More ACBL Gold Points: Oct 15-18 Fall Into Bridge

The second last online regional for 2020 begins tomorrow, with the usual stratified two-session pairs events each day, as well as many single-session side game series and newcomer games. And for those who like team games, stay tuned. In fact, check your email and this website in the next few days…

Here is a link to the Fall Into Bridge ACBL Schedule

Attempting The Side Games

This time around, the regional will be very different for me. Instead of my usual mid-flight and super mid-flight games, I will be trying the side-game gambit. As I mentioned, I recently switched to Asia hours, which makes a two-session event during US hours especially hard. Instead, my partners have agreed to play the 9:15pm ET side-game series, conveniently allowing me to play it as a morning game when there is a 12-hour time difference.

Technically, my series is the “Howling Wind Side Game Series”, and I appreciate the creativity from the tournament organizers. However, most of my partners just call it the 9:15pm side series. Hope to see folks there! Based on the past few regionals, the side game series is actually very hard to win – many world class pros seem to play it. I’m hoping the 1500 and 500 strats give me some relief.

Quick Primer On Side Games

A side game series combines your best two sessions by matchpoints percentage to determine overall award eligibility. For this regional, all side series are exactly 4 sessions, horizontally stacked at the same time from Thursday through Sunday.

Each starting time is a separate series. Your performance from 10:15am session does not impact your 2:15pm session. Instead, you need to play at least two of the 10:15am sessions to qualify for the overalls. If you play all four, you have a slight advantage, because you have four chances and they take your best two sessions.

Individual Performance Not Partnership Performance

Also, overalls are based on INDIVIDUAL performance. You can switch partners throughout, if you use the same partner each time, you should win together. However, if you play four sessions with two different partners, you might get a 65% and 40% with one, and a 63% and 50% with another. You would almost certainly win gold points because only the two best sessions count. However, your partners would not, unless they also played more sessions with other partners.