BCBA Weekend Special – Day 2 Report

The BCBA tournament got down to business as 78 teams battled each other in 5 rounds of tough but friendly bridge. A ten board round, that would normally take 85 minutes to complete in a physical environment, ended up normally taking 90 minutes and even more at times. 

While these are not ‘excuses’, we will share with you a few of the practical issues we faced yesterday. The objective of sharing these issues is to allow all of us to be aware of what to expect during such events

Here are a few highlights of yesterday.

Results

After 7 rounds, both leagues are very excitingly poised with any of the top 20 teams in each league having a chance to qualify for the knock outs in the final two rounds. We present below the top 5 teams with their scores for ready reference.

The leaders of both groups have more or less certainly qualified for the Quarter Final League. We have to congratulate Team Pradeep, who have pulled out a lead of over one match from all except two other teams. Yesterday, we had mainly commented on teams in the Gold section. We note with pleasure today the performance of  Team Hyderabad Juniors, who have performed exceedingly well to have a great chance to qualify. We would also like to mention that  Team Tequila has, among its team mates, Mr. S. Sundareshan, president of the BFI. We are honored by his participation and seek his active support in our endeavors.   

Detailed results can be seen by clicking on  Gold and Silver  respectively

Issues faced by participants 

We highlight below some common issues faced by all of us during the process of the tournament which makes each round longer than it make seem to take in real life. The objective of this exercise is increase our awareness. You have been unquestioningly patient with us. We would like to answer some of your unasked questions

Team Match Creation

The most common error we have seen challenging people is that all members of one team end up on the same table! In order to prevent this from happening, it is important that during the process of creation, members of one team are placed on one grid. BBO then matches the grids to create tables.

Players not online

Believe us when we say that the most common reason for this is that we have entered the BBO Ids wrong! We have ourselves attempted to create several team matches with ids where we have either omitted to apply spaces or erroneously added spaces on our own.  So we need to be careful while entering BBO Ids

Cannot Create More than One Team Match

The next issue that we noticed was some matches having some errors in them, whether they were of the sort mentioned above, or whether the number of boards were wrong of any other such error got people stuck because they couldn’t start a ‘fresh’ match.

When such errors occur, Please note that logging out won’t solve your problem. What we need to do is to close the team match in an orderly fashion.

In order to close the team match, 3 -4 players have to ‘withdraw’ from the team match. Once this happens, the match closes on its own and a fresh one can be created.

Alternately, the TD can invoke an option given to him to ‘Cancel the Team Match’

Schedule

The following is the balance schedule

Swiss League

The Swiss League will be have 9 rounds, each of 10 boards, as follows.

Sunday, April 5, 10 am onwards                                  Rounds 8 and 9

Quarter Final League

The top 12 participants in each league will qualify for the quarter final league. This will start at 3 pm on Sunday.

The qualifiers will be divided into 3 groups as follows

Group 1                   1,6,7,12

Group 2                   2,5,8,11

Group 3                   3,4,9,10

Each group will play a round robin of 12 boards per round. At the end of the round robin, the winner of each group and the highest score from the remainder will qualify for the semi finals.

From this stage on, all matches will be having common boards.

Semi Final, Finals and Play Off

The semi finals and finals will consist of 2 sessions of 12 boards each and start at 1000 am on Monday

The top scoring quarter finalist (among the top 3) will get to pick his opponent for the semi final.

The finals and the play offs will start at 0300 pm on Monday

Support for our volunteers

As shared with all of you, we have decided to use the funds received by us for our efforts to support our friendly bridge volunteers who run from table to table providing us boards when we need them. Should you wish to support our tireless friends, you too can contribute by remitting funds to

Account Name: The Bombay Contract Bridge Association

Bank Name:       HDFC                      Branch: Malabar Hill

Account No: 50200037482792       Account Type: Current

IFSC Code: HDFC0000625 

General Conditions of Contest

• Barometer

  Barometer will be switched off throughout.

• Kibitzers

  During the league, Kibitzing will be switched off.
  During the play offs, if both teams agree, Kibitzers may be allowed subject to the proviso that the Director may, at his discretion, switch off Kibitzing.

• Undo

  During the league, teams may mutually agree to allow undos
  During the play offs, undo will remain on, but will be only allowed with the express permission of the director

• Psychs

  Psychs are disallowed in the Silver Tournament
  Psychs are allowed in the Gold  Tournament subject to the proviso that an individual does not psych repeatedly and regularly. The opposing team is requested to bring all psychs to the TDs notice to prevent misuse of this facility.

• Withdrawals

  Withdrawals are not allowed after a draw has been made. Teams withdrawing in this manner will not be allowed to play in the next event.

  Post qualification, withdrawals are not permitted. Teams withdrawing will not be allowed to play in the next event.