The Inter-Club Bridge League finished their 2019-2020 season today with a 5 round BAM playoffs. Congratulations to Kristen Swenson, Hee Jung Moon, Kitty Stanton, and Anna Haas representing the Colony Club, winning the playoffs with a score of 15.5 boards.
Final Playoffs Standings (Top 6 out of 19):
Colony Club
Harvard Club
University Club
Cosmopolitan Club
Regency Whist Club
New York Athletic Club
Shortened Season with Virtual Finish
Although the pandemic cut the regular season short by 2 matches, the league proceeded with playoffs qualifying the top 6 out of 19 teams from the season. Normally, the prior year winning club would host the playoffs event (University Club). However, like all things post-Covid, the league migrated from paper travelers to BBO, skipping the Bridge Mate phase entirely.
Board A Match
Bridge Base has only limited support for Board-A-Match. For those who haven’t played it, it’s an interesting mix of team play and matchpoints. You have a team of four and face off against another team of four across two tables with common boards. So far that’s just like swiss or KO that we know and love.
But instead of scoring it as IMPs, it’s scored like matchpoints – with only one other pair in the field. For any board, you either win, lose, or tie, for a score of 1, 0, or 0.5. Every board is either a top, bottom, or push (and sometimes the results at your table are inconsequential). More than ever, every overtrick matters, as well as the 10 or 20 point differences we so often see with -100 vs -110, or +430 vs +420.
Limited BBO Support For Teams
It’s been on our wish list for a while – better support for team games. Right now scheduling multiple rounds of teams is very cumbersome – all 8 people must be online and ready to play, each round requires another setup session, and there is no good way to chat with all the players prior to the game starting, between rounds, or after the game ends. There could be many more casual team games played with just a few minor changes.
Gloria and I always enjoyed the Interclub League season. Best wishes to all.