102 tables at the end of Day One (Monday), 52.3% of the 2019 total.
In 2022, there were 99½ tables to this point.
In 2019, there were 195 tables to this point.
For full details, check out the Table Counts page!

Bridge clubs and tournaments throughout the ACBL are struggling with returning to live play, so comparing this tournament's attendance to one before the pandemic is not really fair. We'll hope to get a little more than last year, around 60% of the 2019 attendance, making the target number 1930 tables this time — but perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised!

Brain Warmups

What WAS His/Her Name Again?

Below is a short description of six famous people, five of whom were born on June 12, in alphabetical order by (unrevealed) surname. One was NOT born on this day, but rather on the day at the opposite end of the calendar, December 12. The imposter will always be either the first or last born of the six by more of a gap than the two at the other end of the list. Your job is to name the five people and place them in order of their birth years, leaving the imposter out. Answers are below, with the more tricky puzzles from that site that McBruce is addicted to...

• American film producer director who became known as the "Master of Disaster" after directing The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
• The 43rd Vice President of the United States for eight years and then the 41st President.
• A jazz pianist and bandleader who played in Miles Davis's band, then formed the jazz fusion band Return to Forever.
• The British Prime Minister who supported and succeeded Winston Churchill, and was ousted after the Suez Crisis after less than two years in the job.
• Not at all famous during her short lifetime, but her diary, written mostly during World War II, became a best seller.
• An American businessman who co-founded companies that became American Express and Wells Fargo.

Masterpoints for all players are updated nightly here first, with everyone's current red and gold point total listed alphabetically below the leaders, before a shorter leaderboard is added to this page.

Returning To Live Bridge (Part One)

A Simple Tip To Clear The Cobwebs

I'd like to give you a simple bridge tip that will improve your game. Something needed now more than ever, as we return to live bridge after a long time playing mostly or exclusively online. Something vital as we return to live bridge two or three years older than we were before the pandemic hiatus. Something that will help whether you are just coming back now, or have been back for some time and have wondered why the game seems more difficult than it ever was before. Here it is:

   Develop and maintain a consistent bridge routine, to the point where it is so automatic you need not think about it and can concentrate on the actual game.

Several simple tasks should be part of everyone's bridge routine on every deal they play. If you can master these tasks to the level of not having to think about them, you'll be less likely to be distracted later, when the auction and the cardplay begin. Here is a basic list:

• Updating your scorecard for a new round: Write down the opponent's pair number beside the board numbers you expect to play. If you're not sure which boards you will be getting, find out by checking with North, whose BridgeMate will tell you. In a team game, write out the numbers of the boards you expect to see in the match. Usually if you are playing a round or match of x boards, the last board number in the group will be divisible by x. Making some mark on your scorecard rather than finding the board later makes it easier and faster to keep an accurate score.
  
  
• Sorting Cards: there are dozens of different methods. Pick one and stick to it. You should be able to perform this basic skill while greeting opponents, hearing announcements, and waiting for the dealer to start the auction. Multitasking only seems difficult; in reality it simply consists of doing things the same way so often that they become so routine that you can think about your hand's strength and distribution as you sort your thirteen cards automatically.
  
  
• Noting conditions: Who is the dealer and who is vulnerable? What seat am I in, and how might this affect what my first action might be? Best to get into the habit of looking just after you sort your cards, every time. Even with a poor hand: checking dealer and vulnerability only with decent hands might become a "tell" that allows opponents to finesse partner successfully more often than not!
  
  
• Counting highcard points: Most do this as they sort, but a quick recount once your thirteen cards are in the order you like to see them cannot hurt. Once you have this number in your head, you'll begin to look like a real player, as opposed to some people who seem to recount their points every time it is their call, as though it might have changed. Don't be the player who writes his own highcard point total on the scorecard before the auction even begins. Most people who do this are so obvious about it that one doesn't even need to look to tell from the duffer's expression what he's got.
  
  
• Writing the contract down: More and more players are skipping this and some have abandoned scoring entirely. Bad move. In team games, you need to score all deals; if you don't and the opponents do, disputes go their way. In pairs, scoring is even more important: getting the contracts and results down on paper is the gateway to improvement once you get hand records or look up the deals on ACBL Live. Few of us can remember the finer details of a hand just from looking at the deal diagram. A contract and a result often fills in the gaps and often helps us to remember the auction and the cardplay. There's no more important habit to get into. Get a system and write things down. As you do, make a mental note of how many tricks you need to go plus on the board, whether you are declarer, dummy, or a defender. When I write down 3He as I await partner's opening lead, I am thinking "three hearts, we need five tricks to beat this." The act of writing it down and thinking about tricks required cements it into your mind and you can move on to figuring out how to get those tricks you need.
  
  
• Timing: Be aware and courteous, please. Opening leader should make a face-down lead first, and turn it face up if there are no other issues, before updating a scorecard (on most deals, declarer will take a few seconds to think about strategy after dummy hits, so there will be plenty of time to catch up). Dummy's first responsibility is to get thirteen cards face up on the table without delay, as soon as the opening lead is faced: far too many of us are making more of a show of this than we should, waiting for a reaction from declarer after revealing each suit one by one. The BridgeMate operator will need some time to enter the contract at this point as well (leaving it to the end is a sure way to make errors). At the end of the cardplay, the BridgeMate operator must be allowed to enter the result without having to fend off even the most urgent post-mortem from partner, then will need time to enter the score on their own scoresheet. Too many Souths are quick on the kill trying to make their big point, which leads to distraction for poor North, trying to get caught up with BridgeMate and scoresheet. Let's also be clear that one of East or West should be shown the confirmation screen and be actually looking at it when they hit the confirm button. I have seen people looking the other way while they 'confirm' and many times this results in corrections needed later.
  
  
• Cardplay: whether the thirteen cards in your hand or the cards in your bid-box, your main rule should be this: don't reach for a card until you have made a decision. Once the decision is made, play the card with confidence. You'll look like a much better player than the one who pulls a card from the bid-box or from hand, gets it halfway to the table and then pulls it back, only to repeat the process a half-minute later with another (or is it the same one again?) card...
  
  
• Completed tricks: Left to right from your perspective: don't follow partner and go right to left; this reveals you as a desperate novice trying to follow along. Trust only your count; if someone else has a card placed the wrong way, ignore it and assume you have it right. You can only say something about a card turned wrongly in the immediate moments after it has been done, not later. If there is a disagreement, don't mix your cards, and call the Director, who will sometimes rule for the side providing evidence over the side that mixed their cards before agreeing on tricks won.
  
  
• Replacing your cards in the slot: This was a problem before the hiatus and continues to be: some players are clutchers and will not put their cards back in the slot until they have shuffled them several dozen times and completed a detailed post-mortem. It's almost as if they believe that putting their cards back in the slot means that anything discovered later about the result is no longer correctable, like an infield that runs to the dugout before making a necessary appeal. This is not the case: put your cards back in the slot! Do it quickly. Yes, shuffling your cards is important, but one or two shuffles is enough. Often a Director or the North player is trying to pass boards while a clutcher grinds things to a halt. Watch your routine and make sure you aren't a clutcher. And if partner is, have a private talk.
  
  
• Writing the result down: Just as important as writing the contract down when the auction ends; remember to write the number of tricks won, by adding +3 or −2 or = (some mathematicians prefer 0 if the contract makes exactly) and write in the raw score in the appropriate column. Add a note or two about details to check later if you wish. Once many years ago, before BridgeMates had arrived at our club, I investigated a strange result to find that the player's scorecard included five large and angry-looking Chinese characters beside Board 13, covering the space from Boards 11-15 in fact. The result was confirmed; we later found out that the translation was 'VERY BAD DEFENSE!!'
  
  
• Moving when the round is called: N-S need to move the boards (Directors can help but there aren't enough of us to move all the boards every round), E-W need to move themselves. Once the round is called, it is time to do so even if the next table is not yet ready. New E-W pairs cannot begin until the previous E-W pair leaves, so do so please. If you haven't heard the round being called but many are up and moving about, please don't adamantly assume that it has not yet happened. Let's try to avoid being that E-W player with multiple purses and bags who ends the session having moved more tonnage than a moving van crew, or that other E-W player who wanders randomly and forgets where they began....
  
  
• Catching up if late: If you are late getting the round finished, the onus is on you and the other players to do what you can to catch up and to pass played boards so others need not wait. It doesn't matter who is at fault for the late finish; arguing this when the Director asks you to finish quickly is like a Jacoby Transfer that transfers the fault to your side. Do your best to avoid further delays when in this situation: thirty seconds over each discard as declarer runs a long suit is usually unnecessary if you count the suit and know how many cards you will eventually need to come down to. Once the round is complete, be quick in starting the next round and continue to try to make up the lost time. A pair getting a late start because their opponents were delayed also needs to help catch up where they can.
  
  

It may seem to you, especially if you have a routine you've stuck to for many years, that all this advice is for the birds. But consider this: we all played more online bridge than live bridge for two years or more. And while we were online, we had a computer making sure we couldn't revoke, bid or lead out of turn, make an insufficient bid or a double of partner's bid. This same computer moved us from table to table automatically and even kept score for us. The computer managed to get a Director to our table when needed in record time, one who could look up the play and auction thus far, and even the chat! Now we have come back to live bridge and we don't have that helpful computer anymore to keep us from going astray. We need a good, consistent routine to keep us on track, and many of us need to rediscover it. I don't remember so many Director calls before the pandemic, for someone following suit to the third card played to a trick rather than the first. Or calls where there is a contested claim and when I ask what the contract is there are three or four different answers!

Something has happened during our two-year long holiday from live bridge, and it has made it surprisingly difficult to return and monitor your own suit-following, or visualize an auction from bid-box cards, or know when the Director is needed in basic situations (that's part two, see tomorrow's Bulletin for that). Players have so much to think about that was done automatically for them online that there is a lot of needless befuddlement out there. The way back is to relegate the basic things above to a simple routine and follow it. Individuals may have slightly different routines, but as long as they get the job done, they will help you focus on the actual game.

I believe that a good bridge routine is more important than learning conventions that come up twice a year, or figuring out how to execute a double squeeze, or becoming an expert on the current state of the Alert system or the convention charts. Your time-saving, details-focussing bridge routine, running in the background automatically like a 'system process' on your computer, will help you raise your awareness level on each hand with fewer distractions. In the long run this will be worth far more than some whizbang bidding system that taxes your brain to the max and generates poor results or angry partners and teammates with every error.

(more tomorrow)

Brain Workout Section!

For those of you who used to like the puzzles I printed in the old bulletins, here is a link to an online version: one of the puzzles that I used to feature in the old paper Bulletins, but it is easy to play on a computer as well. Not so easy on a tablet or phone, since most of the puzzles require right-clicks, not easily done in a tablet or phone environment. Bridges gives you a grid of islands, circles containing a number. Your objective is connect the islands with bridges so that 1) all bridges are horizontal or vertical only, no diagonal or curved bridges, 2) The numbers in the circles indicate the number of bridges that go to that island, 3) Two islands may be connected with one or two bridges, but no more, 4) Bridges may not cross one another or go over an island, and 5) All of the islands need to be connected together with the network of bridges. Strategy: bigger numbers usually allow you to connect one bridge in each possible direction and later decide which directions have second bridges as well; check how many islands can actually be connected with up-down or left-right lines, often this will give you clues as to where the bridges must be. Click on the puzzle you want to try at the right (or the caption below) to go to the page with all the instructions you'll need. These puzzles come from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (see below) and there are links there to apps for most devices.	Easy puzzle (McBruce's time: 0min 30sec)
	Medium puzzle (McBruce's time: 1min 28sec)
	Tricky puzzle (McBruce's time: 1min 33sec)

Answers to the trivia questions at the top of the page...

(Click here to go back to the questions!)

June 12 birthdays:

• 1897 — Sir Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister who supported and succeeded Winston Churchill, and was ousted after the Suez Crisis after less than two years in the job.
• 1916 — Irwin Allen, American film producer director who became known as the "Master of Disaster" after directing The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
• 1924 — George H. W. Bush, the 43rd Vice President of the United States for eight years and then the 41st President.
• 1929 — Anne Frank, not at all famous during her short lifetime, but her diary, written mostly during World War II, became a best seller.
• 1941 — Chick Corea, a jazz pianist and bandleader who played in Miles Davis's band, then formed the jazz fusion band Return to Forever.
• ...and...
• December 12, 1805 — Henry Wells, an American businessman who co-founded companies that became American Express and Wells Fargo.