growing number of players who have turned off chat entirely and refuse to respond to queries. Some of them are quite active when THEY need to find out about a bid that someone forgot to announce or alert, but sink back into the silent treatment when admonished for their behaviour by the Director. The idea seems to be that having paid to play, they don't need to follow any rules they don't like.
  
  Chat can be distracting, and BBO's options make it possible for you to squelch the sounds and remove all chat from your screen. But if you do that in a tournament or virtual game, you may be replaced with a substitute if I can't contact you when necessaary, and you won't get a refund. This behavior HAS to stop.
  
  No form of bridge is without interruptions and distractions; part of the game is being able to handle these normal events and stay focused. You can keep chat sounds on and turn them down to mimimize distractions. But the silent treatment is not an option that your entry fee gives you. Ignoring chat is like throwing money away. I will replace you and I will not let you back in. Don't do it.
• New McBruce rant: Twelve Bridge Truisms. Learning your system is important, but learning basic bridge logic will help you more often:
  • Declarer's mystery last card will never be in a suit previously ruffed in hand. This one tip will save many defenders all kinds of embarrassment and many minutes of deep thought for no reason. In a perfect world, declarers who love the "cash all my winners and hope opponents lose their minds" non-strategy will realize that the opponents are not going to between them discard the whole royal flush in the suit of their last card, and will just concede the last trick instead of making us wait for the inevitable.
  • The last card in a suit can't take a trick if its owner does not have an outside entry. While no declarer should rely on this unless you can tell from the cards played that this is the case, it may save time for the defender with the unreachable winner when the discarding game starts: if there is a possible entry, it's the entry that must be preserved before the winner behind it. Destroy the possible entry and the winner is stranded.
  • When you lead toward dummy's suit headed by the ace-queen, LHO will usually play low quickly: when this happens you should have expected it and already know what you've decided to do. Too many of us think that we will get some psychic vibe telling us when to play the ace and drop the unlikely singleton king offside. If you believe that these psychic vibes can be transmitted over the internet and you'll be able to pick up on them, you shouldn't be playing bridge, you should be playing the stock market!
  • Although distribution inflates the perceived total, there are only forty high-card points in every deck. Once the opening lead is made, all players start the defense of a hand with three important numbers: their point-count, dummy's point-count, and the leftover points. How to divide the leftovers among the two other players will often be done for you by the bidding. Distribution will affect these totals, but not all that often, not all that much, and not much very often.
  • A player known to have a doubleton cannot have more than seven highcard points in that suit. This comes from a Danny Roth book and he followed it up with the note that 'the number of players who have represented their country in international competition and yet do not seem to realize this is astounding.' Surprisingly often you will get information about the other three suits that indicate that declarer's or a defender's holding in the fourth suit is a doubleton. When you tally the points to figure out which missing high cards the concealed hands may have started with, don't consider scenarios that require a player to hold eight or more points in the doubleton suit.
  • A player known to have a doubleton headed by a spot card cannot have ANY points in that suit. This one comes up even more often, because small doubletons are often indicated quite early in the cardplay, and mean that the player's expected highcard points must come from the other three suits only.
  • Just because ACBL rules, or the convention your partner wants you to play, says you CAN do something, doesn't mean you HAVE to do it. I recently watched a player open this hand: ♠ A 8 4 2  ♥ 9  ♦ K Q T 4 2  ♣ K J 2  with a bid of 1♣! Was it a misclick? No it was not, the player explained it as "could be short." So excited about a chance to use this "short club" that a five-card diamond suit is ignored? That's not bridge, that's chaos.  Similarly, a few years ago the ACBL decided that it was now permitted to have an agreement that a 1NT opener or overcall might include a singleton high honor (ace, king or queen). We have players who have taken that to mean that this is a recommended play, because the change was prompted by experts who did it infrequently when they thought opening something other than 1NT might cause a rebid problem. In fact, the risks of opening 1NT with a singleton are quite large. What if partner transfers into your singleton? This will happen often and you may play in an inferior 5-1 fit. The 1NT bids with singletons I see are mostly easy to bid and rebid naturally. People just do it because the ACBL now says they can.
  • If a bid is not alerted you may assume it is natural and make reasonable bids and plays based on that assumption. We lose a lot of time on this one to suspicious players who smell a rat in every auction. But if there is a valid natural meaning, assuming that will not disadvantage you. If it turns out otherwise later you will get a score adjustment if you might have done better with correct information. If the rest of the auction indicates that the natural bid was something else, call the Director, but be prepared to finish the deal first before we talk about adjusted scores. Which leads to....
  • An auction by the opponents that doesn't make sense still requires a result before we check for possible damage requiring a score adjustment. Too many of our players get so frustrated when the opponents forget to alert something and instead of trying to get a good result, decide to carpet bomb the rest of the bidding or the cardplay in hopes that the penalty for the original infraction will save them. It will, but a serious error unrelated to the infraction, or some high-risk gamble, may affect your score even as the non-offending side. Let's suppose the opponents reach 4♥ with a missed alert, and it is fairly clear that you would get to and make 4♠ with the alert. But in playing 4♥ your partner, fuming at the fact that the Director hasn't simply adjusted to 4♠ making, pitches several aces out of spite, allowing the opponents to make a top board, rather than the 75% they would get (before the adjustment) for making a normal number of tricks. The opponents, as offenders, still get your 4♠ making as their score, and so do you, but you're on the hook for the 25% of a top your partner jettisoned out of spite. Law 12C1e doesn't come up often, but Directors love to use it because carpet bombing deserves to be heavily penalized. Play normal bridge and trust the Director to get it right, even if it takes a discussion later. Opponents' mistakes are not intentional or personal. Get over it.
  • There are virtually no hands that can make a takeout double of a one-level bid and then double the same suit at the two-level for penalties. If you've made a takeout double with a balanced rock crusher and they raise their suit, your second double is still for takeout. You can play it is for penalties but this requires an alert, because it is unexpected and frankly unproductive. Even a 22 count often cannot take six tricks against an 11-card fit and well-placed singletons or voids....
  • There are virtually no hands that you may pass because they are "in between" a weak two opener and a one-bid. If you pass, you pass because the suit isn't strong enough for a weak two in that seat, not because of some "sweet zone" between a weak two and an opening one-bid. As they say in Texas, there ain't no such a thing.
  • A call made quickly must have the same meaning as a call made slowly. If I catch you pulling this one with any sort of frequency you'll have to play somewhere else. The first time I see it you will receive a stern warning. And I have seen it. People making a takeout double with 4-4-4-1 distribution, singleton in opener's suit, and 19 highcard points: an obvious bid, but somehow it takes 45 seconds. At some point it becomes clear that you aren't considering other choices, you are trying to make sure partner picks up that you have extras. And BBO allows the TD to check the timing of bids, even if I am not there at the time. When partner takes extra bids with his 2 highcard points, it is clear that this partnership has some concealed extras, and the minimum penalty will be a score adjustment. You don't want to know what lies beyond that minimum.
• Yet Another Plea When it is time for the game to begin, the system warns me every 12 seconds if there is a player who is offline or out of BB$. When this happens, I let the partner know but I can't make the others wait more than a minute or so. Directors have a whole trunk of magic tricks we can use to accomodate late pairs offline, but NONE of these work online. If you sign up and go to another part of BBO, keep track of the time, for BBO has two servers and one cannot communicate with the other. You may appear as offline even if you are online and watching a casual table or doing something else: now that there are two servers, you don't get automatically moved to the tournament when it begins, and I cannot contact you. And your partner is left with no game. We lost two pairs on Thursday evening and another player arrived seconds before I was about to pull the plug on Thursday morning. I cannot and will not wait forever. Plus, if there is more than one player missing, the notice only tells me about the first. Ultimately, it is up to you to be ready and waiting when games begin. Let's be better.
• BBO Announces New Rules for September 2020! Strats will be based on AVERAGE masterpoints rather than the top player, a change we made at the club about a decade ago and which BBO has finally programmed. (I can't wait until our local experts ask why they are in Strat B....)
  
  The 0-300 and 0-750 games will have strats based on average, but both members of a partnership must be below the event limit. A 200 and a 350 cannot play in the 0-300 game together: the average fits but one of the players is ineligible.
• To 2♣ or not 2♣... Board 11 from Sunday's game featured this hand as dealer with nobody vulnerable: ♠ K Q J 9 8 6 5 4 3  ♥ A  ♦ T 4  ♣ 6. Is this a 2♣ opener? Is it even legal to open 2♣?
  
  By my way of thinking, this hand should not be opened 2♣. But I am old-fashioned; my rule comes from Shienwold's Five Weeks To Winning Bridge and it has been 35 years since I read it. The rule is: open 2♣ if you have more quick tricks than likely losers; if equal, use your judgment. This hand has two quick tricks and four losers. Not even close. If the opponents compete, partner may play you for high cards you do not have, and you may be forced to bail out from a penalty double into spades at a level that turns out to be too high. Better to open this 4♠; on most hands where partner cannot provide a trick, the opponents will have a fit and perhaps even a game.
  
  But it is unquestionably one trick away from a cold game; partner needs only any of the three missing aces or some other honour combination that can be established for a tenth trick in spades. By the previous set of regulations, 2♣ was a reasonable opener with this hand, as long as opener believed it was strong enough to handle whatever partner might do with a strong hand of his own.
  
  But as the Ruling The Game article on page 30 of the September Bulletin makes clear, the new Convention Charts have different ideas and it matters which is in play. On the Basic and Basic+ Charts, it is legal to open 2♣ with a Very Strong hand, but not without one. Very Strong is defined as either 20+ highcard points, or, 14+ highcard points or 5+ controls and within one trick of game. This hand has 10 points and three controls, so is not defined as 'Very Strong.' Under the Basic and Basic+ convention charts, this hand cannot be opened 2♣. The Open and Open+ charts, however, are different. There is no restriction on agreements for 2♣ openers, other than the rule that an artificial opener cannot be a psyche and no opening call can be purely destructive. Under the Open and Open+ charts, 2♣ is a legal opener on this hand.
  
  VVBC open games use the Open Chart, while 0-300 and 0-750 games use the Basic chart.
  
  If 2♣ is illegal, the auction continues and the Director decides whether the result obtained was due to the illegal agreement. On this hand it would be hard to argue that the 2♣ opener would not end up in spades somehow if prohibited from opening 2♣, but there might be a case, depending on the details, for damage.
  
  In an open game, the Director should be checking the actions of the partner to ensure that there is no implied agreement that hands like this can be opened 2♣ (unless the opponents have been advised of the expanded range); if partner holds an opening hand and fails to investigate slam, that might lead to an adjusted score, for example. If an opponent opens 2♣ and you are considering competing, you might ask (in private to the bidder, if online, of course) whether weaker hands within a trick of game qualify.
• The Show Must Go On: Three recent trends in VVBC games that just need to stop happening:
  
      —players not online at gametime
  
      —players looking at the details of their last board when everyone is waiting for them to start the next
  
      —players becoming dummy and leaving their computer for a bathroom break or a snack only to saunter back later to discover that they are the declarer and several minutes have been wasted.
  
  (One way to avoid this last is to turn the sound on: if you don't hear anything happening as you visit the pantry, that is a clue that they are probably waiting for you...) I can't tell for sure that people are looking at the last board's results, but when you finish a deal after everyone else and get immediately moved to the next round and it takes you three full minutes to open a 4-3-3-3 17-count 1NT, what other explanations are there? When we began this adventure I hoped that one day we could try 6 minutes a board, but it is clear that this would be utter chaos because far too many of us are having inexplicable trouble with 7 minutes. In fact, the limited point games are faster than the open games; the 0-300 and 0-750 players have fewer delays. The show must go on! If you aren't getting enough spare time to get up and take a break, you may well be the reason. Stop taking forever to make obvious bids and discards. Stop re-planning the hand after every trick. Stop leading for a finesse not knowing what you are going to do when the next player plays low smoothly — do you really think online you'll be able to smoke out a tell? When you make a takeout double and partner bids the suit you didn't want to hear, pass: bidding your own suit shows a huge hand and will get you into further trouble, not to mention the trouble you'll be in if you wait a minute, make a strength-showing call without the cards for it, and partner somehow knows to pass.
  
  Above all, if I come to your table and tell you that time is running low, you need to do something about it, your fault or not. You cannot ignore the warning and continue to take forever to bid and play: paying your entry fee gives you no such right, and those of you who think otherwise are spoiling it for many, many others. I hear the complaints all the time. And, I can check table histories and see who is causing the biggest delays: everything is logged, bids, plays, all timed to the second — so be careful when you claim it isn't your fault!
  
  In order to solve the slow play problem some of us are causing, I will be trying to speed things up and have as many 14-minute rounds advance to the next before the end as I can. If you are the last table playing with one or two minutes left, and I can see what the result will certainly be, I will assign that score so we can all move on. This may mean that playing out your winners slowly hoping for someone to misclick and discard the winner they should obviously keep, will cease to be a play you can use as time runs out. This may mean that if you reject a reasonable claim, hoping declarer will make some error you might be overruled. This may mean that if you delay a key decision in the hopes that the computer will resolve it for you when time runs out, I will chose the lesser play and adjust to that. These are the strategies that need to stop, and I will be pro-active in squelching them.
  
  If I give your table a warning about time and you ignore it, I may adjust to AVG+/AVG- or some combination so that dozens of players are not left waiting while you decide which spot card to discard from a hand which will take no more tricks. And if you are more interested in the history tab than the next board, resulting in a three minute wait for the next round to begin, you may find yourself disinvited from our games if you don't cure yourself of this behavior. History will remain and you can query me about an adjustment in the 20 minutes after the game ends. But while the system puts cards in your hand, the show must go on!
• Project Fresh Start: In mid-June, the ACBL restructured the list of people eligible to play in Virtual Club games, changing them from friends of the TD's account to a special "include list" which is everyone who won masterpoints at the VBC between January 2019 and March 2020. Anyone who was previously manually added to the list will need to be added again by request. Please make these requests well before gametime if you can, so the game starts are not delayed.
• Hand records!: You can get them while logged onto BBO in your history folder, but only if you have played in the tournament. Now you can get them in a pdf file (starting May 7) minutes after the game, as I now type them in as you play. The hand record link will be beside the results link on the results page.
• Need a partner? New tips added below on how to use the BBO partnership desk and substitute list to increase your chances of getting into a game.

What were the game details? The games were 20-board (18 for limited games) matchpointed pairs tournaments, held on Bridge Base Online. 18-20 boards is longer than most tournaments on BBO, but 18 is the minimum needed to ensure full ACBL masterpoints can be won at the games. The games take a bit longer than two hours, and that time might go lower as players get familiar with online bridge. When the time in a round runs out, the system assigns a likely result based on the cards that were left and the Director can adjust this if necessary. If the bidding is not completed on the last board, both sides will get average on the board unless it is clear that one side is headed for trouble. All players play copies of the same boards at almost the same time, and players are automatically moved to the new table when a round ends. Games are stratified into three approximately equal groups, with the top players in strat A, the middle group in B and the rest in C, based on pair average. (UPDATE: BBO now stratifies by average after stratifying earlier games by the top pair, not by average. BBO continues to assume that all BBO "star" players, and any player without an ACBL# attached to their BBO account, are in strat A.)

How much do the games cost? We have set our entry fees at 5 BBO dollars per player, 10 for the pair. BBO dollars are based on the US dollar and can be purchased securely from the BBO site using a credit card. Careful! If you purchase BBO dollars from an iOS or Android app on a phone or tablet, the app may grab some of the money you pay. It is best to purchase BBO dollars from a computer and a web browser version of BBO. Occasionally, a special game promising extra masterpoints will cause the entry fee to rise slightly, to cover the increase in sanction fees.

I'd much rather play some other way, can we change it? The current situation seems to be best considering the sharp rise in attendance we have seen. For some it is a bit slow and they have time every round to make a gourmet meal. Others seem to use every second on almost every round and when I visit I see all the usual signs of time loss: inattentiveness and confusion about who is on lead, overthinking of basic bids and plays and late hand discards that make no difference, and on and on. From time to time the slower players do not get the result they think they deserve when time runs out, and there is little we can do about this. Fourteen minutes is a long time for two boards. If you are not finishing rounds more than one or two times a session, you are almost certainly part of the problem. Stay alert!

What can I do if I don't have a partner? Log on fairly early, perhaps thirty minutes before the game, and find the next VVBC tournament (VACB154971 will be the director you're looking for, and Vanc. Bridge Centre note the 're' spelling, will be in the title). Each tournament has several tabs; when you click a tournament you are first taken to the Registration tab to sign in. There is also a Details tab you can switch to, with tournament rules and details, and an Entries tab with a list of the people who have signed up so far. And the last tab is the Partnership Desk tab, which is a list of the people looking for partners to play with in this tournament. Add yourself to the list, or invite someone else on the list to play. If you get an invite, you can check the person's profile to see if there is compatibility and accept or decline.

One final method: when the time gets down to two minutes before gametime and you are not matched up, add your name to the substitutes list. This list is for all BBO tournaments, but you can decline invites from other tournaments in order to wait for a chance to get into the VVBC game. Just before the game begins I will check the partnership desk for names. If we have a half-table at gametime, my first job will be to fill that spot, and before I send out a general invite to all subs on the list, I will first check the substitutes list to see if there are any names I saw on the partnership desk, or other local names, and I will invite those people first. The ones I will not invite are unknown people who send messages asking to sub, especially when we have a nice turnout. These games are primarily for locals. These mysterious messagers are looking for masterpoint opportunities and should be grateful I don't report them.vb

What do I need to do to play in the pairs games? A number of things, many of which you may have already done if you play online (but check!):

1. Get a free membership to BBO at this link — pick a screen name to go by, and create a password.
2. Link your ACBL number to your BBO account. I did this so long ago I forgot how, but finally figured it out. Go to Featured Areas | ACBL World. This will give you a list of tournaments for ACBL masterpoints, but below it there is a button that allows you to enter your ACBL#. Three good reasons to do this: a) if you don't you cannot win masterpoints: we cannot enter them in later, b) you and your partner will be in strat A, no matter how many points you or partner have, and c) entering your ACBL number puts you on the list of pre-approved VBC players, assuming you have played and won masterpoints at the VBC at least once in the past year.
   
   We really cannot accentuate how important it is to do this, especially for the 0-300 games, and NOT on the day of the tournament, but before. (If you do this on game day, you may be able to succeed for that game by logging off and on.) We get an updated list of BBO names to include only once daily. We can add people to this list, but if their ACBL#s are not linked, the system assumes they have 10000 points, making them ineligible for the 0-300 games. So it really is important to get this done, and it only takes a few minutes at most.
3. Set up a BBO dollar account to pay for the games. (For those who feel strongly that the Internet charging for anything will set the destruction of the world in motion, there is the option to have your partner pay your entry fee...). A BB$ button at the upper right of the main screen gives you several options for this.
4. Familiarize yourself with online bridge. There are lots of BBO places to play for free, and even a few free tournaments to play every day, but there are also tournaments which charge only a small amount for an entry. BBO also has lots of help files to show you how to make bids, play cards, make a convention card, sign up for a tournament, get on a substitute list or a partnership desk for a tournament, send chat to table, to opponents only, to a single person, etc. Remember that in a tournament you must be careful about the chat you send to the table and that there are options you should learn for sending chat messages only to both opponents. We alert/announce our own bids in online bridge, not partner's: when you make a call there is a text box you can enter text in to alert or explain your call which will show up in the auction without being viewable by partner. If you forget and alert partner's call, the opponents will be confused, or very amused. For example: 1NT (Pass) 2♥; (Pass) 2♠. The 2♥ bidder should alert 2♥ and write 'transfer' in the text box. Partner will be blocked from seeing this until the end. If you alert 2♠ and announce 'transfer' intending to explain partner's 2♥ call, the opponents will think that 2♠ is another transfer!
   
   A new guide to the key differences between online and offline bridge has recently been added here.
5. Watch for the next Virtual VBC game. This can be confusing. There are ACBL games open to all, but our games are at the Virtual Club section, recently set up so we can all play with other familiar players as we shelter in place. McBruce's directing account name on BBO is VACB154971. If you see this in the list of tournaments, that will be a VBC game.
6. Click on the game. This will give you many options. You can log on and specify a partner (who will also need to be logged on to BBO). You can join a partnership desk and send chat to others who may be interested to see if you are compatible. You can read details for the tournament. Games are added about two hours before they take place, but you need not sign up early. Waiting until the last minute may keep you out though.
7. If you are 'blocked,' send a chat or BBO mail message to me, VACB154971. If you are not on the pre-approved list of VBC players, I can add you, but I need to know your BBO name and your real name. You should be at least an occasional or potential player at the VBC (anyone in Unit 430 meets that rule easily). I may not be able to add people in the last five minutes or so before the game, and I won't be there from the moment the game appears on the list two hours before, but I will check messages when I log on and get as many in as I can. Remember though, you and your partner need to be online at the same time to register, both must have enough BBO$ to play, and to be on the list of VBC players you both need to have registered your ACBL#. I can't investigate all of these for you and tell you what's missing. It's up to you to do what is needed.
8. Once you are signed up, you can do other things on BBO as you wait (joining another tournament is not reccommended unless you are sure it will end before ours starts). The system will pluck you from wherever you are to the tournament when we begin. (This has changed: many BBO activities in the Casual area are now on a different server, and the tournament area will show you as offline. Be VERY sure that you are back on the tournament page at least a minute or two before the game begins. The BBO clock is notoriously unreliable and 54 minutes to gametime may actually mean 52.)
9. At the end of the game, there are several ways you can see the results: BBO will place a message in your box with a link to the results and hand records. BBO also has a history page where you can look up results and hand records for every hand you have completed on BBO. Our own results page posts the results a few minutes after the game and links to the ACBL Live for Clubs results when we get them. And about 40-70 minutes after the game, the results will go to the VBC space on ACBL Live For Clubs (so far, alas, without hand records). If your BBO name rather than your real name appears at ACBL Live For Clubs, it means you had not linked your ACBL number with BBO (see #2 above) when the game began.
10. Be careful, but time aware! There are no undos in a tournament setting, and if you make a mistake you should say nothing to the table in chat until the end of the hand, to avoid giving unfair hints to partner. But it is important to avoid delays and finish the round on time, so learn how to claim when the last several tricks are irrelevant and the result is clear. Recently I have seen several players who reject all claims as a sort of policy. This wastes a lot of time and it is NOT your right to delay the game in hopes of a misclick. If you encounter this, call the Director and I will deal with the players involved.

Still can't seem to get in! I'm sorry to hear that several are having difficulty getting in, and I wish I had more answers. Most of these problems are random glitches that result when the tournament traffic is suddenly 10-50x larger than BBO has ever experienced. It's not easy for me to resolve these situations close to game time and almost impossible to figure out why afterwards. I see only BBO names and I often do not know who they represent, because for whatever reason, very few of you put your full names in your profiles. This means messages that say 'Bobby and I can't get in' require me to first find out what BBO name Bobby has, whether you're registered, and if not whether you are both online. I do understand that BBO does not actually charge for a tournament until you complete your first board, so glitches that keep you out at gametime do not cost you money. One remedy that might work if you find an event has started without you, is to sign up as a substitute and let me know you have done so in chat to VACB154971. If an opening becomes available, you'll be my first choice.

More advice:
The ten original points below worked to help a lot of people get online and started quickly. Here is some extra advice added more recently to help you out:

1. BBO basic skills are covered on a help page here. Some of the things that everyone should know:
   • Sending chat to a specific person rather than to everyone at the table
   • Getting rid of an alert/explanation box that covers your bid-box (click it or touch it!)
   • Sending mail to someone who is offline to arrange a future game
   • Changing options so that you need to confirm bids and plays (reducing misclicks)
   • Switching from pictures of cards (which may move unexpectedly to put trumps on the left!) to a bridge diagram look (where the suits stay where they are)
   • Creating a convention card or modifying a stock convention card and saving it for play with your favorite partners.
   • Signing up for a tournament's partnership desk or as a potential substitute
   
   It is important to note that some features of BBO have been removed to reduce the bandwidth during the current rush of people sheltered in place. Also, these help pages focus on the current computer/browser version of BBO, not the previous Flash version (which someone who does not upgrade their browser may still have), or the tablet app versions, where touching replaces clicking. But there is a lot of help here and many of us could use it.
2. Another few words on disclosure are needed based on a few recent incidents. It is important to understand that we alert and explain our own bids, not partner's, in online play (just like the best players do when playing high-level events behind screens). Even more important is to use private, not "to table" chat, to request more information from opponents. Doing so prevents the passing of unauthorized information to partner about bids you are interested in and the specific questions you are asking. This also applies to misclicks: alerting partner that you have misclicked in a live auction is a sure way to get any good score you achieve adjusted.
3. The correction period for BBO tournaments expires 20 minutes after the game and there is absolutely no way to correct, or even to check, a mistake after that time period runs out. At the end of the game I stay online for that 20 minute period and as I post the provisional results I will hear if someone sends me a chat message in BBO. I also check my BBO mail and my e-mail during this period. But that is as far as I will go. This will surprise many, but having started surprisingly late, I have no aptitude and not a lot of love for cellphones, and I usually keep mine squelched. I don't often check the messages that are there: if you choose that route, you will be sending your complaints into a deep hole that will only be checked long after the correction period expires. When a board is adjusted after time runs out, you get a message at that point and you can check it in your history when you have a spare moment, even in the 20 minutes after the game. If you resort to a cellphone message because you haven't learned how to send a private chat or a BBO e-mail, or check board adjustments when you get the message that they were made, I can't help you.
4. Seeing a lot of players logging in a few seconds before gametime. This is dangerous, because while the system waits for missing players before starting, we cannot wait for you forever, and many games begin at times when BBO is busy. Try to log on at least a few minutes before the scheduled start. Nobody wants to arrange a game and then have to play with a random sub.
5. Misclicks are part of the online game and we have been very strongly advised that allowing 'undo' when you misclick can lead to many many problems with unauthorized information. This runs afoul of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge, which sometimes provide some relief when an unintended action happens, but online it is much more difficult to determine a player's intent and make the right ruling, as well as being difficult-to-impossible to adjust later if needed. In the vast majority of cases, a bid made as the result of a misclick will have to stand, but this creates problems of its own. It is OK, but not required, to let the opponents know, either in private chat, or publicly once partner becomes dummy and cannot be affected by the disclosure, what went wrong. Partner, however, has to remain in the dark, and if the mistake creates a strange auction, he cannot be allowed to make an unusual but successful decision if the mistake-maker has let it slip that something is up. If you are careful to say nothing publicly, partner may decide that the most likely reason for the strange auction is a misclick and get it right. As an opponent of a player who has, or may have, misclicked, you may call the Director if the misclick is likely to cause an unusual result. In rare cases, the Director may be able to get creative and find an interesting solution. But most of the time, you'll just have to roll with the weird bid and accept the result if the opponents land on their feet without help.
6. The results that BBO produces have percentage scores, but the ACBL Live scores have the BBO percentages and total matchpoints. We have discovered an anomaly here, when artificial averages are given on a board, ACBL does not compute the matchpoints properly. Sometimes two pairs with 111 matchpoints have different percentages! In one game the 2nd place pair in C was listed below the 3rd place pair in C! The BBO percentages appear to be more correct. By the way, the ACBL Live results list players by real name, not by BBO name. If your BBO name appears, it is a sure sign that you have NOT successfully linked your ACBL# to your BBO account, as described above. This means you are ineligible for masterpoint awards and have to play in strat A, so please go to ACBL World and link your ACBL number.

• Bridge Puzzle #1: This came up on Monday March 1:
  
  East opened 1♣ and South overcalled 1NT.
  
  North transferred to hearts and South jumped to 3♥.
  
  North bid 4♥.
  
  It looks like two spades and two minor suit aces to lose, but one of the spade losers may be pitched on a club winner.
  
  However, East gets off to the best lead, a small spade, and West plays the king.
  
  Can you still make it?
  
  All you need to do is to duck the first trick. If West has a five-card suit, East has only two, and if East has both missing aces, ducking the first spade and winning the second will make it impossible for East to put West in to cash a third round of spades once in with the A♣!

Have fun playing! Stay healthy and safe.